I suppose this could category could designate different things for different people. It could mean art or shows that you’ve seen in the past decade, art that’s been created in the last decade, performing arts, movements in art, news about the arts, etc.

I used a photo of Kara Walker’s artwork, because I think I remember Shotts talking about seeing her show at the Walker in 2007-2008.

Let’s talk about your favorites over the past decade….

This should be a lively discussion…the quantity of books published in the last decade, and amount of time invested in reading them means there will be far less “shared” time with the same books as our fellow Hollow Men.

The title says it all.  What are your favorites from the 2000’s?

Alright, let’s hear of your choices for the best music of the decade. 

Serious contenders?  Personal favorites?  Guilty pleasures?

Years, that is.  It’s the anniversary of Galileo discovering Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto orbiting Jupiter.

Read more about it here and here.

Good 2010 to all of my fellow Hollow Souls.

I’ve been in a particularly reflective mood in this New Year, and I want to explore some of those reflective moments with the rest of you, if possible.  It’s been a decade since the calendar flipped over to the year 2000, a lot of fears never materialized in flipping over and a lot of fears we never realized we should have materialized in the haze of the past ten years.  The more I ponder it, the more I realize we’ve seen a lot.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’d like to post some conversation starters in the articles and have people contribute to the main idea with thoughts of their own.

For this one…I’d like to hear from you all about the things that have happened in the last ten years that have been memorable.  They can be significant or trivial, just something worth noting. 

Ten years ago, I felt like I had been in Kansas City for ages.  Nursing a broken heart made things go unbearably slow, even though I had only been here about ten months.  I actually remember wondering on New Year’s Day of 2000 where I would be in 2010, if I’d even be alive to be cognizant of it.  Happy to say, I am.

What happened for you in this decade in the making?

What does the Jesus Year hold for you, and what do you make of this idea generally, and in terms of your own lives?

For me, I’m interested in finding larger struggles beyond myself, and maybe that’s ultimately what one can do that lives up to, in part, the example of Jesus. And yet. Here, this year, I’ve been given everything–a good life, companionship, good work, and even a more flexible schedule so that I can teach this fall (something I’ve wanted for a long time) and so that I can write (something I’ve always wanted). Why does this still seem like it falls short? Why are my struggles still primarily with myself? Is this part of the experience of being 33, as a sort of crossroads year? A year in which I know many of my peers are far more successful in terms of what the culture says is successful? Why is it that I still can’t eat right, exercise right, balance my life? Maybe the Jesus Year is the year we are supposed to compare ourselves to Jesus, yes, but really what we do is compare ourselves to everyone else?

But more generally, does this stage of life have any common or universal traits among the culture at large? Are most people already married? already married and divorced? having children? getting higher promotions? running for office? changing jobs? moving? taking up some cause?

I thought you would all be interested in this, seeing as, for a little while longer, at least, we’re all 33, our high school and college classmates are, most of them, 33, and I suspect several of our friends, cousins, and others around us are 33. And we haven’t had a larger question posed lately, so it seems like a good time. Any thoughts?

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But, this leads me to ask: any “tops” of 2006 you’d like to share and comment on here?

Here are a few, from me:

Top novel: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (actually out in the U.S. from Graywolf Press in 2007).

Top poetry collection: Averno by Louise Gluck

Top movie: The Prestige

Top documentary: An Inconvenient Truth

Top song: “Hamburg Song” by Keane

Top political event: Democrats regaining Congress in November elections. Rumsfeld “resigns” shortly thereafter.

Top global events: Lack of global resolve over Darfur, Sudan. Continued unavailability of clean water to millions.

Top Minnesota event: The state sends first Islamic member of Congress to Washington in November election.

Top celebrity: Bono

So, looking ahead now, here are a few thoughts and resolutions from me.

In 2007, I expect:

• to see Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Rudy Guliani in the spotlight for the Presidential elections of 2008, as they all announce their candidacies. (I’m already surprised to see John Edwards announce his candidacy, and so early.)
• a withdrawl plan from Iraq.
• peacekeeping efforts deployed to Darfur, through a renewed United Nations.
• the biggest seller in books, by far, to be the new and final Harry Potter.
• the biggest movie, in terms of blockbuster status, to be the new Harry Potter movie.
• to be exhausted by Harry Potter by this time next year.
• additional evidence for global warming.
• one of us to announce a child on the way.

