Time: What do we make of it, and how do we play with it?
The picture above was taken with my iPhone not three seconds before I sat down to write this post. Currently, it's 5:30am up in cottage country, I'm sitting out on the deck, and it feels like the world around me is just starting to stretch it's arms. There's a stillness in the air, a calm in the water; and for a few treasured moments, I'm the only one awake.
So now you know what this time of day looks like. I say that because if you're like me, 5:30am is no decent time for any human being to be conscious. While my eyes look to the east my still only semi-functional brain is asking "what the hell is the sun doing over there?". I understand that many people aren't like me, and prefer being up at the crack of dawn, but for yours truly the experience is a somewhat new one. Ever since I went into business on my own and was free to work whichever hours I liked, I've turned in to some extreme version of a night owl. Bedtimes of 4:00am have been the norm, but since I have young children, sleeping in is rarely an option. So for the last few years I've been averaging maybe 3-4 hours of a sleep per night.
Want to know how one finds time to write a blog? That's how one finds time to write a blog.
I've shown you what 5:30am looks like, but to me at least, the sounds are equally alien. All manner of organisms are making themselves heard from the depths of the Muskoka woods, organisms that don't seem anywhere near so brazen in the mid-day hours. All around me is a great chorus of chirps, buzzes, tweets, and whirs. It's as if they're screaming at me in their various animal languages to collectively ask "What the hell are you doing out here? This is our time! Go back to bed fat man!"
Wait a second. Shhh. Some larger animal seems to be stirring now. I'm sure I hear it. I wonder what it is, and if it's dangerous? I suppose I should put the laptop away and head for safety, as there's a known bear problem in the area. No, must keep typing. At worst I'll be able to live-blog my own mauling, and that'll surely earn me a spike in traffic. Listening carefully. Shhh, don't make a sound now. Wait, is the creature in question actually — yawning? And is the sound coming from inside the cottage? How'd it get in there? Wait, the door is opening...
Oh, it's my Dad.
He slept on the couch last night and he's currently doing the zombie walk out onto the deck. "Mornin' Pops." In short order I notice that he doesn't seem confused by the sun's location on the sky at all, and all the morning voices don't phase him in the least. After a few hellos he's off to get coffee and to catch up on the news, almost as if he's got a whole morning ritual going on. So, I guess people actually do things in the early morning then? I mean, sure, it's just watching the news, but I always figured that if you were up before 8:00am you just sat down somewhere in the darkness and blinked a lot. Who knew?
So I go on writing to myself. No screaming kids, no distractions. It's very similar to the quiet one enjoys by staying up late, yet it's somehow different. There's more of a desire to do something constructive with this time, or so it seems to me. More energy is available at the beginning of your day than at the end of it. See, despite how I've described my regular routine, recently I've switched things up. For the last few weeks, as opposed to a 4:00am bedtime I'm regularly in the sack by midnight. It's all part of a general health thing I'm doing, and I have to tell you, getting a little more sleep sure feels good. While my body doesn't always know how to deal with so much rest, and I occasionally pop out of bed at 5:00am, I can feel the difference now that I'm not running ragged all the time.
I suppose I'm aware of my motivation for staying up all those late nights, and why I'm enjoying this quiet morning to myself so much. I'm a pretty social guy, and I love my family and friends; but I also really, really need my alone time. Badly. I was a bit of a loner growing up, but for at least part of that time I was alone by choice. Perhaps that's why I've always preferred solo hobbies like drawing and writing to things like team sports. I guess I've just always treasured being alone with my own thoughts, and I'm not sure whether that makes me a narcissist or something even worse.
I do know that if one wants to pursue creative hobbies while still maintaining a normal life, they must jealously carve out time for themselves to do so. I have this good friend, a talented writer and an aspiring novelist, who's currently struggling with this balance mightily. We've discussed it at length. He wishes he could find time to write between work and child-rearing, but unlike me, he needs his 8 hours of sleep every night. He also suffers another disadvantage in that he's a much nicer, and far less selfish a dude than myself. His desire for time to create is profound, and yet that still doesn't hold up to the the very real concerns of daily family life. Although everyone uses time as an excuse, writing novels takes lots of it, and my friend truly doesn't have enough of it.
Of course, I can't fault his choices at all. The only defence I can muster of my own desire for me-time is simply this: if I don't allow for such occasions, I'm fairly certain that I'll go mad. Being a creative person means having a surplus of ideas, most of them nonsensical and of no value, but which must be regularly vented from the head. It's more like a sickness than anything else. Neglecting to do so can be dangerous.
I have very few illusions about the numbers of people that read this blog, as I'm sure the people who do read it are tired of hearing me repeat. I only mention it to stress again that while I love anyone kind enough to read these rambling entries, they were not written for you. They were written for myself, in an effort to take ideas out of my head where they can no longer trouble me. I wish everyone could find the time to do something similarly therapeutic.
Soon the kids will be up, and the day will begin in earnest. There will be breakfast to make, fights to break up, and noses to wipe. Maybe around tonight's campfire we'll even get to enjoy an adult conversation about the day's news. All of it will be lovely, and then I'll be off to bed again.
And then if I'm really lucky, hopefully I'll be up early enough tomorrow to go outside, see the sun in the east, and flip open the laptop. What possible better use of that time could there be?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BradBlogspeed/~3/i7RQbF-eNX8/gmornin
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar