Do One Thing

For two months I've had a terrible time getting through books. Part of the problem is that I'm trying to read five books and have another two waiting. I drift from one to another and that's no way for me to enjoy reading.

What's the big deal? I know people who don't read any books and they're fine.

I can't imagine how not reading works for people. Mostly I think they substitute a phone for reading and a phone is no substitute for a book. A screen and page are very different things. One sucks life from me. You can guess which one.

I don't want to give up on reading. I keep finding new books I want to read and from which I want to learn, but I can't get to them because I have these books hanging around my neck.

Just quit those books then. They must not be any good.

I would except each of them is pretty good. None of them are great, but they all still feel worth reading.

I don't know if it's a solution to all that has been ailing my reading, but today I chose the book in which I was farthest along and sat to read it. I'm still feeling the sickness I've had for a week, so it's not like I would go for a run or head out with friends drinking. I figured I might as well open a book and see what comes of it.

What came of it? One book finished. The first of 2020. That and this writing, a bit of self-help, a reminder that my best plan for a good life boils down to three words: do one thing.

I can't read five books at once. I can't even read a whole book at once. I can only open where I left off and start on the first word of the chapter. One word leads to another. Do one thing means really doing that one thing and not thinking about all the other things. Do one thing until it's done, then see what's next.

I finished my book. I wrote this piece. I revised it. Time to post it and update my reading list. After that, maybe another book, maybe something else. Whatever it turns out to be, I'll try to make sure it's just one thing.

Balancing

The shelf next to my desk is a mess. Piles, piles, and piles. Things I should do or should have done. Things I haven't let go. Things I haven't put away. The mess distracts me.

In my email is a Paul Jarvis piece about enough that has me thinking about the difference between what I want and what I need. I want the shelf clear, but what I need isn't as obvious.

I make pushes toward minimalism. They are half-hearted. I like the minimalist idea, but I love the facts of family life and the clutter of living. I'm in the living room where my daughters' paintings hang on the walls, knick-knacks from friends and family decorate the mantel, and blankets are strewn on the comfy couch. I wouldn't change much of it.

As for the messy shelf, some of it I'll put away after this, but much of it is in limbo. I have a couple projects there that I'm not ready to abandon but on which I'm not ready to work. The shelf is a parking lot. It looks messy but it doesn't mess much with my life. Not unless I think about it too much.

Jarvis's concept of enough I call balance. I imagine that tightrope walkers don't remain long in balance as they cross the wire. Balance is something we return to. We fall out of balance, wave our arms madly, and hope to come back into balance before we fall, but we are always moving out of balance. We can also keep working to return to balance.

Minimalism, enough, messes, balance, these are all transient states. Accepting that, I look over at the shelf and see less mess, more possibility.

I've written often about wanting a clean desk, but I'm often working on something new that comes to me in scraps and loose pages, notebooks and computers, file folders and empty coffee cups. The mess accumulates. Wanting a constantly clean desk is a fool's game. Returning to a clean desk, that's an art.

I'm ready to clear off some of my desk and shelf now. It might give me some ideas.

Say It Again, Sam

I've probably published thoughts like this before, but I need to hear good ideas over and over before they sink in. Then, a few years later, I need to be reminded. Maybe you do too.

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I still start every day writing three Morning Pages by hand. Sometimes the pages are pep talks or therapy sessions and feel like wasted time, especially when I go weeks on the same old ruminations rather than producing things to send out into the world. I worry I'm being self-indulgent and beating herds of dead horses. What's the point of writing it all down again and again?

Well, the point is writing it down again, telling it in a slightly different in order to make sense of it.

For almost two months I've been writing about my health and weight almost every morning. None of those pages have any place out in the world. Reading them would probably be as exciting as circling the drain. They're not useful for me to reread.

Which gets me anxious as I'm writing them.

I'm lucky though. I've done Morning Pages long enough to know it's okay. I'm working through something. I'll figure it out and move on. Eventually.

As always in writing (and in living too?) the answer is to keep writing and trust that words written one after another always move me to new understanding. It would be nice if things moved faster — I've gnawed on one topic for almost two months — but this is how it works for me. I trust the process.

Tomorrow morning I'll get up and write three Morning Pages by hand. They may be about my health and weight. I don't know. But whatever happens, I'll just keep writing.

The Empty Page

Disjointed thoughts about writing on paper composed on the computer after having read Colin Walker's blog (which you should be reading too).

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It's fun to read Colin Walker's thoughts as he moves to writing everything by hand. There's real joy there. I know that feeling, even though I'm drafting this on the computer in Writer: The Internet Typewriter an editor I've loved for years. It's great for creation (and surprisingly good for revision), but like any electronic writing tool it can disappear words too easily.

I remember computers in the nineties. I'd write for hours until someone tripped on the power cord. The machine would go black and quiet. All was lost. Rebooting led to a blank screen and blinking cursor, confirming the unsaved draft was completely gone.

I lost seventeen pages that way once. Poof.

Technological breakdowns like that have been largely overcome, but the biggest dangers of writing on the computer remain: the delete and backspace keys and the writers who use them too much sometimes on pages and pages of work. It seems the same as crumpling paper and starting a new sheet but if feels different and has very different consequences.

Colin Walker is describing the power of analog writing and the need for things touched, felt, and held onto. I have a handwritten story from tenth grade (1983) that barring disaster can easily remain readable, tactile, and (dare I say it) delightful for centuries. Every time I dig it out, I smile both at the thought of myself back then and at the feeling of holding those pages.

The power of analog creation begins with the blank page on the desk and the pen in hand, the writer palpable in the process and not mediated by electricity, networks, or file formats. Palpable means able to be touched and such things have more heft, a feeling about them of value. Filling half a page by pen, I'm likely to keep going with my thinking and accept the imperfections. Filling the whole page, I begin to feel the act of writing revealing what I want to say as well as how I want to say it. Even if I crumple it and throw it in the bin, until the recycling is collected, there's still the artifact. It's right there within reach. I can see it. I know it's there.

Analog writing depends completely on the actions of the writer. Auto-correct kicks in when I feel a misspelling or misplaced comma. Formatting consists of underlines, circles, the occasional use of all-caps. Revisions are actual marks on the page, lines drawn from place to place, and scribbled in additions. Sometimes the writing flows around a drawing, post-it, or coffee stain. It's all up to me.

One reason I don't much like Microsoft Word is that it wants to do more of the work for me. I'm more creative when I'm alone with the words and, quite literally, left to my own devices.

Writing on paper connects me with the act of writing. It changes my thinking. On paper I'm a writer, not a publisher or editor. I write words, lots of them, and that takes me places.

Walker sounds like a writer and thinker here:

I now find a blank page inviting, a place of discovery where I don't know what I am going to find but will enjoy the hunt."

The blank analog page, once marked, can't be made blank again. That's its killer feature.