Playing with time and space

The window above my desk overlooking Highway 7 (York Road)

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Tectonic plates are shifting, giving rise to new landscapes. The furniture groans along fault lines. My personal planet moves toward a new geographical reality.

Time is shifting, too. New portals open. I guide my craft through untracked space, trusting my gravitational instincts.

The month of January has been all about changing my work habits. One of the essential exercises for a creative person is to play with time. Keith, the social worker, told me last week to pay attention to my own energy during the course of a day. I have read similar advice in Creating a Life Worth Living, a book about "career design for artists" by Carol Lloyd. It devotes an entire chapter to charting one's circadian rhythms.

I have known for years that my most productive mental time is between 3 and 10 pm. But it's also important to engage in some kind of creative activity early in the day, to set the pace and get focused. I've tried all kinds of arrangements. But what the matter came down to, this week, was realizing that my physical peak comes much earlier in the day, and I ought to dedicate that energy to physical endeavours rather than artistic ones. Finally, I came up with a new scheme. After rising, eating breakfast and writing my morning pages, late morning will be devoted to one of several things: housework, going to the gym, or walking.

The biggest obstacle has been my computer. Habitually I make myself coffee, sit down at the keyboard and get sucked into a vortex of email, aimless surfing and computer games. It's a bad place to sit when my brain isn't functioning. Before I know it, lunchtime will be past and I won't have accomplished anything. After that it's easy for the entire day to evaporate into an aimless vapour.

I had to make a new rule: the computer does not get turned on until noon. By then I will have completed my physical assignment for the day, and it will be alright to sit down with my lunch and start to read email. I started experimenting with this yesterday morning. At 10:30 I set out to reorganize my office.

Well!

The timing was right. Over the past two days I have spent five hours removing boxes and clutter, reorganizing all the drawers, shifting and vacuuming under furniture, even contemplating redesigning the space. In the end the desk, tables and bureau all went back to their old places, but I have eliminated the jumble that filled all the drawers. Paper, fabric, pens, paints, glue, tools and personal effects are all neatly organized. Practically everything that's unrelated to writing or art is gone. The room is still busy and fertile, but everything has its place.

The problem now is I have boxes of papers, magazines and junk sitting in the living room. I am determined not to move any of it back into the office. This is a dedicated work area, not a storage closet! Sometimes between now and tomorrow afternoon I have to deal with the mess out there, because I'll be picking Brenna up after school for a long weekend. But I am master of my own universe, or at least my own planet, and I won't let a little mountain get in my way. Some of it will go down to the basement, some of it will get thrown out and the rest, well, I'll come up with a solution.

The other exciting thing is, this cleaning gives me a great sense of accomplishment, of moving forward. By the time I finally sit down at the computer, I feel like I've earned it. I have taken some honest steps toward putting my world in order and can safely devote the rest of the afternoon to creative endeavours. In the coming weeks I'll see whether I can make this new routine continue to work for me.




My office this afternoon.