Work Is Love Made Visible

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge;
and all urge is blind save when there is knowledge;
and all knowledge is vain save when there is work;
and all work is empty save when there is love;

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

I didn't want to write this post. It's been a long, raw week, and I'm not sure how much I want to go walking naked down the virtual street this weekend on top of it. Plus, frankly, this feels like some combination of bragging, showing my privilege, and no-shit-Sherlock moments. Which is how I know I needed to write it anyway, because those are the brainweasels talking. The ones that want me to say oh, this is nothing, you should see what Kitty does with more demands on her time, you should see what I think I could do if I were living up to my full potential, you should see what people with more limitations get done and how much more amazing they are than I am. What you've been building on for the past four years is nothing. And I know at least half of that is bullshit, especially the last one.

In other words: fuck you, brainweasels, I ate you and turned you into an introduction. Because that's one of the insidious things about doing this work; I end up with a mantra of "this is just what I do" so that I avoid caterpillaring myself. (We're all familiar with this, yes? The one where someone asks how do you move all those legs at once, and then you go OH FUCK and topple over.) But the dark side of avoiding that problem is the one where I forget that this is something that took a lot of work to get to, and I shouldn't minimize it.

So, we've established that I haven't had a 9-5 job in four years and change. The financial specifics of how I managed that are on the one hand hugely important (savings, luck, a partner who chooses to support me) and on the other hand not really the point. The point is this:

That's a random day from last week, and it's one of the easier days, frankly. Nor is it quite as regimented as it looks; that section of time for German also includes running vocab exercises on Memrise, acquiring breakfast, and writing up a quick post to go along with the public accountability post for German.
The half hour break is so I can actually shower sometime ever, and the second one is because lunch is important and I'll forget to eat until 1 or so if I don't put the free time in. Okay, sometimes I forget to eat until 1 or so anyway, but if I'm having a good day and sticking pretty close to the schedule, that break is where it should be. The slots you see as Haven 1x01 are the variable ones (which reminds me that after I finish this up I need to go toss some scheduling in for the week ahead), which may be blog work for Unspooling Fiction, website content, paid work, or blog posts here. Basically, those are my sitting down and writing times, though in the future they may become my sitting down and songwriting times, since I'm slowly beginning to believe that not only is that a thing I want to do, it's a thing I'm capable of doing.

And that looks pretty full, right? Scary-organized. But the secret for me is to have a lot of tasks I can cycle through that use my brain in different ways, and each of them helps me cycle up to the next task on the list. You may have noticed I can be a little over-analytical; the music gives me a chance to put that aside and the Unspooling Fiction work gives me an outlet for the analysis that doesn't result in never-ending cycles of self-doubt and inaction.

It wasn't easy to get here. I've been at these routines in some form or fashion for the better part of eighteen months now, and this is still the ideal, not what happens nine days out of ten. The chances of work slopping into the evenings are pretty high. Sometimes the practicing feels perfunctory and unproductive, the writing feels obvious and cliched, there's this fog over my brain and nothing works. I hate like hell that I'm not bringing reliable income into the household and have to convince myself each week that I am contributing. Sometimes each day. There is, always, the specter of "get a real job!" to fight off; if you've watched Amanda Fucking Palmer's TED talk this week you know exactly the one I mean. And I came to it late, late enough that I wonder if it's not too late on the bad days.

But what terrifies me more is the notion of never playing another note again. So I do my PT and I write lyrics and blog posts and, soon, I'll tell you all about a project I have to demonstrate that there is no such thing as too late. There's only getting up every day and doing the work I was meant for, and letting everyone else decide if that's something they want to be a part of.

And when you work with love, you bind yourself to yourself, and to each other...