Some of my personal resolutions include:

• to eat vegetarian as much as possible, with only occasional fish when eating out.
• to eat less, eat more healthy foods, drink less alcohol, and drink more water daily.
• to exercise at the Y at least 12 times each month.
• to post and comment regularly on the Hollow Men site, including a weekly literary/poetry feature.
• to work to organize our house better.
• to begin more sustained writing.
• to be in better touch with family and friends.

–Shotts

Summer Clearing

We pick locusts
sliding fresh from the dunes
like little Saint John the Baptists
wandering in our wildness.
Our little wilderness, sanctuaried
by a wheat truck and a chain,
arrives each time the metal-gray auger
slips under the patch of dust-
blue prairie sky.

We imagine the wide mouth
of the auger smiling at us
long and trembling. Comfortable
skin, tin-flecked and spotted,
reminds us of great grandma;
how the back of her hand
would turn over our faces
seeing with feeling,
expressions given two
generations away.
…how the back of her hand
shimmered with the thickness of opals,
deep and complex in buried years, but

signing her failing liver. Grandma goes,
the auger returns like a great benefactor
feeding us in her place,
warm in memory.
With a grin, the animal repeats
familial habit, pacing over
four rust-red walls that buckshot has
bored through, leaden weevils
tunneled by the Bowmans next door.
Spiral grates with dust and we hear
the steady slice of wheat coming
as grandpa kneads the metal
knob forth and back in the meat-
and-honeyed palm of his hand.
Golden in the summer
clearing, the Jordan comes to us.

We laugh until
the sandy slide of wheat
cuts our voices
out and we can only
grab as our mouths fill
with deserts; our lungs
split as the hot
chaff belches into them
a violent resuscitation,
Stream rolls us under
and bites
like tiny spring hailstones.

When father pulls my shoulders
loose and shakes the grain free
I don’t only feel it, again
I am born into the yeasty light.
Shallow scrape of machine-missed
chaff arches our back until
our heads are bleach-blonde
keystones to June.

Fingers dip, till, push, pluck
ripped bodies of grasshoppers still
throeing, newly cut.
We squeeze them tenderly and yell at the combines,
our fingers chalk green with mercy.

We approach our gathering, and I’m enjoying the anticipation. I look forward to speaking with you all. It’s been a long couple of weeks, one of which was spent on the road in New Jersey for the Dodge Poetry Festival (anyone who has viewed Bill Moyers’ special The Language of Life knows the Dodge Festival) and then in New York for a few days. A week away has paid a toll.

First, some housekeeping:

Toby, are you ready for us to descend upon you? Anything we can do, bring, or otherwise?

J.E. and Ned, are you able to be there?

Peters, I assume you’re set to come?

And second, a few things:

I know I’ve put in for a guys-only kind of weekend. I still stand by that, but certainly don’t mean to put any of you in a strange spot–Toby especially–about this. So whatever the configuration, it will be great. Toby in particular, I know you and Steph have had a hard few weeks by now. I hope this weekend is still good for you, and I hope it’s useful the way friendship can be useful to grief.

I look forward to such candid talk. For one, I would like to hear more about our marriages and the ways each of us makes them work. Who would have thought we’d have an HM gathering and talk about our relationships, let alone our marriages? Considering that most HM gatherings centered often on our solitude, perhaps we’ve come some distance. But I guess that’s the vicinity I’d like to discuss–how do you protect your solitude and still remain a committed and loving partner? Certainly some of that conversation can and should occur here on the site–so please do respond here–but I hope we can talk openly about some of these issues. Speaking for myself, in this last year, I’ve found it very difficult to maintain the things that I used to value and still value–solitude, reading, writing, contemplation, running, certain friendships, and so on. While I realize a new balance is being struck with Jen, and one that most often seems only to improve, it’s still sometimes hard not to feel some loss. Peters brought some of this up awhile ago on an earlier post, and it would be great to continue some of that conversation and to hear from Peters on this, since he and I are at least in a similar time frame in our marriages, but also to hear from Ned, J. E., and Toby, who have had some longer time to live within their marriages.

