Good Days

The perfect day isn't perfect. It is instead good, very good perhaps. I too often overlook good in search of better and perfect. Good is good. It is contentment which ought to be my only goal because I can choose to feel content.

Since this is my blog, let's focus on me for a bit. Let me tell you about my perfectly good day.

It begins without the alarm but in the October dark. I get up from under a thick blanket and replace blanket with coffee, sleeping with living, dreaming with writing. I go downstairs, grind beans, and press a good cup of coffee. I take my pen and coffee to the basement to write three pages by hand. There's no way I would rather begin each day.

Morning Pages written, I make buttered toast with jam and eat on the couch while reading a book as the family wakes and comes down one by one to get ready for school and work. I offer to drive kids to school or walk the dog, whatever works for them and by eight o'clock the house is mine. I put on a record, boot the Chromebook, and get to work.

First I focus on developing things. Creating. Drafting. Typing. This is when a blog post likely comes to mind, goes to my fingers, appears on the screen, and eventually gets posted online. This is when I continue working on long essays, stories, and sections of a book. I work through a few records until about eleven or noon at which point I print some of that stuff and get out of the chair.

My body needs to move. I go for a walk or a run to work my mind in a different way. I may think about writing or maybe just move. A shower follows and maybe a load of laundry or some brief housework. I warm up leftovers or make somethings for lunch and eat while reading the web or my book.

Then maybe a nap. I set an alarm, read on the couch until I fall asleep and recharge. After that I probably go to the library, buy coffee beans, get cash, pick up something from the hardware store, or make a stop at the co-op. Much as I can, I run these errands on foot, preferably with the dog. Moving my body after the nap puts me back in the world.

The kids and my wife come home and I spend time with them, drive them where they need to go, attend to their needs. We cook dinner and eat together. After dinner we clean up.

The rest of the evening is unscheduled. We may catch the latest Doctor Who or Atypical together. I might would go out with a friend. Whatever the case, the day ends with Stephanie and me tucked into bed, the lights out, rain turning to light snow.

I drift into sleep thinking, I can't wait to do it again tomorrow.

That's a good day. Just about perfect, though I'm content with good. I could be content for years of days like that. Now I just have to make it happen.

Survival Mode

I'm a fan of low-bar goals I get over easily. Usually, I clear the bar with room to spare. I've set a goal to do ten push-ups a day. Totally easy. There, I just did them. Goal met. Here's the thing: I'll likely do ten more because it's so easy. If the bar is set at one hundred push-ups a day, I'll probably end up doing none.

Your mileage may vary.

My goal on the job is to survive. I'm not a fan of that. Survival is the sort of thing that should be taken for granted. I'm trying to stay afloat as the water rises over my head. I have to survive because this is the job that pays the bills.

Maybe your job is similar.

I talk to students about the difference between a job and work drawing the picture I've posted up top. We do a job for pay and health insurance, the necessities. Work is the stuff we need to do. Not doing our work leaves us empty. My job is teaching high school. My work is writing. The sweet spot is a job doing good work, what Donald Hall calls Life Work.

Students ask if teaching is my job or my work. I say, I'm a teacher who writes but wish I was a writer who maybe teaches. I close my eyes, sigh, and say, that's my wish.

To speak up is not about speaking louder, it is about feeling entitled to voice a wish. We always hesitate when we wish for something. In my theater I like to show the hesitation and not to conceal it. A hesitation is not the same as a pause. It is an attempt to defeat the wish and put it in to language, then you can whisper but the audience will always hear you.

-- Zofia Kalinska, qtd in Things I Don't Want To Know by Deborah Levy, page 10

I don't wish to survive. I wish to write, but I don't know how to do that yet so I do both work and a job. I don't see how the work can pay the bills. I fail to believe I can pull that off.

Deborah Levy has figured it out. She is also a spectacular and brave writer. Here is how her book Things I Don't Want To Know begins and ends:

That spring when life was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations. (page 1)

I rearranged the chair and sat at the desk. And then I looked at the walls to check out the power points so I could plug in my laptop. The hole in the wall nearest to the desk was placed above the basin, a precarious socket for a gentleman's electric razor. That spring in Majorca, when life was very hard and I simply could not see where there was to get to, it occurred to me that where I had to get to was that socket. Even more useful to a writer than a room of her own is an extension lead and a variety of adapters for Europe, Asia and Africa. (Page 111)

I don't have it figured out and I'm not yet especially spectacular or brave. I don't have a book that begins or ends other than the one I'm writing one essay, poem, and story at a time. I need a good extension lead, a hole in the wall, and just the right adapter for whatever powers me. Then I have to keep doing good work regardless of my job. It's that simple and yet I can't yet even imagine where I might get to. The bar seems far, far too high.

