Of Scaffolding and Spinning Plates
A period of retooling / honing / hacking to unearth a calmer, more balanced approach to the day, a routine that allows me to replenish my daily self-respect gauge without having to rush – as Donna Tartt tells us, “If you’re not enjoying something, it’s almost always because you’re doing it too fast” – headlong through the execution of my goals (write, read, run) and into the (perceived) needs / demands of life’s other spinning plates.
I like to tell myself that I’m inching closer to that ideal with each iteration, each little variation, but I won’t allow myself to foreclose the possibility that I’m simply creating problems where there are none because of some deeper issue at play.
Turning to an oft-revisited bit of wisdom from Annie Dillard:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on with a worker can stand and labor with both hands a section at a time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order–willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”
Annie Dillard, “THE WRITING LIFE.”
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