I’m killing time today before going to my parents’ house later for a Rosh Hashannah meal. Today’s the second day of Rosh Hashannah. I took the day off from work (as I did yesterday) because I planned on going to services this morning, but I didn’t go. I came back to the city last night for chorus rehearsal and wound up sleeping in this morning. So I’m going back to New Jersey in a little while.
I’ve spent much of the afternoon feeling frustrated about reading/writing. I’ve had the urge today to write a novel. Or find a really good novel to read. I just finished Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which I didn’t really get into (I liked his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle better). I think I’m going to read Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex – it seems big and juicy and good.
I don’t know why I have an urge to write but not the motivation to do so. I can’t seem to write the kind of book I’d want to read (I would love to be able to write like Michael Chabon), so I figure, why not just read the kind of book I want to read instead of trying to write it? My writing ambitions don’t seem to match my abilities.
My other problem is that I’m horrible at scheduling time to do things. I can’t keep up routines. Well, there was my screenwriting class three years ago, when I managed to start and complete a first draft of a screenplay in ten weeks and was the only person in the class to do so, but I was in a weird place in my life then. I don’t know if I can repeat the conditions, because I’m not sure what they were, but for three months I remained celibate and went to bed early and wrote a couple of pages of my script every day. Like I said, I was in a weird place.
Maybe I need to set myself a schedule. Maybe I need to read this book Matt has (but hasn’t read) called Getting Things Done. I don’t know. It’s incredibly hard to get myself up in the morning, so I don’t know if I could do writing before work; and I don’t know if living with someone is conducive to disciplining myself to write. Maybe I just need to make this little office/closet room in our apartment more conducive to writing.
I had a bizarre dream last night in which Matt and I were moving into an enormous luxury apartment on a high floor of a doorman building in the city. We walked into the apartment and it was huge. So much space. I loved it.
I feel like there’s too much to read. I want to start reading a book, but I also want to read this week’s New Yorker. Or I want to do neither. I don’t know. I’m all a-jumble right now. I cleaned the toilet and the bathroom faucet earlier today. That’s all – not the sink itself, just the faucet, because it was within reach. I also threw out a bunch of old magazines. One difference between me and Matt is that he doesn’t mind clutter while I can’t stand it. I find it keeps me from being fully functional.
Ugggggh. I hate feeling like this. My appetite is bigger than my brain.
You sound a lot like me Jeff! So much to read and so little time and not good at scheduling time to do things. Have a good Rosh Hashannah meal anyway!
Perhaps you should unpack why you don’t think it would be cool to write the kind of book you’d be good at writing, rather than trying to write a book you’d like to read. See what I mean? I mean, if you’re a writer, the one thing only you can do is write the way *you* write. And there’s lots of coolness in that… once you quit being hung up on wanting to be able to read yourself. ;-)
And happy Rosh Hashannah!
I’m not sure how well GTD would work for your current situation. I think of it as being more useful for focusing when you have a lot of tasks to do and you need to figure out what’s actionable and what’s not, rather than being a “how can I make my life better & get to do more of what I love” kind of thing. But I could be wrong.
You could check out 43folders, which has lots of good links and info on the whole GTD concept, especially in regards to ways to adapt it to work with those of a computer-y bent.
Good luck with the writing Jeff. I find I use school and classwork as excuses not to get any writing done (songwriting or sometimes even choreography in my case). I say treat it like another appointment, you know, something you’d feel really bad about breaking. Just set aside time for one more appointment.
As for Middlesex, I read it thinking it would be a transgendered coming-of-age story, but it really doesn’t get to that until 2/3rds of the way through the book. However, if you are interested in Greek history and the history of 20th century Chicago I’d say go for it!
Middlesex is divine! I couldn’t put it down after I picked it up at the library out of curiousity. I read the first 50 pages standing there in the aisle …