In any case, this is on my mind, and it’s part of what I look forward to. Of course, I also look forward to tea and coffee, walking through the leaves, and catching up on all our eccentricities. Autumn has been in full force here in Minnesota for the last couple of weeks–truly exhilarating around the Mississippi, the bridges, the lakes, our neighborhood and in the parks. It will be great to come down while Kansas City will be in the throes of its autumn.

See you, in less than three weeks — Jeff

It’s not very good, but I just felt like posting something different…the following is true and I put it in a poem while I was in college.

V. The police called to tell me my car window was reported “found shattered.” I slip on my shoes and white T-shirt and break out of the front door, heavily squinting in the morning sun. I slowly twist my head through where-the-window-should-be to find glass seeding the front seat. I talk to the police officer; taken:

1 rental tape,

26 music discs.

The letter that came this morning:

“Your recent letter came. I have read it and reread it many times. You know you can count on us for prayers for your safety. It’s a problem I have understanding how God answers in so many unusual ways.

Your mother needs you so terribly much. Through her tears is sobbed, ‘I wish he could spend some time with Andrew this summer.’ I really don’t know what else to say.

Congratulations on your graduation.

Love,

Grandma C.”

I remember this event well, I was in the last days of college, desperate about what I was going to do with my life.  The policemen knocked at my door and woke me up in the early morning telling me that my car had been broken into.  It was a smash-and-grab, and it was the first time I had ever been deliberately robbed in such a way.  I really felt violated, which was surprising to me.

I had also sent out a bunch of letters for support for China, which is what my grandmother responded to in a letter I received the same morning.

The thing that I thought was worth putting in a poem when I was in college was the specific feeling I recieved of being alone in this place, at the cusp of graduating from college which was I was promised would be a pivotal moment in my life.  However, I mark this time as one of the most confusing lost times I have ever been in.  My relationship with Katie, whom I had just started dating a few months prior, was strained because neither of knew what we were going to do post-graduation.  I hoped I was going to China, a place I loved, to people I cared about. 

Then, this letter from my grandmother, that wasn’t really about me whatsoever.  I felt like a hollow husk when I got this, punctuated by the “congratulations on your graduation.”  I felt like the graduation card was just a vehicle for familial guilt to be conveyed to me…and in that specific time, with all the pressures and violation of the morning, I think I finally left my family. 

And I felt left by them.

Anyway, I stumbled across this the other day and it set me back in this specific moment strongly.  I thought I’d share.

To my Hollow Men,

Toby

I mentioned in the Music Thursday post that I was sorry for my lack of involvement over the last week.  This blog has been a great outlet for me, and I hope to come back in full force soon.  I know there will be ebbs and flows…last week was a tough one for many of the HM.  J.E. and Shotts, I think, had mentioned a tough week also.  This last week was particularly hard for Steph and I, and I’m glad to be able to have a group of friends I can share this with. 

It started out hard, but I thought it’d get smoother instead of more difficult.  I had some deadlines in the beginning of the week that caused a lot of stress.  I still was feeling like I was coming out of my post-vacation pining (which makes it really hard to sit in front of a computer screen).  I had to hit my workload hard, and started up BirdBox activities bright and early Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and worked until 9:30 or so each of those days.  It really takes it out of me to filter my world through an LCD monitor most of my waking hours.  Steph knows I’m not much to talk to after days like that.

Let me preface this next bit with something Steph and I found out about a month ago: we were pregnant.  Steph and I were excited, to say the least.  We were also restrained because we know sometimes things can go wrong, especially early on.  Well, Steph had been feeling badly the last couple of days, so we scheduled an appointment with her OB/GYN.  They were really great and got us scheduled us immediately.

At our appointment, one of the nurses took us into a sonogram room.  She later told us she expected everything was going to be fine; that what we were describing was pretty typical.  However, when we looked at the sonogram, she realized the baby had no heartbeat.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve heard. 

