Seeking: Clarity Upon an Open Project Block
Working when the sun's not up the best way to ameliorate the guilt which shouldn't be there in the first place but it is so for now I'm working with it in the hopes that, eventually, it will fade away.
Notion for this thoughtlet first appeared in last night's side project session (with the newsletter being sent Sunday mornings, it was, for the first time since moving to this routine, an empty space) but it became apparent within a minute or two that to start these pieces in the evening was inimical to the point of their creation (to produce work quickly and diligently each morning for the sole purpose of having created it, agnostic to the reception or lack thereof) and therefore disingenuous.
But: as I like the middle chunk of a work block to be something other than The Book, there needs – to make this schedule work and not result in wasted time and energy – to be another project.
A comics series, maybe? There's one or two bandying about. A long-form essay? Short stories? Eh: I like Cormac McCarthy's quote about short stories: "I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing." (Though this is me we're talking about; it might take years...) More material for this site – especially as I've entered another one of my woodshed/broadcast modes and only posting to the digital ether from here –? Eh. Maybe – but it's unclear right now; just know that I want it to be something challenging, something I haven't done before; time, then, to sift through the backburners, the idea folders, and see if there's anything beyond fool's gold waiting inside. A podcast? I do miss interviewing cool people...
No matter what, I've got to stay true to these scheduling blocks, to this routine: it just feels right. There's a rhythm there, a quiet propulsion, that anchors my day, that keeps the guilt at bay. Pardon the rhyme.
P.S. Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson is a national fucking treasure) is my favorite character on WATCHMEN so last night's episode was a treat even as Lube Man's (working theory: he's the FBI guy that arrived in Tulsa with Jean Smart) absence permeated every frame.
