Since Jack
died, any time management skill I had has deteriorated. I make to-do lists and
never look at them. I do things not on my list. I go to sleep too late, wake up
too late... Well, here’s how my morning went today...
Preface: I lost an hour of sleep
Saturday night, made worse by going to sleep almost an hour later than usual
(2:45 instead of 1:45 a.m.).
So I’d
thought I’d go to bed earlier than usual last night. But I’m a night owl. Once
it hits 9:30 p.m., I stop feeling tired, even if I am. Not in bed until almost 1:30
Sunday night.
8:30 a.m. My
alarm goes off. (This is my attempt to get a decent start on the day. It's
half an hour later than I had to wake up before I retired.)
8:49 a.m. I
actually wake up. The alarm had fit very neatly into my dream, so I guess
that’s why it didn’t wake me for real. I switch off the alarm, which turns on
the radio.
9:30 a.m. I wake
up again. Apparently, I went back to sleep even though I’d rolled over onto my
back and I think I can’t sleep on my back.
9:50 a.m. I
actually get out of bed. Lying in bed listening to my local public radio
station gives me the illusion that I am learning something from the news. But
some seven hours later, I no longer remember what was so riveting.
9:50–10:20 a.m.
I’ve gotten my New York Times, which
is delivered to my apartment door, and Publishers Weekly, which I retired from
five years ago and where I still do free-lance work. Then I read all of the Times’s front page story about the Saudi
royal family members and others who were “arrested” last fall, and read the
front page portion of the stories about Kenya’s historic drought and voters in
Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district. In PW, I read the long news story
about feminist bookstores (there used to be 100, and now fewer than 10, but
they’ve been doing very well since Trump’s election) and the opinion “Soapbox”
piece about writing historical fiction and how closely to hew to fact.
10:20–11:30 a.m.
I open my laptop to write an e-mail to my B&B hostess in New Orleans to ask
her a few questions about the delicious muffins she sent me. Instead:
1. I get an e-mail from a friend about
a movie we’re planning to see on Thursday. She suggests we order our tickets in
advance, but when I go to the theater website, the movie isn’t available on
Thursday. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out if this is true, and then
check another theater, where it is showing on Thursday, and then e-mail back my
friend.
2. I see an e-mail from a PW colleague
with an attachment, but when I click on it, my e-mail warns me it may be
deceptive. I go to the PW mail site to ask the colleague if he sent me an
attachment. But there I see an e-mail from another colleague that requires me
to go to another website to check out a document, which has some conceptual problems.
So I have to e-mail her back, explaining as well as I can what the problem is
and how it might be fixed. This takes a lot more time. But when I click “Send”
after a while I get an error message that I’m not connected to the Internet.
BUT I AM. Yet another example of computers lying.
3. And I forgot to send the e-mail I intended
to write in the first place.
11:30–11:45 a.m.
I write all of this in my journal.
And after
this, I finally take a shower, get dressed, and return to the kitchen for
breakfast. Or is it lunch by now? You tell me.
-------------------------------------
I’m
participating in the 11th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two
Writing Teachers. This is day 12 of the 31-day
challenge. It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a
community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to
slice about. Join in!
