July 27, 2022
One of the things I’ve been
most grateful for in recent times is that I don’t seem to have much trouble
keeping busy.
I have my writing, of course,
and this encompasses fiction, as well as these essays. I have my routines,
which is a more of a foundational factor, in way. You see, I have discovered
that I possess one major flaw. There are likely more, but I will cite this one:
I have just enough discipline to have a routine but not enough to manage
without one.
Therefore, when I can, which
fortunately is most of the time, I follow my script. Each day is set to begin with
time spent on my devotionals. Then, I indulge myself in two or three games, to “kick
start my brain”. One of these is wordle. Then I sit down, put butt in chair and
fingers on keyboard (aka BICFOK) and begin to write. I have until about noon
hour before certain planned interruptions begin. I fit a few household chores
in between noon and one, and, of course, I have a bite to eat. Legs go up for
about two hours once those chores are done. And then I begin my supper
preparations. Sometimes, if the muse is tugging at me, I get in a bit more
writing. At the very end of my day, that is when I tend to visit
YouTube. I try very hard not to do it until the end of my day, because I know
how undisciplined I am and therefore, how easy it truly is for me to fall down
a rabbit hole or six. Best to find those rabbit holes when my creativity has
shut off for the night.
Lately, I enjoy those “tweet
collections” about a myriad of topics, most of them claiming to be hilarious. By
the time I turn to YouTube, I’m at the point in my day when I would welcome a
little bit of hilarious. Not too many of those collections have a lot of
laughter inducing words, in my opinion, but I do hit upon just enough—and they’re
always a surprise, so I really appreciate them.
Aside from surprising a bark
of laughter out of me, some of these tweets also make me think. One thread that
I took in recently was under the heading “Learning something new about your s/o
as you work from home.” The concept is exactly that: tweets inspired by the “working
from home” experience had by many during the pandemic. In a hundred and
forty-four characters, these nuggets depict moments observed by one partner
about the other that truly were, for them, revelatory.
In this vein, I can attest
that my husband and I were way ahead of the curve. We not only “been there,
done that”, we designed the tee shirt.
Reading some of those tweets
took me back to those uncertain days leading up to my husband’s retirement at
the end of November of 2017. This happened maybe a couple of years prior to the
day he was looking forward to, but that I, in a way, was dreading. Up until he
retired, you see, I’d had my house to myself every day, Monday to Friday, and
for the previous fifteen years. There was a part of me that resented the fact I
would no longer have that. But I did, of course, get over myself. Eventually.
When the reality proved not to be quite as bad as I’d dreaded.
However, leading up to the
time about which I was reminiscing, my husband had his own desk in my office. We
flirted, briefly, with the possibility of our working side-by-side in this
dedicated space, from the moment of his retirement to, well, eternity. Especially
when he realized that his COPD wouldn’t afford him the ability to pursue the
hobby he’d been planning on: restoring steam-era farm equipment.
He decided instead to explore
another passion, and that was writing.
And then, came that long,
unexpected Christmas break. He had a three-week stint of staying home for an
extended holiday and if I recall, the weather didn’t lend itself to outings. We
were in this office, the two of us, together, for many, many, many days.
That unplanned time together—call
it a dry-run on his retirement or a sign from God—showed us what the future
would really be like if we stayed the course we were on.
When David finally went back
to work after that break, he had a new project to work on in his off time: he
needed to set himself up a desk with his computer in a corner of the living
room. A space that would be his where he could do whatever he wanted to do, in
all the privacy any author—or budding author—could reasonably ask for. No, his
space does not have doors. Mine didn’t either, at the time. That was another
project, some two years later, when we were getting ready for our daughter and
her dogs to move in with us. By then, he truly appreciated the concept of solitude.
We’ve made a lot of decisions,
together, over the last half-century. And I can honestly tell you, the decision
about having separate working spaces is one that we both continue to consider
as prime.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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