I don't like how a C&P from Word enters VOX.

One of the things about doing “Morning Pages”, as suggested by my neighbor Artgeek, is that it strongly urges you to get away from the chaos of the house and take a moment to write three pages worth of stuff down.  The stuff is fairly unimportant (one link she gave me said it was even permissible to write, “I don’t know what to write” over and over for three pages), but the process matters.  The idea is that it will help you clear your head and unleash your creativity.

I’m reading a lot about that right now, as I embark on reading, “Getting Things Done”, by David Allen.  He also has suggestions on how to clear the head and allow yourself to be creative, whatever your endeavor.  However, I find his book starkly intimidating.  It’s a puzzle to me, and while some of what he says makes a bucket full of sense, much of it feels reminiscent of reading a foreign text.  Sometimes I think my brain is hard-wired for disorganization, no matter how frustrating I find it.  Hell, looking at my little room right now, I really wonder about that!  Looks like a tornado hit it, but by the end of tomorrow it will be completely tidy.  There should be a way to keep it looking like that all the time, but I haven’t managed it.  Nevertheless, it is my ongoing ambition to try!  In previous incarnations of my life, a half-hour dedicated to tidying my space might merely have resulted in a small dent.  Tomorrow, it’ll look nearly sparkling.  I call that progress.

Back to the subject at hand – “unleashing creativity”.  When I was in Kenya, I loved mornings.  It took about a week, maybe two, to get into a rhythm of waking with the sun at 5:30am (and my roommates loathed me for it, despite the fact that they could, and did, sleep through anything).  However, the returns were worth it.  Trillions of times over.  I was the only student consistently up at that time, possibly the only person, and usually I was even up before the cook crew (a rotating group of students, and my original motivation to get up that early).  I wrote so much more while I was there, and truly developed my interest in photography.

How much of that was just the fact that I was on a study abroad to Kenya will remain forever a mystery, but the truth is that I am certain a significant amount of it was also the rhythm of waking with the sun and having all of camp to myself.  I allowed myself more silliness, for no one could see.  I allowed myself more writing space, because I wanted to miss nothing.  And if I wanted to take a picture of that millipede, by god, I could.  (It was huge.  Totally awesome, and I don’t care how many people question my sanity for photographing it.)

I found it amusing, though, because I am a nightowl, through and through.  Here in the States, it’s not at all unusual for me to be up until 2am or later.  I pay for it the next day, but it’s still very much an inclination for me.  Some of it is that I can’t wake with the sun consistently, as I did in Kenya.  A dawn simulator has helped tremendously, and I recommend it to everyone.

My night habits have only increased, though, since moving to my latest destination.  I now live with a wonderful roommate, her cat and her puppy.  Unlike my roommates in Kenya, I am not as prone to sleeping through anything.  In the middle of the night, I can sleep through some things, but not everything.  As the morning inches in, though, it becomes tougher and tougher.  And if there’s one thing I cannot sleep through, it’s an alarm.  Even if it’s on the other side of a wall.  Especially then, actually, since I can’t turn the damn thing off.

So I’ve found that those moments of peace come for me these days, at the end of the day.  In some ways, I guess they always have.  I’ve enjoyed mornings when I’ve felt able to truly wake up for them, but it is difficult for me in my NorthWestern quarter of the globe.  True dark to fall asleep to is all but impossible (especially where I am now), and as the seasons change, so does sunrise.  Mornings are just as much a struggle as they ever were before Kenya.

Furthermore, in my current house, there’s no way to escape the chaos first thing.  Even were I to wake up earlier (which is quite questionable, given my predilections), I don’t think I could get as much done before the obnoxious 6am alarm that is my roommate’s first (of many) wake up sounds.  That thing goes off forever.  And, eventually, the puppy wakes up.  And then it’s attempts to get her to pee and eat and behave.  Sometimes it feels like I’m hiding in my room!  Even lying in bed, there is no escape.  I have an extreme desire to jump out of bed and fix whatever that obnoxious noise is, or to help my roommate with whatever dog training thing she’s got going on.

Combine all of this with a wonder-woman on the East Coast who tends to be a nightowl herself, and the fact that all of my friends are an hour or more behind me…

Well, nights are just my time.  I, at this point, journal in the mornings and at night, most of the time.  The night journal is not always long hand, the morning journal is.  I haven’t figured it all out.  I want to get up and pee before doing morning pages, but it feels like I’m available for the world the moment I open my door.  It’s hard to make a 15 week old puppy understand that I’m not around when I’m standing right there!

I tried this morning, after having read about morning pages last night, to actually have my wake up.  Pee, brush my teeth, make some tea.  From the links Artgeek gave me, this was acceptable.  Except, it really did toss me right in the middle of it all.  Oddly, though, I wonder if it was more like what the morning pages were supposed to be.  Seemed somewhat like what the “collection” phase of “Getting Things Done”.  It was much more scattered and like notes to myself than I feel previous entries were.  I don’t much go back and reread old journal entries, so I can’t swear to that, but it’s a feeling.  I was spacey enough that when I went to get dressed, I managed to pull on clean underwear, socks and pants, but then wandered out to the kitchen in my night shirt.  And didn’t even realize it until about halfway through morning pages/dealing with insanity.  So, I wasn’t entirely clear headed. 

The nice thing about the room being messy though, is that there are a lot of books out.  Since I’ve felt so long like I’ve lost my direction as a reader, having 12 books out and about feels sort of homey.  I’m only in the middle of six of them.  Though I think I’m not going to finish number six.  And I may return number five.  Number seven, though, goes with number four, and number two is a book on writing.  Number one is GTD, and number three is a nice fantasy novel I’m looking forward to and I promised a friend I’d read for her experiment on me.  Number eight is the next book in that series, so will be tucked away soon.  Number nine was one I thought I’d read snippets of this evening (was a toss-up between that and the writing book), so will also be put away soon.  Number ten is a book on local foods, also soon to be tucked away.  Eleven is a second book on writing I just got, and twelve is a book I just finished that was both a light-hearted read and a study for working on my own book in that genre.

Feels like home.

Post Script: After shutting down the computer, and using this as the evening’s journaling exercise, I went and put away about four of those books.