We were in great hands at the clinic Steph goes to.  The nurse was awesome, and talked to us about how she had gone through two miscarriages in the last year.  She didn’t give pat answers, celebrated that we had gotten pregnant in the first place (they see many who don’t even get that far).  She told us we needed to grieve…which is advice that needs to be given more often.  Then there was a stream of nurses who came in and talked to Steph about how they had been in our spot before.  It was great to not have people handle it with antiseptic distance, but help us with grace and dignity.

So Thursday morning at 5:30 we went in and had surgery for Steph to avoid complications.  

It’s an experience that seems easier and harder than I thought.  Steph’s recovering on the couch right now as I type.  She feels tons better, and I am doing all I can to help her be comfortable in her recovery. 

However, I had someone ask me how I am doing…and I can’t answer that yet.  I’ve had the responsibility of keeping deadlines met (I got some grace from my clients, too) and keeping Steph upbeat.  However, I find myself strangely emotional at times.  I cried when the person above asked me how I was doing…

…but mostly I find myself being grumpy.  It comes through even when I am trying to be Steph’s cheerleader and frustrates me.  I’m trying to be the strong one, but I think soon I’ll need to let that mask slip off for a while.  In fact, I think these words — knowing that they will be completed in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Texas — start to heal.

Thanks, HM.

I thought this was an curious idea. it’s interesting how literature is trying to employ the tools of modern internet to thrive.  In fact, the first blog I can remember took the shape of posting Samuel Pepys’ diary in daily increments.

Anyway, there’s a depthful flurry of information and content out there…I find so little of it really valuable to me other than an instantaneous visceral experience.  I think that’s one reason this blog has surprised me, because it’s got me excited about something online again.  That hasn’t happened for years.

What do you think?  Do you think this is an interesting tool, but not one that anybody will use?  Do you think it can help bring significance to a space that seems devoid of it sometimes? 

Time is elastic, I heard once. I always believed this thought to have some merit.

Recent posts about time and how we spend it got me thinking. Is it truly about how we spend it, or how we experience it? Good times go quickly, bad times seem to move more slowly — that is, if you believe in good and bad times. Or is it all just time, experienced as we choose?

I have no answers, but I do have a recent observation: I should have been careful what I wished for, for now I have it. I have a job I love, a wife I love, a dog I love, and a dozen or so activities I wish I could spend more time doing. Every minute is marrow. There are no scraps anymore, and time feels as though it is whizzing by faster than I can experience it. No longer do I have the sour, which emphasizes the sweet. No longer is there a sweet anticipation of good things to come, simply because it is all good now. Is this a better quality of life?

I certainly never feel like there is an opportunity to rest and reflect; to enjoy the subtleties of my introversion. I think back to the days where I was in class, looking forward to evening activities, dinner, a bike ride. It was as though i got to savor those events, both in the mind and then the reality. Gone maybe is the savoring of the mind.

I am not saying I am unhappy, just that things were good in a very different way.

Thoughts???

Sometimes, I’m surprised as I skip a cycle.  Instead of a six-month turnaround, the phases last a whole year. I don’t ever make a conscious choice about it, it just happens.  I sometimes wonder if it’s body intelligence, shifting me to something that inherently it knows I need.  That doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, though, as the shifts seem to be preferential, and not necessary.  I’ve tried to wrest control of the shift, but I don’t seem to be able to affect it.  I think I’ve ruminated on this to a few of you before….

The shift looks something like this: I move from coffee (black) to tea (Earl Grey, white and sweet).  I move from Gin & Tonic to Scotch (neat).  I move from water to Coke (especially with Mexican food and pizza).  I start thinking of curling up in a blanket with a book and hot chocolate — instead of images of sun, outdoors and cool drinks.  At Starbucks, I’ll order a Hot Carmel Apple Cider instead of the usual Latté.

There are other shifts.  Salad to soup. Just a week ago, I was craving salads, fruits and vegetables.  Yesterday we had chili, and now I can’t stop craving the heartiness of meat and beans.  I can’t even think of the lightness of salad right now.  I think it has something to do with the weather.  It’s gotten a lot cooler and rainy in the last week than it has been since mid-June. Perhaps I’m more like a bear than I realize, and my body seeks out heavier, calorie-laden foods.

