For years I resented having to be up at 6 am and out the door by 7:15... only to return home from work at 4:30 or 5 exhausted... spent! Then I was faced with making supper, washing dishes (or chasing down kids to do it!) throwing a laundry into the washing machine, and after all that... marking. This routine left me little time or energy for things I really wanted to do. Even taking a half-hour walk outdoors was a treat during those busy days!
So after years of that, I'm not a big fan of "routines"... But recently while reading The Rule of Benedict, Joan Chittister's words jump out at me. She is commenting on Benedict's rule that the chapel (or "oratory") be only used for prayer, communal or private. No lounging, chatting or hanging aimlessly around. She then writes:
"Richard Sullivan, a professor of creative writing at Notre Dame University in the 1960s and a writer himself, taught his classes that the two most important physical dimensions of the writing profession were time and space. 'Write every single day at the same time and in the very same place,' he said. 'Whether you have anything to say or not, go there and sit and do nothing, if necessary, until the very act of sitting there at your writer's time in your writer's place releases the writing energy in you and begins to affect you automatically.'"
There are so many things I want to do... Did I accomplish more when my life was more "scheduled"? I'm not sure... (I didn't have a lot of time for non-essential tasks!)
One of my mother's favorite sayings - back in her working days - was: "If you want something done FAST, ask a BUSY person to do it." Her thinking was: Busy people are less likely to waste time...
Maybe, in the areas that I WANT to accomplish more, I do need to schedule a certain time to do it! (Maybe!)
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