A 1920s oak library table

Over the past two weeks, my hours and days kept getting sucked into a vortex. LJ turned into a black hole, where time and space lost meaning. Each morning I woke with hopes and dreams. Then, like an automaton, I would walk into my office, turn on the computer, connect to the internet and go to LJ. The sun would climb and descend the sky. I would occasionally dig through the fridge, scavenging for leftovers, then go back to the computer and LJ. Darkness would fall and I would get sleepy and go to bed, feeling lost and terrified.

I finally hit the bottom and didn't want to stay there. Today was different. I got out of bed, pushed some dishes out of the way and sat down at the table with my breakfast and a notepad, and made a list of things I wanted to do today. Breakfast was a chopped mango, an English muffin with strawberry jam and a cup of coffee. When I finished I went for a walk and took some photographs of flowers.

I came home, made a pot of tea, walked into my office and swept the clutter off my desk into the green armchair. I turned on the computer but only to listen to my favourite radio station. It was 10:00.

Then I sat down at my desk and wrote for three hours.



This desk is my favourite possession. It is a 1920s oak library table, probably my most valuable piece of furniture. It even has the original wood casters, but the broken drawer handles were replaced when my mother and I refinished it about 25 years ago. It is a fine place to sit, with daylight caressing the honey-brown wood grain. It is a fine place to think and write.

I had no prior expectations of what would come out of those three hours, only that I would stay at my desk and write. Without expectations I felt no pressure. I didn't throw a tantrum. When one idea lost my concentration, I moved onto something else. I worked on five or six different things, such as a page outlining the thesis for the book I have been trying to write, a list of concepts I need to research, and a poem, which I finished. I didn't feel frustrated by my lack of concentration. Different projects gathered energy from one another.

It was the most productive work time I have had in weeks. Tomorrow I will do the same. I'm not afraid of getting distracted, because those three hours felt so good.

At 1:00 I got up from the desk, walked down the street and had a slice of pizza for lunch, then came home and checked my email.

Here is one of the pictures I took this morning, a friend for ruralrob's peony:

Now I am trying to work on some new developments of my website. I would like to add photo galleries. I taught myself HTML. Unfortunately my knowledge has grown rusty since I redesigned Silvan's Glade three years ago. For one thing I need to relearn how to do frames.