Maybe foods are the clothes my insides wear.

Do you have a shift this way? What cravings leave and arrive in your life this time of year?

Six Years of Noah

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Three Years of Ahree

[youtube]55YYaJIrmzo[/youtube]

On the first rainy day we’ve had in a months I was out at Stock Building Supply loading up the Performing Arts Center pickup with 4 x 4s and 2 x 12s. By the time I was finished my leather gloves were soaked through. With slimy reactivated glove sweat and grease inside my gloves and rain dripping down the back of my neck I was reminded of those days at the pipe yard.

The highlight of the morning was watching the “new kid” drive the forklift around. The kid hits a pot hole and dumps half his load in the mud. He crashes around, backs into the racks; has to climb off the forklift to adjust the load by hand. The old guys drive by pointing and laughing, coercing a rueful wave from the kid.

Ed on a Massey Ferguson; McPherson, Kansas; April 1, 1994.

all the blogs so far are really, truly fascinating.  So difficult to express so much in so few words. 

I think the heart of the matter is context.  it is nearly impossible, to dissect our time, analyse it, and make conclusions which really capture all there is to be captured in the subjective experience.  A person can only write so many words to describe the indescribable, the billions of molecular-level interactions which make up any subjective experience.  Is it a bike ride, or is it a moment of zen, a time when the subconscious goes on auto-pilot, freeing the mind and body to just experience.

I have some definate thoughts about exercise, the human condition, hope and placebos, and my experience.  I have been reading a dog psychology book as of late and it has taken me to some really interesting places.  I think there is a strong correlation between the two on many basic levels.  I also think our conscious mind has taken us far away from our natural state.  By this I mean, in part the exercise for example.  I see many people with mental health concerns daily and have for years.  I pick up on a common theme with many of them.  This is a generalization, to be sure, but most of the people i see with anxiety and depression do not exercise regularly.  Not that they are willing to, even though the research supports its mental health benefits. 

I think we have to look at primitive man, basically on the roam for several hours a day out of necessity.  This is the natural state.  We still have that same basic blueprint.  We have however lived through a tremendous last 1000 years or so.  And even frighteningly moreso in the last 100.  Sure we live longer, but do we live better? 

We are a pack animal, like a dog, completely dependent on the instinctual system we have formed.  No?  How well would any of us do in complete isolation?  This is our hard-wiring, how our brains are designed to function.  mental health concerns increase in society as physical health decreases.  this is not a coincindence; they are connected systems.  I do not think we can do much to change this now, simply to recognize that this is our condition and make decisions based on that. 

I sat through a really intriguing seminar on dying which is a whole other blog.  Yes, we are living longer, but we are not dying in ways which we would prefer. 

Hope — Shotts, I think you are right.  I know you are right.  Hope, when you look at it scientifically is often more effective than any other type of intervention .  Studies have been done, for example, on hair growth formulas where nearly as much hair was grown with a placebo.  hope, expectation are the two biggest contributors to people’s success with treatment,  not the medication, not the fancy intervention; but rather, can the clinician instill hope.  Head to head, exercise performs as well as anti-depressents against depression by the way.  So, is hope of value?  In my experience, it is essential. 

As for plans in the fall, we are in boston until the 13th.  i hope I will see you all at some point after that.  I hope we can play some bocce, smoke a pipe, drink some boulivards and continue our discussions.  best to you all. 

jp

Alternate dates are the weekend of October 21 or November11.

What say you?

