Down time

I didn't make this a work weekend. After talking with Marian on Thursday night, I decided to bring her and Kerri down here for an impromptu visit. It enforces down time for me, which is good. Besides a visit to the farmers' market and dinner at Wok's Taste, we spent all Saturday watching movies.

With family around I find it hard to settle to sleep at night. I need solitude at the end of the day. I went to bed at 11:30, but sat up with the laptop until after 1:00. Next time I should try to retire earlier so I can be alone for a little while and still get to bed in good time. The new apartment's layout is more conducive to this.

This morning I didn't get up with the alarm, but lay in bed an extra 40 minutes. It was the first time I did that in weeks, except for twice when I deliberately did not set the alarm so I could sleep in. I wasn't drowsy, just lazy. It was not a problem today; I still had plenty of quiet time before the girls to up to write and so on. The difficulty will be in resuming the routine tomorrow.

The light box, knitting and 100 words are going great, but work on the novel is still blocked. I am writing 200 words every day, but it's going nowhere. I think fewer, larger blocks of time might be better, allowing me to write longer passages at one sitting. Not sure how to accommodate that. For now I'll stick with what I'm doing and think about how to tweak the routine.

I'll drive the girls home early today, and have the evening to myself. Besides getting dishes and laundry done, I plan to go to bed early.

Thoughts

Driving home from Port Hope this afternoon offered me an opportunity to hear some compelling programming on CBC Radio 2. Both books mentioned here sound like interesting reading.

Spark rebroadcast an interview with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (full interview and transcript), author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. He writes: "Perfect, comprehensive digital memory denies human beings the ability to grow, to change, and to evolve over time. That is deeply worrying."

Tapestry featured Bob Kull, who spent a year in utter isolation on a small island off the coast of Chile and subsequently wrote Solitude: Seeking Wisdom In Extremes. He gave a thoughtful, candid interview, and the book sounds like a challenging voyage of enlightenment.