The Life Literary

Morning pages again today. Skipped some days: it’s allowed. I worked on text for this year’s Christmas card. How many more years will we continue this labor of love, labor of creativity? Maybe it’s time to write the book about our thirty or so annual cards, imitations of everyday things like a menu, a song-book, a college bulletin, a wanted poster, a wallet, a corporate annual report, and much more, all written to communicate what’s happened with the family during the year.

Life is full. It’s easy to prioritize your time when you have an employer expecting you to appear each day at a certain time and work until another certain time. The tasks of a person retired from that sort of employment are compelling for too many good reasons: opportunity to spend time with _______ (grandchildren, wife, children), prime time for hobbies like gardening, plus a long string of medical and other necessities and commitments. Writing is becoming a priority, it is a priority, but too often I let it give way to something else. Maybe I do need to leave the house for some hours each day to “go to work,” defining a set time as writing time. I’d get more done quicker.

Printed text of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening to be the next poem to review. Formerly memorized ones come back pretty fast. How many will I be able to keep active simultaneously?

Wrote morning pages, a task which almost always sparks ideas. One is to rethink M.M. Make it simpler, less strident, gentler. A children’s book, maybe? Reviewed Two Roads and, satisfied it’s back in the ole noggin, will pull out another poem, probably Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, since I might as well get all my Frost under control at once. Also, it’s December and since I don’t expect much snow this year, or any for the rest of my life as climate change moves us to wherever it’s moving us, I might as well enjoy snow in verse.

Not much quantity or time today. Many interruptions demanded many moments which added up fast. I’m thinking of the time I managed to carve out as quality. I wrote the opening paragraph for the first chapter of TBL. Even a paragraph can be enough to get a ball rolling down a hill. More significantly, however, I started a journal/morning pages routine. The many journals/notebooks/commonplace books from writing during 2007-2013 were key to the whole process. Glad to be back at it. Even more glad to want to be doing it.

I also started a list of regular and one-time tasks. These items entered my brain fast and unbidden, a good and familiar sign. I will soon wish for many more hours in which to work.

Getting back into writing. Going to keep notes on what I accomplish. Today I outlined a children’s book called, “The Glue Lagoon.” The book is based on stories I told one of my grandchildren about a mysterious body of water that has some very sticky properties.

I also began outlining ideas for our 2021 Christmas card. I usually start those longhand in a notebook.

On the admin side of things I retrieved my old computer from which I will harvest past writing I haven’t saved or posted here or on my Google site. I reopened this blog and changed the password. I also reviewed my memorized poems notebook and began to refresh my memory of the ones I’ve partially forgotten.

March 23. I need to stop saying to myself, need to stop thinking that the gardening season is charging ahead without me, that I’m behind. Wondering if I’m that way with all of life: thinking I’m playing catch-up, worrying I’m lacking or deficient when, actually, things are fine. I have so many seedlings growing (oh so painfully slowly, but yes, growing) in the greenhouse (is it the temperature fluctuation? (too much heat midday, then down to mid-40s at night), or maybe things get dry, then I water them, then dry, then water and here I am with very…..very…very…slowwwwwww growwwwwwing seedlings.

Or, maybe everything is ok. Or at least ok enough,

And so today, between the pain in my back and right back thigh and knees, I raked leaves from the front yard beds, set stepping stones, pulled winter weeds, generally cleaned up the place, the front yard south-side creek bed, preparing the plots for plants and compost and seeds. And two of my four grandchildren were here today, making me smile, giving me joy. And distracting me from gardening. Garden work interspersed with grandchildren work, core, crucial, joyful walks and playing and listening. And all the while both gardening and grandchildren keeping me from writing, from reading, from studying.

Not sure how I’d do anything differently. Not sure I want to do anything differently.

Pretty sure this is how the literary life, at least for me, at least for now, goes.

Besides daily writing, the content of which I outlined yesterday, I’m also, at the moment, a student. I’m in my church’s (the Orthodox Church in America) Diaconal Vocation Program. It’s essentially a self-paced, remote/online course of studies, at a sort of Master’s level, designed to prepare me to be ordained a deacon in the Orthodox Church. In Orthodoxy, a deacon is an order of the clergy, which is why it requires advance studies. I’m three-fourths through the second semester, Church History. I completed the first semester, Scripture, and in a few weeks I’ll be ready to begin the third semester, Doctrine. Then, sometime this summer I’ll begin unit four, Liturgy.

I have to admit, I’ve always enjoyed studying theology. Maybe I’ll be writing about that sometime over the coming weeks and months.