Response from J. E.:

Schedule:

5:00 alarm
5:10 out of bed, coffee and cereal
5:25 read, write, whatever
6:00 make sure Liz is up, make eggs and Liz’s tea
6:15 water plants, feed birds, tidy up, collect crap to take to work
6:25 eat with Liz
6:35 out the door!
7:20 at library, reading
8:00 at work
12:20 at library, coffee?, reading or getting books or CDs
1:00 at work
5:10 leave work
5:45 home, make tea, shower, surf internet, watch part of a movie, water plants, make supper or the like
6:30 eat with Liz
7:00 finished with supper, read, write, work in shop
9:30 in bed, light reading
10:00 lights out

My actual day varies quite a bit from this. It is very important to me NOT to have a rigid schedule. Sometimes I have deadlines for things. Like the Mennonite class. Rarely do I have self imposed deadlines. I’ve finally learned that for creative work I should do what I want when I want. When I want to read I should do that. When I want to write I should do that. I have so many varied projects going on that there is always something that I’m in the mood to do. Likewise if I’m really getting good work done at 9:30 I’ll continue to work until I’m tired and then not get up quite as early.

Response from Ned:

Okay, here’s my schedule during the school year. It is of course decidedly different when summer hits.

M/W
6:30 Get up, shower, in quiet and often darkness. Eat cold cereal and drink OJ.
7:00 Drive to work or be taken. Listen to music in van.
7:30 Prepare for class, reply to emails, etc.
8:00 Teach
12:00 Work in office, planning, grading, go to library, etc.
1:30 Arrive home. Check email, eat, play with kids, discipline, talk with Sara, write some checks, drink some coffee, etc.
3:00 Work in studio, run errands, read, write, or work on personal projects.
5:00 Come up to entertain Eliot while Sara cooks. Perhaps unload dishwasher, take out trash, etc.
7:00 Talk with Sara, read, write, or work in studio.
8:00 Play with Eliot, change a diaper. (Wednesday is the only consistent night of television for me. I hate to admit this, but since we’re being honest, I watch Lost and Law and Order along with millions of other viewers. Hey, you’ve gotta have some down time).
9:00 Read several books to Eliot and put him to bed.
10:00 Pick up around house, fold laundry, read, listen to music, talk to Sara. Sometimes complain to Sara about my metaphysical woes, write my daily schedule in an email to friends that are miles away. Iron clothes prepare for next day.

T/Th
Basically the same, except that I go to work in the afternoon, and so I have down time and studio time in the morning, which is typically not as productive.

Fri
Basically the same as M/W except that I have long, tedious, unproductive, faculty meetings in the afternoons that sometimes keep me there until five.

Sat
7:00 Get up, drink coffee, lounge in the living room with Sara
8:00 Run some errands (this may include a trip to Target, the grocery, or to the mall; though to be perfectly honest, if I can avoid these trips at all, I do. Sara doesn’t really like me along because I complain about how materialistic I feel and how tight our finances are. So now she goes during the week if possible).
10:00 Traditional trip to library for books and perhaps a video. (This is often one of the highlights of the week for me).
11:00 Home or out for lunch.
1:00 If there are household chores or the car needs fixing (that kind of rigmarole) it gets done during this part of the day.
3:00 Studio or work time. I talk to my parents once a week for about twenty to thirty minutes and that call often takes place this time of day.
7:00 If we watch a movie during the week at all it is probably on a Saturday or Sunday evening.

Sun
7:30 Get up.
10:00 Go to church.
11:30 Go to lunch.
1:00 More or less similar to Saturday.

For what it’s worth,
Ned

Response from Toby:

[Toby originally sent a jpg of his original drawing of his time plan. Toby, if you can, perhaps you can post that in a comment to this conversation, so others can see it.]

[Note from Tob — I inserted the image...click on the thumbnail to open up a large version!] 

Jeff,

Obviously, the fact that I am getting this to you last and such a long time after you initially asked for it says a lot about how I spend my time from day to day

There’s different “realities” of how I spend my time:

• There’s the “Ideal Reality” of how I’d like to have my time set up during the week. I created a timeline when I first started doing freelance as to how I imagined this (although, at the time I thought it’d be an actual schedule). I think I still aim towards this schedule as what I want to “get to” for now. If I ever get there, I may imagine something that works better. I’ve attached the original drawing of my plan. I’m a little surprised at how closely I do follow this every day. I separated things out into blocks of time, with major sections broken illustrated as time bricks, with lines coming out of them representing what the time is made of. In some places the time can be used as needed, but still sticking to the overall plan. The main deviation from this model is when I wake up in the morning…I usually stumble down to my computer immediately and start working. I really want (and believe I need) to start the day off by pushing back the concerns and getting grounded in my thoughts. Spiritual contemplation, if you will. I let the worries rush in at me as soon as I am awake, and I think it’s detrimental to my long-term sanity. I also neglect investing time in marketing myself and finding new work (marked as BB Develop). I imagined dedicating one day of every month, and one week of every year specifically to this. Still think it’s a good idea.

