I think I might need new rules

Or to enforce the old rules, at least.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something Kris Rusch mentions in her book „Writing with chronic illness“, she says that she doesn’t allow herself to read before she has written her words for the day. She also talks about the importance of sleep, nutrition and exercise, ahem.

As I said, I’ve been thinking about the ‚no reading‘-rule for quite some time. My first thought was nope, never. But then I have been making excuses for not writing lately. And while I keep thinking I can just move the writing and the yoga around as I please, funny enough, when I move them around they don’t get done more often than not.

So I tried to figure out how that rule might feel, if I could do it, if it would be a good thing or not.

Then, yesterday, I ended up going to bed past midnight. I was tired and low on energy all day. I barely managed to make myself write morning pages, work on the manuscript didn’t happen and while I did yoga I was slow and a bit grumpy.

And I kept thinking about that rule. Until I realized that as much as I like thinking this is something I can’t figure out by thinking about it. What I can do is just give it a try for a short time and see what happens. Duh.

So this will be my rule for the next two weeks or so, no reading, no consuming story in any form before I have either spent half an hour on the manuscript or written 500 words. Whatever happens first.

And then I realized I needed another rule to complement it. Because sleep. So the other rule will be that as soon as my ‚get ready for bed‘-alarm goes off I have to drop everything, get ready right away, not finishing anything or whatever, and if I’m fast enough I can read a bit before turning the lights out at 10.30. If I dawdle, well, pity.

Thinking was not the only thing I did yesterday, though. My husband and I talked quite a bit again, about teaching and people and such. Very nice conversation. That took a little longer than we wanted. Again.

After that I did my online rounds and such, looked at everything I needed to do, looked at the grocery list, found that the list was a short one and that I could get almost everything at the nearby grocery store. So I went and mailed the return package first, then picked up my blood pressure meds at the pharmacy and then walked to the supermarket. I got everything I wanted including coated peanuts, ahem, and Ben & Jerry’s was on sale and there was a new flavor with mango. I mean, clearly I had to buy it.

I came back home to a super stressed husband who dashed around the kitchen and living room cooking while I tried putting away the groceries, then we had a delicious lunch. Mmh, zucchini:

I had quite a bit of time to myself after and used it to play a silly game, read a bit, eat chocolate, do the dishes and listen to some classical music.

I taught my first two students, the next one canceled and while I had the best intentions to use that time for something productive I turned out to be very hungry and so I just ate those peanuts I had bought. I taught my last student of the day, then met the boy for bodyweight training (only twenty minutes, phew), we talked a bit, he showed me some of the models he had painted the day before, I went online again, then started writing this post, did Duolingo and my foot exercises, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

One more teaching day until Easter break. Now the important question is if I’ll fall into a deep slump and get crankier and crankier next week or if I manage to maintain some structure, get some stuff done and feel better.

Stay tuned and find out.