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A few other quotes from the book:

If I thought I was not thinking about the past, the past was thinking about me. (110)

This strange memory in turn reminded me of a line from a poem by Apollinaire....'The widow opens like an orange.' .... I did not know how to get the work, my writing into the world. I did no know how to open the window like an orange. If anything, the window had closed like an axe on my tongue. If this was to be my reality, I did not know what to do with it. (109)

...but I couldn't work out what I was trying to say. I knew I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world, but I was overwhelmed by everything and didn't know where to start. (101)

Still Haven't Run Out Of Ink

There's a thing called a six-word memoir made popular by Smith Magazine. It originates from a six-word story often attributed to Hemingway that probably wasn't written by him:

For sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

When I show this to students, they laugh at such a short story. I give them a moment, sometimes saying the story three, four times getting them past their laughter, and they find that it's a tragedy, the kind they can't quite understand yet. As a father, it gets me just a little every time.

The six-word memoirs are poetic, the good ones anyway. I have kids write some and most of them find that one six-word memoir leads to another and another and another. One kid filled five sheets of notebook paper with them. The first three pages weren't really memoirs but then she found the poetry of it and her last couple pages were something special.

I've written a few hundred of them, but this one pretty much sums me up:

Still haven't run out of ink.

I write with fountain pens and have a glass bottle of ink from I refill my pens every third day or so. Then I go on writing. I seem always to keep writing.

For years I ended blog posts with the words write on, a good ending and a way to push myself forward.

These last two weeks I have written a lot. One of my students asked if I run out of ideas, things to write and say. I smiled. It does seem like we would have a limited number of pages within us, but my limit is based on how many I choose to write before I die. He wanted a better answer than that, though, so I told him something like this:

Writing begets writing. One idea creates two more. It's like a nuclear reaction in which splitting one atom releases two particles that split two more nuclei that each release two more particles. And on and on.

I told him that writing about the book I had finished reading led to an idea about Dad which led to thinking about my car which got me to thinking of my turntable and records all of which led to a childhood memory that got me thinking of how my younger daughter wants to buy every book she sees. And on and on.

Yo, he said. That shit's crazy. I write ten words and I'm like done.

I smiled and said, you might be surprised what happens if you keep the pen moving.

We have family in town so I won't be able to write much today though I have half a dozen things ready to write. I'll make notes so as to remember. Later, when I check how much ink is left in my pen, I'll know I've got more ink in the bottle. I still haven't run out of ink. I don't think I ever will.

Nearness Of A Dictionary

An earlier version of this piece appeared on Medium in September 2016. I also published another piece about dictionaries. It's a topic from which I can't seem to stay away.

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Clear space on your desk and set an open dictionary there. Your writing life will improve immediately. At my writing desk in the the basement a dictionary lies open in front of me. I write by hand or type on a laptop or typewriter with that dictionary open to whatever word I last consulted. The dictionary, open at your desk, unavoidable, will change your writing life for the better.

Maybe you worry that page turning and searching will take time away from writing. Wouldn't it be better to just Google definitions?

Yes, using the dictionary takes time away from tapping keys and pushing a pen, but that’s good. Taking time for Facebook is bad. Looking through the dictionary has me thinking of words, finding new words, and returns me to words I've forgotten. I looked up sanguine to be sure that it described how I felt about the neighbor’s tree falling through our fence into the yard, and the definition helped shape the next few hundred words I wrote.

Browsing a record shop, I inefficiently flip through albums A to Z. Brushes with other records suggest new music and lead me into serendipity. Looking for one album, I find so many more.

Asking my phone to “define sanguine” brings up the definition and history in 0.40 seconds but only for that one word. In my dictionary sanguine is the last word on page 1041 which begins with sand, continues through sandalwood, sandhi, sandjack, sangfroid, sanguinaria, before ending at sanguine. Looking for page 1041, I passed saleroom, salt, and Samaritan and thought about the Good Samaritan, remembered a Slate.com article about salt in food, and wondered what the hell a saleroom is. None of that relates to how I felt about the fallen tree and crushed fence but had me feeling writerly. All because of the nearness of the dictionary.

I put a dot next to sanguine and every other word I look up curious when I'll return to that page. The dots amuse me when I find them again. I wonder what I was thinking and writing when I looked up that word. Occasionally, I look up a word I've previously dotted, the meaning having escaped me. I reread, add a second dot, and leave the dictionary open to that page as I go back to writing.

Leaving it open encourages my habit of using the dictionary. A closed dictionary likely remains closed. An open dictionary is a writer's friend and aid. It is also a little bit magical.

Using the dictionary is slow. Like handwriting, it makes words physical, slower than digital impulses. It has me taking time with the words.

Which dictionary you use doesn’t matter much so long as it lies open near your desk. Mom got me this Webster’s for college, so that’s what I use. Maybe your Mom gave it to you or some professor required one for class. If you lack a dictionary, they can be had cheap at a used book store, garage sale, or library book sale. Ask friends who don't write if you can have theirs.

Get a dictionary. Place it open on your writing desk where you will be unable to avoid it. Look up sanguine or maybe saleroom. Read the definitions. Put a dot next to it. Survey the words near it. And enjoy your improved writing life.