• There’s the “Micro Reality” of the day-to-day. As I’ve said above, it follows my ideal with the exceptions above…oh, and I forget to eat breakfast a lot too. I have implemented in daily running. I run at least 2 miles a day, for 5 days a week. It’s really helped things out greatly. I usually do this either over my lunch (around 1:30 to 2:30 most days) or in the evening before dinner. Sometimes, to fit it in on hurried days, I’ll do it late.

• There’s the “Macro Reality,” which is more of a long-term use of time. Hang out with friends at least once a week, have time at the pub with my guys friends twice a month, church on Sunday, family at least once a month, a date with Steph at least once a week. We’re trying to get more time to walk and have leisure time, but first we have to make it through lots of house projects. We realized the walks can’t wait, though, so we’ve been doing that together at least once a week. I desire to bring in more time to correspond with friends through (e)mail, phone and visits.

• There’s the “Gross Reality” of where we want our lives to move long-term. This is measured in years, rather than weeks or months. I want to get back into painting. I want to have a sustainable business that generates enough revenue to explore and develop some of the “big ideas” Steph and I have. I want to travel. Family vacation. Kids. Retirement near all of you guys, so we can hang out and play the vintage Playstation version of the “Masters of Teras Kazi,” not eat pistachios any more, make heart shaped burgers, and meet up on Coronado Heights with cigars, pipes, and cigarettes from time to time.

Hope this is what you were looking for, Shotts. Time is something I’m thinking about a lot lately. I am beginning to feel my mortality more acutely than before. There doesn’t seem to be all the time in the world anymore, like there used to be.

Response from Peters:

[This was shared in an earlier post on this site.]

Shotts- schedule is the following- Monday through Friday (varies slightly) up at 6:30 or so, walk the dog, get ready for work and depart at 7:30. Arrive and begin work at 8. See 4-8 clients per day, have lunch with Amanda at noon and commute home at 5:30. Work in garden, read, ride my bike or make dinner from 6-9. Walk the puppy again. Watch “good eats” at 10 and asleep at 10:30. Weekends have been very different and there has been no steady routine. will let you know more when we get things settled. If you want more information, let me know.

Response from Shotts:

Generally on the weekdays:
7:00 am: Wake, shower, eat
8:15 am: Go to work, often via bus, sometimes via car
by 9:00 am: Work
Noon: Lunch, often at work, sometimes walk to food co-op
By 1:00 pm: Work
5:30 pm: go home, often via bus, sometimes via car
6:00 pm: Open mail, make and eat dinner with Jen
7:30 pm: House duties (clean, mow, garden/yard, laundry, groceries, etc.)
8:30 pm: Read or watch movie or time with friends or go to reading or event
10:30-11:00 pm: Bed

Generally on the weekends:
At Aspengren lake place (most summer weekends)
Clean, organize house
Groceries
Read, work on manuscripts for work, freelance editing
Out to dinner with Jen, maybe movie or some event
Read Sunday New York Times, catch up on The New Yorker
Write Organic Poetry column for food co-op newsletter
Walk around Powderhorn Park
Babysit niece and nephew

Comment:

I have become interested in time and what we do with it and how that reflects our values. We are what we do with our time. It’s all we have.

I have been intrigued with creating a livable and sustainable daily schedule, ever since reading _The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin_, where Franklin outlines very specifically what he does with his time, from first waking until retiring. In some ways, his _Autobiography_ is a template for a certain kind of frugal existence—“healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Most autobiographies and memoirs tell a story of the author’s time and place, or maybe tell a story about the author’s thought and beliefs, but they rarely show the daily humdrum of existence, which is where those thoughts and beliefs are truly played out. Memoirists and journalists tend to define a life by a single important event or a short series of dramatic events, but that’s not what a life amounts to. As T. S. Eliot wrote: “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” That may, indeed, be more real than “I was part of one big thing.” We are the accrual of minutes and what we do with them. And what we measure them by.

