sound bites

Remembering to take vitamins every day is hard. Sitting down to actually examine one's head and then write about it is even harder. I made a promise (out loud, so it would count) on the passing of my 34th year to every day write at least a page in a journal. The promise was, in one sense, an attempt toward a sort of personal discipline -- an intimidating concept to which I've never really been able to adhere (see vitamins, above, or language study, or general exercise, u.s.w.) It also was an attempt at capturing time -- in parenthetical sound bites, of course (I can't write for more than 15 minutes without getting a terrible cramp) -- and putting it back into something I could physically hold. Like writing real letters, which I wish people still did (or I could, without the cramping.) At risk of sounding like a complete Luddite, I both love and hate email (and IM too) as while I can harass people I love with greater frequency while being physically far away, a five-minute hasty type doesn't even touch the, “so really, how are you?” question as would/could an uninterrupted hour of inky scribbling.

But maybe I'm deluding myself and killing trees at the same time. The last personal, paper letter I received from a friend was, I think, back in 2003; so I write to myself, claiming both the time I'd take to read a letter and the time it would take for a friend to respond for my own, and spill these minutes of thought into my journal. Which typically means about 20 minutes of aimless thoughts and a still hand; and then five minutes of frantic scribbling amid frustration that my pen moves so much slower than my fingers over a keyboard. I've yet to give myself a whole hour, as discipline and I are still wrestling with time-management -- should I write or surf Berlin blogs? Check email for the 105th time today? Laundry, anyone? Snacks! At the end of the day time is writhing on the floor, killed with a thousand blows of inane action. Hopefully my modest promise will teach me to pick it up, dust it off, and play nice.