Listen to Pilot Light

Friday, August 17, 2012

Losing time

I read other people's blogs, especially those that help me understand more about publishing. And I blog to share thoughts and observations and, with luck, sell a few books and songs to those who enjoy what I write. Yet blogging often seems the wrong thing for a writer to be doing. Thinking up a topic (or even stumbling over one) and then taking the time to write it is time taken away from working on writing or music projects. If I write about things unrelated to the project I am working on, it increases the multitasking workload, which is a problem for a person who seriously does not believe that people actually multitask (they do, however perform threaded tasks). If I write about what I am writing about then I am putting work here instead of there, if you see what I mean.

It's a problem of time. We each have twenty-four hours in a day and I often wonder where mine went. I lose chunks of that time. I understand the chunks that go to what Dagny and I call domestic stuff, a broad category that we use to refer to almost anything that isn't either making art or simply having some fun. Shopping, cleaning, doing paperwork, even checking email all fits in there.

Mostly it is the art time that I can't find. If I sit down to write at nine and get a few pages rolling under my fingers, then I will look up and see that it is lunch time. And I was just getting started. The afternoon disappears the same way.

My life must contain some automatically activated time-compression plug-in. I want it out! Now!
   
This artwork has nothing whatsoever to do with this blog except that I put it here.