Ordinary Coffee

in

I wrote this a few months ago, back when we were all still going to work. I miss my morning coffee downstairs with Ed who takes good care of the seniors at our community center and me.

At the office, I go downstairs for coffee. There's always a pot on. Folks there prepping for seniors who come to breakfast and stay for lunch. They invite me for a daily cup. I pour and wish them a good day. They wish me a great one.

It’s ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water runs through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness.

Dad kept coffee on all day. A pot in the morning. One after dinner. When anyone came to visit. When the guys were over to work a funeral. When he went out late to a house, hospital, or nursing home to retrieve the dead and help the living find their way again.

Just ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water run through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness, some darkness.

Dad always offered a cup. Always accepted one. He’d sit, drink coffee, talk, and listen. In his kitchen. In theirs.

At the office, I always accept the offered coffee poured into my cup over the stain of the day before's coffee. I stand, sip that bitter coffee, talk, and listen.

Dad's unfinished cup has gone cold in the kitchen of memory. Death having called him out one last time.

Ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water run through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness, some darkness, some light.

I carry that coffee up to my office and sit alone sipping again from a cup daily refilled.

Time To Rest

in

When I get an idea in bed, I write it on a sticky-note and go on to sleep. The next morning, I usually take the sticky-note downstairs and write the idea in my Morning Pages. I found an old sticky-note today, something I meant to write but for which I didn't have the time. I've got plenty of time now.

The note says:

The difference, lying in bed, between commanding "I have to get to sleep" and gently saying "It is time to rest."

I remember the feeling I had that night, lying in bed. It was late. I was tired, but my mind was racing, like it is most every night now. I looked at the clock, calculated the hours left before my alarm would sound, and told myself, "I have to get to sleep right now." I may have sworn at myself. That has been known to happen.

But then something caught me. I love when this happens. A warning light flashed in the control room of my mind. I opened my clenched eyes and let go the breath I had been holding.

"Rest," I whispered to the darkness. My wife was downstairs and the cat never listens, so I was the only audience for this. "It is time to rest," I told myself, my voice gentle and patient, as though I were talking to a child, someone I love.

I didn't fall asleep immediately. Life doesn't work that way. This isn't magic. Well, it is, but not that kind of magic. It's the kind of magic that eases the weight of anxiety by gently wafting it away.

I tend to yell at myself to change my behavior. Funny, because I had a sign in my classroom saying, No one ever changed my mind by yelling at me. The real magic was in the moment of realization that there was another way to go.

I can recycle that sticky-note now that I've written this. Although I'm tempted to stick it to the wall beside the bed, the dash of my car, the inside of my computer, or maybe just on my forehead, written backward, so I look at it every time I feverishly wash my hands and hope for the best.

The Solution Is Right There

in

I write with a refillable fountain pen. The twelve-dollar bottle of ink on my desk lasts six months. Not bad given how much I write. Every third day or so, I refill the pen. This is my sixth fountain pen and has a peculiar behavior: no matter how well I clean the nib after each fill, the pen blots one glob of ink onto and through the page. What a mess. And it has been driving me crazy.

For months I've worked on a solution. I wipe the pen carefully, hold it upside down, and flick it to settle the ink, but that glob keeps blotting the page.

This morning, I filled the pen, wiped it oh so very carefully, and, as I have the last month or two, folded a scrap sheet and wrote a bit. Four words in, the pen belched a glob. After a dozen more, all was well.

Returning to my Morning Pages I wondered, why can't I solve this problem? when in fact I had just practiced a fine solution. I wrote the glob onto a piece of scrap. Ten seconds of scribble and the problem was solved. I've had it solved for months. How have I missed that?

I've missed it because I've been fixed on one solution instead of the problem. I've been willing to settle for nothing but a refilled pen that writes cleanly from the first word. Fixated on that, I missed having solved the problem of blotting on my writing pages.

I forgot to be aware of what's happening. Wishing for something, I missed the solution I had already discovered.

I'll bet that a blotting pen isn't the only problem I may have solved without noticing. It might be time to pay better attention.

Task & Timer

in ,

Task & Timer bgfay - March 23, 2020

Here's my situation:

I can’t seem to get myself going this morning. There are some things I could, maybe should be doing, but none are really of much use and most are dependent on communicating with others so I send email and wait for replies. Everyone is dealing with stuff and my email isn't top priority. Nor should it be. I have brief moments of productivity between long stretches of nothing to do.

Maybe you can relate.

I'm not complaining, just trying to find a way to deal with the way things are. Since I'm not alone in having this problem, maybe we can test-drive a possible solution. You'll need a task and a timer.

  • Task: Write a blog post
  • Timer: 45 minutes

One issue with working from home is boundless time.

Yesterday, I had five important tasks to do and finished before noon. Today, there wasn't even that much, so I read the news. Big mistake on two levels:

  1. The news was the idiot man-child in the White House complaining that the virus is lasting longer than his short attention span.
  2. Online, I fall into a spiral of clicking, clicking, clicking on nothing, nothing, nothing hoping to be rescued by something onscreen. Rescue never comes from the screen. It comes from within and involves shutting the screen.

(I'm typing this on a screen but in a minimal editor set to full-screen mode and free of distractions.)

When in doubt, block computer/phone distractions, assign a task, set a timer, and work for the allotted time.

I may not finish this post before the timer sounds. That's fine so long as I keep going for forty-five minutes, as long as I'm working and focused long enough to pass the points of frustration.

I'm most likely to abandon things out of frustration within the first fifteen minutes. Past that, I usually stay with the task and make something of it.

Here's my confession: I tried to quit this post twice already. At two minutes in and again at twelve minutes, I gave up. Both times I went toward checking email and news, but the timer called me back. I still have time on the clock, I told myself and kept going.

Having nearly finished, I'm not sure I've created much of anything, but staying with the timer is worth something to me.

Maybe it's worth something to you.

I'm home with my wife and kids, dog and cats, daily calls to my mother and brother, email from friends, and my work. Working entirely from home this way is quite a shift and a tough balance. I'll need time to grow accustomed. Having one specific task and a timer helps.

My timer, by the way, is up. I'm off that clock. Time for a break. Maybe a few push-ups to get the blood flowing. Then I'll set another timer, start at the top, and revise this into a post.

Setting the timer for this one task got me going. How cool is that?

What are you doing to adjust to working from home? Leave a comment below. Let's talk.

The idea for timed writing comes from Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones and Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers to name just two writing books that suggest it.

The idea for using a timer in this way also comes from the New York Times piece "Letter of Recommendation: Kitchen Timer" by Ben Dolnick that I have copied here for those lacking a Times subscription.