You read a long essay about Vonnegut and think about the planet moving through space. Watch a YouTube video of music of a band you like. Itch an elbow. Work on rainy Saturdays. Think about coffee or scotch and dry: reclining on rooftop bars.
Click click scroll. Scratch chin. Doodle.
Ideas fly. Thinking of Googling storage places outside the city. Dismantling furniture: bookcases and beds and desks. The long drive north. The long six weeks left. Taking the car to the mechanic. Plastic tubs of books. Washing the walls down with sugar soap water sponges. Using a ball of blu-tac to de-tac the places where there were photos and words that were supposed to be motivating, turned condescending.
Needing a sandwich.
Tight circles around a date on the calendar. Same date written on a post-it note. Time owed written over triple. Hours lost documented loosely. Column of double digit numbers. Thinking: if this is the sum of productive capacity, someone - not me - is getting a bargain never discussed. If the language had punctuation for irony, you could use it and quote "...refuse to work another weekend...". Count the unworked weekends on the hand of a fist with three fingers down and two up.
If living is waiting around for something to happen, I've been alive my whole life. If living is to go/do: the illuminated exit sign brings rebirth closer to reality every day. Every lost weekend still an exit sign closer. Walking, driving. Home late. Spending hours flipping through 200 pages looking for errors.
Inevitability is okay when it brings opportunity closer.
May your last day be your best day.
The 5am Project
It's 5am on the first day.
Actually, it's 5.23 on the first day, and it seems my ability to turn off alarms while still asleep has returned. For some reason my unconscious mind prefers to hit snooze, rather than just turning the stupid alarm off.
Maybe I should have thought about a "5.30am project", or a more sensible "6am project".
Alas, I'll stick with 5am.
So, the project.
In simple terms, I'm really great at making excuses. Excuses not to write, or finish a novel that's been in the works for the past four years (Four. Years). A friend and I decided a month ago that we'd set a date, write as much as we could by the 31 July and submit a chapter to Allen & Unwin's Friday Slush Pile. It was supposed to be a way, for me in particular, to get motivated about writing - to produce something quickly and send it out into the world. The idea was more about process than content; the process of writing ~50-60,000 words quickly.
Even with a deadline, and a fast approaching one, I was unable to get the word count much higher, really. It seemed I would be content to plod along with a couple of hundred words written on the weekend. There was no time, I rationalised. I had work during the day, and then I had to eat when I got home and get to the gym. By the time I got home again, showered and settled down, it would be 10pm and I'd feel like two hours of writing was about the last thing I wanted to do.
So here I am, awake at 5.38. No more excuses, and plenty of time to write. I'll be doing this for the next month - 35,000 words in 30 days.
The 5am Project.
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