For now I'll pretend we've been in
communication all this time. If I find the time I'll get you blog
readers caught up later.
I think that Michael and I made a very
good decision last night, all at my husband's instigation. I've
observed recently that my most productive working times are certainly
in the morning, but only the first hour or hour and a half of any
given morning has been free to me. I'm struggling with Seasonal
Affective Disorder (SAD) now that the time on the clock has shifted,
which means my afternoons are good for very little. This makes it
hard to read theory, hard to write, hard to do much of anything other
than sulk, and of course sulking is no good.
At five o' clock this morning, instead
of sleeping in, my husband took over. We had some time before the
children woke to work on Bible study and devotional reading. This has
been my habit for a while now, but historically the children demanded
attention very early, occasionally as early as 5:30. This morning,
when my almost-three-year-old awoke at 6:00, Michael took care of
him. He told me that I had until 9:00 to work on whatever it was I
needed to work on.
It occurred to me to want this several
months ago, this aggregate of four hours in the morning to work on my
brain-stuff, my unpaid self-employment, before my husband would start
his working day at nine. At the time I did not really consider such a
thing possible.
This morning I made the beds with
five-year-old Parker, which is a practically a miracle in itself, and
then returned to my office, my study, the laundry room, whatever
you'd like to call it, to spend an entire hour reading a difficult
French literary theorist. I still don't understand Lukรกcs
per se, but for once I got to read him during one of my brain's more
active and alert times. And now I have this hour in which to force
myself to write. The distractions are still there, but they are
minimized. If I am right, this simple schedule change could
revolutionize my day.
A friend of mine often talks about
limiting obstacles to success. Working in the morning, and allowing
my husband to start his working day at what is still a reasonable
hour, will go a long way toward limiting those obstacles I've been
facing every day. That is our intention in this change, anyway. Only
time will tell of it's success.
I've also been doing some different
things with the children recently. There will be plenty of time to
talk about that later.
For weeks Michael and I have been
talking about purposefully setting aside a certain amount of time for
writing so that writing will happen more often than not. For weeks
I've found the task of sitting down to the computer without allowing
myself to do other things to be impossible. But now it's morning. I
can sit at the computer and force myself to write in the morning.
Knowing that this necessary work is behind me, I hope will stimulate
me to use those times so full of family responsibilities more wisely.
I admit to you I harbor hopes that this
will combat my SAD more effectively than candles and warm socks ever
could. Of course that remains to be seen.
I know better than to pin all my hopes
on a single idea. I know that the excitement of beginning often
dissipates once routine sets in, and sometimes routine gets
irretrievably disrupted. This disruption often turns out to be for
the better, but the truth of this rarely reveals itself immediately.
I feel like every day is another experience in having God humble me.
But for now I am excited because this is the first time in many weeks
that I've sat down at the computer and expressed myself in any media
other than the brevity of facebook. And the day that begins today is
more hopeful than those that have begun otherwise in recent weeks.
I am going to have to find a different
time to walk the dog, though.
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