Rhythms are the Best for Working


Rhythms are the best for working... but rhythms are the hardest thing in the world for me to manage! And then there's the matter of breaking long-standing, unproductive rhythms.

Rhythms are the best for working.
Break the rhythm and it’s like
starting cold: creak and puff and
grind away, write reams of garbage
until the garbage becomes
a lubricant. Lift that dead
arm you’ve been sleeping on. See
it sway and flop: half corpse you
are. The arm is useless. Paralyzed
for life. Can’t do it. Won’t work.
Imagine yourself dead: this
is it, kid. Body won’t work.
Feel it dissolve into the
sheets. It’s noon. Last time I looked
it was nine. I don’t remember
sleeping. The rhythms of the
world have gone awry. Who can
trust a clock
now?

That's the first stanza of a poem I wrote, first draft, some time around 1976 or so. Nearly 30 years later I still have trouble establishing a rhythm for working.

There was a time, back when my daughter was an infant, that I did manage to do that for, oh, about 6 months, starting in September of 1973. She was just a year old. I was suffering from horrible migraine headaches, and decided that they were caused by the fact that I was not writing, since at the time I was full-time mom and had no time for myself. So I found a parent-participation day care center (the only one then that would take a child still in diapers) where I took her every Tuesday and Thursday (with every eighth day my day for required participation). I would load her up into the car and drive from Ontario (Calif.) to Claremont, deposit her there at 8:30, drive back home, sit down at the typewriter (a manual!) and pound away for a few hours, drive back to pick her up at noon, come back home, feed her lunch, put her down for a nap, and then write for another hour or so while she slept.

It worked very well for a while. During that time I wrote the first drafts or portions thereof of nearly everything that ended up in my masters' thesis (a collection of my own short stories). But then I hit a wall. I would sit at the typewriter and nothing, absolutely nothing, would come. And of course, my daughter decided to change her schedule. No more naps after lunch, mom. Thanks anyway!

There were many other things that interfered, not the least of which was my crumbling marriage, and internal conflicts of which I was only dimly aware ... it took me three decades to understand the forces that were driving me then.

Every day my rhythm now is to get up at 8:30 (my body won't let me sleep until at least 1 a.m. -- often even later; hence the late rising), start up my computer, put on some coffee, go to the bathroom, then come back with my coffee to my computer and go through e-mail. At that point, it's anybody's guess as to what I will do next. E-mail has a way of distracting you in all sorts of different directions. It's probably not the best thing to start your day with. But it's about all my brain can handle in that groggy state with which I begin each day, coffee in hand.

Well, maybe I'm just making excuses.

Interestingly, back before I got this wonderful iMac and DSL service I work with now, I was without Internet access at home for a year and a half. Back then I managed (for a while at least) to get up, don some exercise clothes, do a half hour of stretching and weight training, get out & walk for half an hour (yes, even in bad weather), all before making that first cup of coffee. I worked part-time at Planned Parenthood then, and read and wrote my e-mail there, during my off hours.

I think it helps to have a place to go to when you go to work, or at least, as when I took my daughter to day care, some activity that marks the line between "home" and "work."

Well, today I did manage to get to the gym for exercise -- my third time in four days. I think I should probably make that my first activity of the day.

Rhythms are also the worst for working... when you are trying to break unproductive rhythms. Every day I think, go to the gym first, and every day instead I do exactly the same thing in the morning that I did the day before.

Posted: Wed - February 25, 2004 at 09:24 AM          

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