This sounds like a good idea. I must try it, though I don't think I'd last even a week, let alone a month. I too check my email, and various websites. I end up wasting my mornings on nothing but coffee and Slashdot. Not very productive.

I'll try to write some every morning. I'll let you know if it's helpful or not.

How about a contest: we write morning pages here as comments to a forum, and the first person who misses one day loses?

Merc.

Done.

Starting tomorrow, I will do just that.

Oh dear me.

Merc.

So, this is a morning entry.

What's the goal? Creativity? The writing itself?

Morning is probably my least creative period. I tend to try to organize my day in my head, try to plan what needs done, and so forth. Maybe that's a bad habit that a little creativity would help.

Perhaps not.

Some days I wake with a head full of ideas. Other days, I wake with nothing but an uncharted vacuum.

Today is one of the latter.

Just woken up.
Last night, Anna and I ended up talking about Enid Blyton. She said "She wrote hundreds and hundreds of books". I said "yeah right, nobody can write "hundreds of books".
We asked Google almighty, which redirected us to Wikipedia almighty, which told us...
Eight hundred. Books.
She wrote eight hundred books.
She could write an amazing 10,000 (that's ten thousand) words a day.
I was in awe. Anna and I started rolling on the floor laughing, saying things like "How the fuck do you not repeat yourself, I mean repeat yourself, I mean repeat yourself?" and anna saying "But she did, she did, she did, she did!".
I was in awe. Anna was amused.
How could she do it? I said.
Simple, just write ten thousand words of rubbish every day! I could do that too! Anybody could!
I wonder who is right. It's definitely true that you're not gonna get the amount of polish if you write 800 books in 40 years, an average of TWENTY books per year, three books every 2 months. But, you're bound to come up with amazing stuff too. Like, bound to.
...
Last might, I dreamed that I woke up and that I couldn't go back to sleep. I think it might have happened for real. The waking up, I mean. I must have been up for ten minutes or so. I remember closing my eyes, and watching the dancing patterns, and then opening my eyes again, the pattern dissolving. Except, my eyes were still shut, and I had no idea.
I also dreamed that I was asleep, in a cinema. I woke up, and I saw some people sitting behind me. I had a strange feeling, being seen as I woke up. Then, I woke up for real, with the same strange feeling.

THe important thing is, I haven't lost my morning page race this morning!

Merc.

Hi,

Well, it's still morning - but it won't be for long.
It's cold. Cold cold cold. Winter cold.
In Canada, our house would be warm because there would be a central heating system to keep us comfortable.
In Perth, it's not quite cold enough for that. And it's not quite warm enough to be comfortable - quite the opposite, in fact.
I have to be quick, it's very nearly afternoon and it's our day off.
No dreams last night. Disappointing.

Yet again...!

Yet again, at 11:59, here I am!
Morning pages... for now come after my morning routine, which includes work.
Not very good.
Even worse, this is turning into yet another one of those blogs where people talk about their crap. That's even worse.
So, let's break that cycle.
How do you do that? By doing something you would never do otherwise. Without trying to be smart.
Life is about breaking cycle. Routine is just routine - the point where you don't even have to think at all, you just function like an obedient cell. Breaking the cycle is harder - you do things you wouldn't normally do. If you normally wake up and go for a walk, stay at home. If you would cook pasta for dinner, make sushi.
Breaking cycles is what gives people amazing freedom - and joy. It's risky, but it's also exhilarating.
What's my break today? I don't know. Writing about breaking a cycle is a beginning - I would normally talk about it, because I would want to do it "right". I guess that's a start.
Going to swim with my freshly mended wet suit in the middle of winter is another possible break. It takes courage... but I might as well.

Merc.

Has anybody here seen Anthony Taylor?

:-D

I am here. I really am.

It seems life moves on in fits and starts and lulls of nothing much between. I happen to be in a fitting start mode right now.

I am on the downside, though, and should be in a lull soon, which will actually be good.

I will be back tomorrow morning, to try this again.

So, I suck at this. I have not yet shed complexity from my life, and my days seem overstuffed with requirements and demands on my time.

So I ask you all:

How do you find time to write? Morning pages or evening pages or the pages filled between, how do you find time?

I am not an organized man. Quite the opposite. In fact, I am not even vaguely interested in *becoming* organized-- I like myself this way.

So, how do I start the habit of freeing up time to write?

I enjoy writing. I love it, in fact. There was a time when I had to write, when I couldn't help but write. As the concerns of money and job pressure and day-to-day living increased, I lost the need to write, and now I'm left with a few empty boxes that were once filled with the old needs.

Here I have a challenge I can't meet: to write daily, a few words on a blank electronic page.

And I can't even manage that.

But I will try. Changes take time, and it's past time to change my life.

A man's stomach will grow and grow as he eats, stretching and bulging and becoming accommodating of more food. Following this, his girth increases, his capacity grows, his hunger comes more and more frequently, and is not so quickly satisfied.

Why is it that food is so easily consumed, but life is not? If life were like this, our days would grow to accommodate our activities, and the hours would become insatiable. We would accomplish everything we love, everything we hope, everything we desire.

No. The days are inflexible, rigid. They do not grow, but arrive very precisely, one after another, like a conveyor trundling empty boxes of the same shape and size, one very much like another.

A wise man recognizes the sullen, ungiving day. A wise man fits his life in each parcel, and is satisfied changing the color of the box. A wise man writes on the box, "This box is mine, and I have filled it completely."

I am not wise.

Days come, one after the other. We gave the day a structure - and each day has become a ritual.
A mass. Wake up. Wash. Travel. Work. Lunch. Work. Home. Eat. TV. Sleep.
The ritual is important, it embraces you, it's friendly, it's known. But, it's always a ritual.
Rituals make it look like days come, and then they go. But they don't. The rituals around days do.
Are we stuck with the rituals? Maybe. We cannot choose not to follow them, because our lives would be completely out of sync with other people's. And even if you do decide to break those ritual, you end up finding yourself in a new ritual - the ritual of the non-ritual. Where things just happen.
I don't know. It's tricky.
Woo knows?

There is a vast universe, and we are a infinitesimal part of it.

I have my entire life dreamed of conquering it, or at least a small part of it, the nearby part of rock and gas and cold emptiness. I have been awestruck at the thought of living beneath an alien sky, in alien sunlight.

I sometimes believe this is our destiny, this is our meaning of life, this is our only true purpose: to explore, and settle. I wish we could spread our DNA throughout our neighboring solar systems.

In the Book of the New Sun, our world and our sun have been depleted of energy. Cacogens come from other planets, and they wear masks to hide their monstrous faces. Later, Severin discovers the monstrous faces beneath the masks are not real, that they are also masks, which hide the beautiful human faces beneath.

I want that to be a metaphor for humanity. I want our ugliness and casual selfishness, which is hidden beneath a mask of civilization, to also be a mask. I want our true nature to be beautiful humanity, naked and wise and kind.

Do I believe it?

No.

But I'm hopeful. And were there is hope, there is possibility. Maybe, just maybe, our children will walk in strange sunlight, breathing air hundreds of light years from here. Perhaps then they can leave the horrific mask behind, and we will finally deserve our purpose, our destiny.