Up 7. Watched Colbert/Meyers. This is one of the lamest things I do routinely, and I wish I could cut it out — but, according to the book on depression, watching “talking heads” has even been used a prescribed therapy.
Read 10 pages or so, on depressed Inuits.
Usual morning after that. Didn’t get further w/ reading. Also cooked some sausage for lunch and dealt w/ a couple online items w/ Bree.
Walk.
Worked 10:30-1. Hung up on first graf of new revision! Having trouble letting it go and tried to return to it a couple times in the afternoon. Other than that, had lunch and read quota of Solomon by about 4:30.
Visited w/ Bree 5-6, filed CDs and killed some more email.
Read Coolidge around 9:30 - to p. 100, b/c about 30 pages are taken up by “Suite V,” w/ 2 words to a page.
Some computer cleanup tasks, before a restart. Sort of a new broom principle for May.
In the same vein — I’ll continue to post my monthly reading, and think about other ways to use this space, but I’m going to stop these daily entries for now. They’re more for my sake than anyone else’s, but my days, including my writing schedule, are so routinized this far into lockdown that it seems redundant. This is pretty much what I’ve arrived at:
6:30. up
7-8 read
8-9 breakfast
9-10 song notes/exercise
10-11 walk
11-1 prose
1-2 read
2-3 lunch
3-4 songwriting
4-5 email
5-6 time w/ bree
6-7 walk
7-8 dinner
8-10 poetry/music
10-11 online/movie
11:30 lights out/podcast
This looks unworkably rigid, but it’s an ideal I’m shooting for most days, and not skipping the writing block is crucial to my well-being. I have intentionally taken a day off twice in the last 5 weeks. I’m following this schedule fairly strictly until about 4, but even that represents what I’m trying to complete w/in that hour - often there’s time for other tasks between 8-11 range, unless I get up late and am behind on a reading quota. The “walks” are not an hour long either. And of course, Bree and I spend more than an hour together, even in the unglamorous form of meals or home projects — though she goes to bed earlier than I do, so after 9 is a good time to concentrate on things that don’t interest her.