LISTEN. Another Sunday, another blowout win for my team, another embarrassing ninth inning for a soon-retiring legend whose lifelong dream it apparently has been to take the mound and demonstrate that pitching in the big leagues is a lot harder than it looks. Albert last week, Yadi yesterday. It was a bit funny the first time but no more please, Ollie. Sure it's only a game but let's not "make a mockery" of it. The score had already done that. Watching a blowout is embarrassing enough, I only do it when my team's on the long end of the score. Is that schadenfreude? Maybe not, if the embarrassment's sincere.
Games don't matter, but mattering matters. Caring about what matters matters. (See Roger Angell, below.)
That's why I'm redoubling my resolve to devote each day's earliest and freshest attention to what matters most to me. That means heeding Jane Kenyon's quality advice,* unplugging the phone/internet, writing and reading good sentences and postponing all else except the daily morning dogwalk. It particularly means refusing the sorts of interruptions and solicitations that email invariably delivers. I'm quite capable of being my own time-thief, thanks. But I'm going for an Eagle Pond of the mind.
So that's one of the new (old) summer habits I'm working on: no email in the a.m.
Another one: in addition to my digital morning journal, which I've learned to visit first thing (after the coffee's brewed), I'm going to report faithfully in the late evening to my non-digital longhand journal. I get lazy about that, tapping keys is so much easier (faster, less straining on the hand's digits) than wielding the pen. But I want the day's last conscious words to be intentional and possibly fecund. See if the slumbering mind can do something creative with them, something that may spill into the morning journal and maybe even eventually into the ever-distracted and distracting world.
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*At Eagle Pond Farm Kenyon and Hall lived simply. They got up every morning, walked the dog, made coffee, ate breakfast, then went upstairs to write… Her advice to aspiring writers was: “Tell the whole truth. Don’t be lazy, don’t be afraid. Close the critic out when you are drafting something new. Take chances in the clarity of emotion… Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.” WA
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