Thanks to all of you for providing your schedule, what you do with your time. I hope you find them all interesting and useful. This issue has grown out of a discontent with my own schedule, my own use of time. It’s a difficulty that I admit has come from wedding my own schedule so intimately and, in some ways, dependently on another’s. Marriage has complicated what had been, at times, a very regimented and habitual use of my time. After speaking with you all, this seems to be universal.

I’m interested in how each of you spend your day, hour by hour, in part because it’s good to know what each of you might be doing—at this moment, for instance. It’s 5:22 pm, and I imagine Ned entertaining Eliot.

But beyond that, I’m interested in how our values play out in the way we use our time. For example, Ned and Toby both mention church on Sunday as an important part of their schedule. They are putting a value to work. I am amazed and also jealous, to use another example, at how much time J. E. puts into reading—at least two hours a day and sometimes more. That is a significant value in his daily life. Peters values his dog, and mentions him twice as part of his routine. I am also jealous of how Peters has lunch with his wife during the weekday, which seems unusual and something they have decided is important for their relationship. Ned and Peters are the only two who admit to watching a regular TV program. J. E. and I both mention watching movies. Media in general are a huge part of our schedules, looking across all five. I’m impressed how early J. E. wakes up and what he does in a day, and I’m impressed with Toby’s running schedule of two miles a day. All of us mention our wives in our schedule, and make some particular time with them every day. I like how Toby’s schedule—the most “narrative” of our responses and in some ways the loosest—includes a wish list of how to spend time, and how he breaks down short-term uses of time and long-range uses of time. J. E. measures out his life in tea spoons. Ned measures out his in coffee spoons. Toby admits to forgetting breakfast altogether.

I’m interested here to how other people enter into these schedules. As I say, we all mention our wives, specifically. Toby and I are the only ones to mention time spent often with friends. Ned, of course, mentions his children. The presence of these others suggests values. So does the absence of these others.

Toby and Peters are the only ones to specify deliberate forms of sustained, aerobic exercise—cycling and running. I am frustrated by that absence in my own schedule. I am frustrated that, looking at my own schedule, my biggest value—based on how I spend most of my time—seems to be invested in my job.

As I wrote above, I am discontented with my schedule. It lacks meditation, exercise, and my own writing—three things I value but don’t seem currently to value enough to be regularly implementing into my life. Looking at the other schedules, I see that I can fit these in—I just don’t. Perhaps you all see such absences and possibilities, and hopefully you also look at your own schedule and the values they suggest with some amount of pride and affirmation.

Please comment here on other things you see while looking across these schedules. There are lots suggested by this exercise. I’m amazed at how little I know in terms of how to live and how little I’ve been taught in terms of how to make a right and balanced life. (This is why the “Self Help” section of bookstores are so well populated.) How to spend my time is certainly one of the largest issues. I would like to continue some of these exercises with the HM, if you’re all interested, and this blog site is the perfect medium for such conversation…

–Shotts

(Next up: What do you eat each day? How much and how often? Where do you get your food? How often do you eat out versus how often do you eat at home? Begin considering some of these questions, and I’ll soon post on the site and ask each of you to respond.)

Tober- You da man! excellent work, my friend. Thanks for going the extra mile. As Shotts might say, you are the best of us.

Shotts- schedule is the following- Monday through friday (varies slightly) up at 6:30 or so, walk the dog, get ready for work and depart at 7:30. Arrive and begin work at 8. See 4-8 clients per day, have lunch with Amanda at noon and commute home at 5:30. Work in garden, read, ride my bike or make dinner from 6-9. Walk the puppy again. Watch “good eats” at 10 and asleep at 10:30. Weekends have been very different and there has been no steady routine. will let you know more when we get things settled. If you want more information, let me know.

Jeeves- I hope we get to see you over the holidays, and that all continues to be as well as possible with your family and Lizzo’s.

Cheers, Mates.