"... it's that willingness to slow down and examine the mysterious bits of fluff in our lives that is the poet's interest."

Since I started working again I haven't been too inspired to write. I also feel like I have no time whatsoever outside of work. It constantly amazes me that a weekend is only two days (and I've only had two four-day work weeks so far... this week is gonna be rough). Seriously, two days? Why haven't we the people revolted against this yet? On top of all that, I find myself multi-tasking to the point where I can't concentrate on any single thing when I am trying to get stuff done outside of work. So I'm trying a few things to help myself slooooooow dowwwwwwwwn.

One, I'm sticking with my routine of getting up at 6am and having a good hour of quiet time with thoughts, coffee and keyboard. The idea was that I might be more inspired to write when I was fresh from sleep, while the birds were singing and no one in my entire neighborhood seemed to be awake. So far I haven't written much - all I've managed to do is catch up on email and word game challenges, but I think the word game addiction early in the morning is helping to jump start my brain for the day's required allotment of thinking. So I've got that going for me.

Two, I'm limiting the time I spent online at night. In fact I'm trying to cut it out altogether, cold turkey. I usually have the TV on in the background simultaneously which doesn't do a thing for my newly realized adult-onset ADD (which is not actually ADD but a product of our "gotta do more be more ALL THE TIME" culture - you have it too, now stop checking your email or Google reader updates while you're reading this). So I've decided to try to focus on one thing at a time in general, starting with this small (but oh-so-ginormous) step. Unless I'm working on that contract project, I'm going to see how long I can stand being offline in the evenings. I suspect I will read a lot more, which is something I've wanted to get back into anyway... Or at the very least I'll get that contract project done faster.

(I considered trying the Morning Pages concept, which some friends have somewhat successfully employed, but 3 pages of longhand first thing in the morning? Please. It would be a miracle if I could actually read what I wrote later the same day.)

Finally, I'm going to get through all the ideas in the magic book by the end of September. I think I've conquered about 7 of the 100 concepts, so that seems reasonable. They're mostly snips which should be easy to write without requiring too much second-guessing and editing, as most of my other posts do these days.

Since I started this daily routine I've also been amazed at how quickly an hour goes by. Time is flying, whether you're having fun or not. See that yellow light ahead? Take the cue...

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Subject line brought to you by the poet Billy Collins. Or the poet William Collins. Time's up so I can't figure out which one.