So, I read for my writing almost every day. Every weekday is the goal. The first writer I chose to focus on, because it happened to be the first writer on this Dan Simmons’ list for aspiring writers, is William Shakespeare. I’m reading all 36(+2?) of his plays. Twice. I read them once, watch a performance of the play since it is a play and meant to be acted not just read, and then I read the play again. Can’t tell you what a good idea it was to read them that second time. My comprehension of the material is tenfold higher. At my current pace, it should take me just a month or so shy of two and a half years to finish the little project. Kinda wild.
Well, for shits and giggles, I made a rough estimate of how long it would take me to read the rest of Dan Simmons’ reading list for writers: 13 years and 4 months. Holy crap. And that’s on a pace of reading each of those books (except for Proust, my lord) a month. Which is…doable, I think? Perhaps ambitious? I’ll be goddamn 50 by then. Which is intimidating but also…exciting? Pretty sure I’m committing to it. 50s is nothing. I’ll still have 20 good years of writing left after that. Which isn’t to say I won’t be writing my ass off until then, I will…but I do have a feeling that my peak is probably still a ways off. Maybe not that far. But not here yet. I still have too much to learn.
Sigh.
I’ll teach someday. But not yet. I still have too much to figure out how to do myself. Far far too much, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of the blind leading the blind. It’s not fruitful, so I won’t do it.
I slept all day today, practically. Zombie Ira. I did go and get myself some salads from Trader Joe’s. I’ve eaten like shit the last week during the WBC project. Not anymore! Gonna get back into yoga, too. Good lord. I pack the schedule full. Sigh. But godammit it’s all full of stuff I love! I’ll figure out the time somehow. I miss the days at the apartment building where I made my own schedule. I don’t miss the stress that building brought upon me and Liz, nor did I use that free time as I think I actually would now…but I do miss it. I miss a lot of that time. I think about it a lot. Mostly Coco. And Cooper being young. Me being young, even if I’m not old yet. My 30s brought me lower than at maybe any point in my life…but I enjoyed those years, too, in a way that’s very different than these years now. A lot of it had to do with all that free time, and how we didn’t have to worry about money really at all. And everything was new, just as new as when I was in my 20s, but I actually had the time and money to go and experience them.
These days are magic, too, in ways perhaps even more powerful. I have a home I own. We’re healthy, and thriving. And I’ve found my writing. I can do what seemed impossible no matter how hard I tried in my 30s. I have wine. I’m reading. I have cats in my backyard. It’s wonderful. It’s just…different.
Night night.
—tonight’s artwork is from David Meltzer