I wrote this in late March, 2021. I didn’t save it to my Works in Progress file so it never saw the light of day until I stumbled upon it on Dec. 6, 2022. I still like it.
I like a schedule. I like making lists. I have a master list to track my lists. It’s tangible. As a writer, tangible stuff makes you feel like you accomplished something, even if that something is little more than scrolling through your works in progress or editing some stuff so that it doesn’t suck quite so much.
Back in January, I created a new system; index cards. Every workday gets a hole-punched 3x5 card. Labeled with day & date, each card has a bunch of useful tasks for work, work-out, relaxation, and home chores. When the task is done, it gets a checkmark. When the card is checked-over, I’m done for the day.
It doesn’t make me more productive. It doesn’t make me, well, anything. It makes me a guy with a stack of handwritten cards strung together with some twists of bell wire.
It does remind me that some days, you need to do nothing. No plan, no checkmarks; just a day to reset.
If I didn’t have a reset day today, I’d have to box up the brand-new space heater we bought that didn’t work worth crap that I sent back and they sent me a refurbished one as a replacement that didn’t work for even ten minutes and go to Fedex Kinkos to print off the mailing label and go down to the UPS store to return it for free to the folks at EdenPure and get my money back.
I’d need to compose a pitch letter for a literary magazine that caught my eye as a place that might need a couple of sonnets, or more accurately, I’d need to rework an existing pitch letter to suit the ethos of this magazine because I spend time every Monday and Wednesday on the pitch, since if you want the world to see your work and you don’t get in the game, no one will ever see your stuff because the mystery multi-millionaire literary magnate who stumbles on your stuff and proclaims you the next Sharon Olds and Frank O’Hara only exists in Hallmark Movies.
I’d need to narrate another year that makes up another chapter in a fascinating audiobook that I’m nearly finished with titled The History of the Tour de France Part II, from 1976–2018, and as I’ve been a bike racer and fan for 75% of my life (so far), I am thrilled to be a part of this project and at the moment, I am up to 2009, but some days, despite my fanboy-ism, it is still work and today is not a work-day.
I’d need to get back to work on my fiction project which doesn’t get enough attention and it’s about a goat, a man, and a Viet Nam vet and I have no clue where it’s going because as I follow Faulkner’s dictum, I’ve started up the characters and I just follow them around with a notebook and write down what they do and so far, they are just getting acquainted but I sense things will get interesting soon enough. (EDIT-Novel is complete. Pitching it like crazy.)
I’d need to dig through Play Submissions Helper because several years ago, I wrote a play about 2 pairs of messed up twenty-somethings who are both not as messed up as they think and more messed up than most of us can imagine and a couple of theatre folks who have read my play think it needs to get out there and PSH is a great site if you’re a playwright, which having written a three act play in Standard Playwrighting Format, I guess I am.
I’d need to do some yard clean-up because it is late March and all the serious snowfall is gone, although we most likely will have more snow to come, but the winds of early spring have knocked down a lot of branches and with Easter coming on April 4, that means I need to get the early season weed-&-feed down which means the branches on the ground need to come up or else I’ll be weeding & feeding deadfall which seems a bad use of time, money, and chemicals.
I’d need to fix the ceiling insulation in my 14 x 24 foot shed that I’ve McGyvered into my gym because over the winter, several squirrels decided to gambol about between the insulation and the ceiling and when I insulated years ago when we moved in, I neglected to install furring strips from rafter to rafter because I didn’t realize at the time that the eaves were open to Sciurus vulgaris, and while I don’t mind sharing, I object to their property destruction, purposeful or not, so I’ll need to pull out the damaged rolls, install new insulation, run some furring strips across the rafters, and do some galvanized chicken wire installations at the egress points.
But as today is a reset day, I’m gonna make some tea, and go play the piano for a while, do a bit of crooning even –the way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea, the way you hold your knife, the way we danced till three… which will most likely be followed by a sit-down on the porch in the spring sun early watching the squirrels and feeling sad that we put down our Portuguese Podengo Millie ten days ago due to an inoperable brain tumor and her primary joy in life was her ability to dispatch squirrels with extreme prejudice and that should lead me into the basement where I’ll plug in my old Gibson ES-335 and drop The Allman Bros Live at Fillmore into the CD player and play along with Gregg and Duane and Dickey and Jaimoe and Butch and Berry on stuff like In Memory of Elizabeth Reed and Stormy Monday at extreme volume and when my fingers start to bleed, I will take on the New York Times Sunday puzzle in pen because words, well, I know words, and there’s some ego at play here, and I’ll greet my wife with hugs when she returns from the Red Cross where she gives platelets every two weeks and I have huge admiration for her dedication to the public good, even after she spent 40 years as a ER nurse and then I’ll welcome home the son who is currently a high-level pharm tech and vaccine injector whilst he decides what course of study to do in grad school so we’ll have some Koegel’s ring bologna, tater tots, cole slaw, beers, and Klondike bars for supper.
Yet, because today is a day to reset, to not clean the bathroom, and not do the laundry, and not vacuum the carpet or under the fridge, and not ride the bike and lift all the weights, please excuse me while I make some tea and do a little nothing.
