routines

So I've recently come into a morning routine. Recently like about a week ago. I'm not a routine person, never really aspired to or desired more routine in my life.... I've always preferred to be spontaneous and to go with the flow and all that kind of thing. But every now and then I'm reminded of the value of a routine, especially in certain inherently repetitive aspects of life. Morning is going to be roughly the same thing whether I have a routine or not: there will be waking, coffee, preparing our kid's lunch, getting breakfast on the table, making sure said kid gets to school, getting my own butt to work, etc. So when someone suggested a morning routine to me, I decided to give it a try. It's nothing new, no new ideas of what to include in that routine, just plugging in a little time for meditation. In my case, some in the house and then while the oatmeal is baking (dude, haven't tried baked oatmeal yet? check it out) taking the dog for a walk around the park. I'm not very good at routine, though, because I've been so resistant to it my entire life. Last week went pretty well with it until Sunday morning when I just slept in because that's what one does on Sunday mornings. Then Monday morning went alright, but Tuesday morning I just wasn't getting out of bed yet. This morning I'm up earlier than my "official" routine starts, which is why I'm here.

And now I'm at a loss as to what to write. I think I had an idea of what I wanted to write, but now it's gone. Lost in the mire of routine.

writing just to write - 4 March 2017

I don't know what I'm going to write here. I'm just writing. I keep getting these reminders of how hard it is to write if you don't practice, and I don't practice. There are reasons. Always reasons. Excused. I'm a slave to King Busy. I'm a father, a husband, a small business owner, no one's paying me to write and I've got "better" things to do with my time. But is it "better" to stare at facebook for an extra 20 minutes? Last week, I spent 83 minutes watching the worst movie I've ever seen. Literally. What could I have written in those 83 minutes? I don't know. I'll never know, but I can find out what I'll write in the next 10 minutes right now, and that's exactly what I'm planning to do. Cave mode is on. Well, not literally, because I'm on the Foley stage computer and that control room is not cave compatible, but the browser only has one tab open (this one), the email client is quit, my phone is in silent mode (and screen-side down), and the rest of the house is still sleeping. So I've got nothing better to do than write. Just write. Not edit. Maybe I'll do that later, maybe I won't. This is full on stream of consciousness writing at the moment, though, although I can't seem to stop myself from occasionally pausing to think about what comes next and definitely can't stop my fingers from correcting typos. That's just muscle memory, I think, but the former.... is that a bad habit or a good one developing? I think it's a good one developing. I want to go back and edit that sentence, but I'm not going to. I think the pause and think where is this stream going... that's a good thing, I think, even if I don't go anywhere interesting with it. Which I'm not doing right now. Certainly not. I'm just writing. Well, listening to Beyoncé and writing. I guess that's not really cave mode compatible, is it? But it does seem to go with writing better than it does with dialog editing, and I do it with dialog editing sometimes, too (low volume comparatively, and preferably instrumental music), so I'll allow it. I'm not in airplane mode, though, which is what I usually do in cave mode on the phone. I don't think that makes a big difference, though, at least not today. Pausing to sip coffee is definitely cave mode compatible. And, now, my kid is out of bed, 4 minutes before I'd said I'd keep writing.

the creative process

Today I had the distinct pleasure of screening a short movie which has not yet been released, and while I'm dying to gush about it I don't think I'm allowed to yet. But I can and will say that my creative juices are flowing in the aftermath of watching this. I don't trust myself to say any more right now.