How I Spend Time

I was reading something about Cheryl Strayed, which led me to this post on a blog, about how we spend our days. "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives" (Annie Dillard wrote that). Like most things I read on the internet I thought This is amazing! and then after reading it, I clicked onto another link and completely forgot all about it. The other link was an article about a woman who said she felt violated after receiving a bill for $5 from a restaurant for using the employee bathroom; and I got totally sucked down a vortex into a cyber battle with the person who wrote that article: Why is this news? Why did I just read that? Who is this person that allowed herself to be interviewed and photographed? Does she even know what violated means? and then: I need to disconnect my internet connection, I'd get so much more work done if I could control myself, and then of course straight down the hole to: What am I doing?

This is a just a small tidbit from how I spend my day, which is "of course" how I spend my life.

Still, I thought: that's a good exercise: let's have a look at my day, maybe it'll help me figure things out about myself.

I wake up at 4. I don't have an alarm, I just wake up. I think maybe a few years ago waking up at 4 seemed like a violation; I spent the hours between 4 and 7 wishing I could go back to sleep/hating myself that I couldn't/fighting with my demons about this, that, and the other thing.

Man on the street outside my window at 4 am: Hey, what's going on up there?
Deirdre: Oh nothing, just fightin my demons.
M.O.T.S.O.M.W: Demons? Haha, that's ridiculous.
Deirdre: I have demons.
MOTSOMW: You wouldn't know a demon if it bit you in the ass.
Deirdre: You think because I'm not walking around outside with a shopping cart at 4 am, that I don't have demons.
MOTSOMW: Yes that's exactly what I think.
Deirdre: I have demons. A lot of em.
MOTSOMW: Yeah okay.
Deirdre: Leave me alone.
MOTSOMW: Okay, have fun with your demons...your difficult, little deemie demons...your painful, horrific, tiny lil deem deemios.
Deirdre: Fuck off...Hey come back. I have demons. They may not be as ugly as yours but I have em. I do! They'll kick your demon's ass...Come back here! Jerk!

After I went through that for a while, I started to think: it's dark, it's quiet, it's peaceful. Maybe I should try to use this time more constructively. So I did.

Let me try this again.

I wake up at 4. I don't have an alarm. I just wake up. Sometimes that's a great thing. I heard someone say recently that every day you should have one thing that you decide is amazing, one thing, even a sip of water. That's not a bad idea. It's just the beginning.