I woke up at 4:30 this morning. I’ve gotten up between 4:00 and 4:30 the last two days. Ever since the time change, I was struggling to get up at 5:05 (when my alarm goes off) or really any time before 6:00… Then something clicked, and now I’m up at 4:00-something. It might just be that this is the old waking up at 3:30 insomnia (except now it’s an hour later), and because it’s closer to when my alarm would go off, I’m just getting up… Aside from it making me a little more tired, I’m not all that upset with being up earlier. For one, it gives me a little more time to write in the morning – and since I’m trying this essay camp thing….
Today was day two of essay camp. It was very similar to day one. We were encouraged to try the five things exercise if we didn’t do that yesterday. Write about something. Write about something else. Write until you’ve written about five things. Most of the “lesson” was about habit/consistency. The teacher/host shared what one of her teachers, Mary Oliver, had said… that basically, you have to form the habit. You have to show up whether you want to or not.
I don’t know what to call the woman: teacher, host, blogger? Each day, she write out a post with some thoughts and an exercise or two and some links to readings. Participants read her instructions and then write. Or at least that’s what I’m doing. Some share on social media. Maybe somewhere there are discussions in the comments. There’s not face-to-face interaction. These aren’t videos – thous I believe she records an audio of her instructions.
Today I wrote for about 45 minutes. I tried the five things exercise (paper towels as napkins, dress shirts, contact lenses and glasses, attempts at surrealism, meta-cognition on writing five things) – maybe not in that order, I’ve already forgotten. In that time, I wrote 1500 words. I don’t know if it was 300 for each of the five things. Maybe if/when I go back to re-read or edit, I’ll check the word counts. Like yesterday, I followed the march of whatever words came out. I didn’t go back to edit or correct or clarify. Or at least, I didn’t go back often – there were some obvious ones… I allowed myself the in the moment corrections when I knew I typed the wrong word.
I’ll be curious to see if I go back to any of these prompts or exercises. I’ll be curious to see if I manage to extract anything out of them – a poem, a story, an essay. This is my decades of training in capitalism showing… in order for there to be value, something must be extracted, repurposed, put to use. Maybe it’s my frugality showing through. We have limited time on this planet, make the seconds count, make the effort count.
Welp… no need to keep you here any longer. My mind has gone blank on what to do next.