How to Check Twitter, Read Gibbon, and Binge-Watch The Serpent, All While Remembering to Call Your Mother
A book I’ve been thinking about a great deal over the past year is a slender 1989 French novel with the rather hair-raising title Les tablettes de buis d’Apronenia Avitia (“The Boxwood Tablets of Apronenia Avitia”). “Tablets” refers to the ancient Romans’ version of the Samsung Galaxy: You’d slather a rectangular wooden tablet with wax and use a sharp stylus to write in it, then smooth over the wax when you needed to reuse the tablet. The scratchings in question here are a series of diary entries by the fictitious 4th-century AD Roman matron whose name is in the title; the novel consists of her jottings over two decades—shopping lists, somewhat lite musings on parties and friends, affairs and deaths. The poignancy is that we, unlike Apronenia, are aware of the significance of the occasional references to the “barbarian” tribes just outside Rome, or to the bothersome little sect called Christians. Which is to say we’re aware that the world she records in such touching detail is about to disappear.
How does it feel to live in the middle of something that feels a lot like the end of life as we know it? Is there a way to live in an unsettled present, looking at an unknowable future, that allows you to feel as if you have some kind of control?
The questions raised by that little French book are, to be sure, ones that all of us have been struggling with over the past 12 months. But their implications will linger. With spring stirring and widespread vaccination in sight, people are starting to emerge blinking into the light and wondering what’s next. How do we create meaningful order in our lives? How do we structure our daily experience out of the sudden, hard-won stillness?
Some writer friends of mine were recently remarking that, on the whole, many of us seemed both slightly more productive and slightly less crazed than other people. Although I myself certainly don’t feel that I’ve dealt with things better than anyone else—just ask the friendly crew at the Tops Market Pharmacy in Rhinebeck, New York—I started to ponder why it might be the case.
One thing was obvious: When you’re a writer you tend to be isolated during much of your working life anyway. That aspect of the last year, at least, hasn’t felt all that strange to us.
But solitude has its dangers. You can get lost in it. Your motivation can dissolve. In order to have a career as a working writer (or any kind of freelance or self-employed career), there’s something you need to master that most working people don’t have to think about, let alone create for themselves, something that’s crucial to a healthy work life—to a healthy life, period.
That something is structure. If you work in an office or a restaurant or a school, you may complain about the punching in and out, the prescribed lunch hours, the daily or weekly conferences and meetings. But be thankful: You’re actually more efficient—a better, happier worker—as a result of the temporal discipline that’s being imposed on you. Trust me on this one. When I got my first book contract, I wasted four years futzing around with all my “free” time. I’d learned a thing or two by the time I wrote my next one, which was twice as long but took me one-fifth the time to write.
The problem that a lot of people have been facing since early 2020 isn’t, in fact, all that different from what I had to confront when I started my career. Here are some ways I’ve learned to structure my own days over the years—tricks and stratagems that can help create a sense of ongoing purpose…whether in business or pleasure.
Cultivate a Secret Obsession
Commit to some kind of consistent, private activity that no one else will see and gives you pleasure. Keeping a diary is a great idea; 10 years from now you’ll be happy to have a record of this extraordinary moment (as will your descendants, who can auction it off in April 2521). But it can be knitting, or cooking, or whatever, as long as it’s just for you, something neither visible to nor judgeable by anyone else.
And don’t doom yourself from the start by making it a daily activity; part of creating a structure that works is being realistic about what you can do. Regularity is what’s key here: Whatever else is happening (writer’s block, pandemic), it’s essential to feel you’re involved in an ongoing activity that you know how to do and is producing a tangible result. I’ve kept a journal since I was about 11, and the sense of coming home to it every few days is both rewarding and oddly comforting.
Commit to a Long-Term Project
It’s amazing what psychological relief you can derive from being immersed over a long period in a book, or series of books, or complete oeuvre of some dead Russian director, which will take you into a future you can’t yet imagine. A few years ago I listened to the audiobook of (hello, Apronenia!) all of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; since it’s 125 hours and 31 minutes, and since I decided I’d only listen while driving—and, moreover, since I basically drive only to the local supermarket and dry cleaner (this was before I got on a first name basis with the gang at Tops)—it took three years.
During that time I moved house and published two books; Rome wasn’t the only place that had seen some dramatic shifts. Seriously, it’s vital to have a sense of being involved in an activity that will move you beyond the present moment. (Your project should not involve current events–related books or films or whatever, nothing about the election, Covid, the collapse of neoliberalism, migration, populist tyrants, the Kardashians. Biography and history are great—anything to remind you that there is and has always been a world out there.)
Create a Schedule
Only teenagers think that total freedom equals total happiness. The fact is that if you know you have to be doing a certain thing at a certain time each day, the sense of relief is palpable. Do your journal writing (or whatever) at the same time every day; you’ll find yourself looking forward to it. Ditto your Proust reading. My latest reading project is the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, the French aristocrat who (minutely) recorded the doings at the court of Louis XIV; the standard French edition is seven 1,000-page volumes.
I wake up every morning around 6, clump downstairs to make my coffee, clump back up avec café, and read exactly 10 pages. (Regularity is everything—and not just for your gastroenterologist.) Then I get myself up, make the bed (crucial), get dressed, have breakfast, and enter my morning writing session—about 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Then lunch. (Give yourself a real lunch. No one’s watching, and you’ll feel better about your work if you don’t feel deprived.) Then comes the afternoon work session, from 2-ish to around 6:30 or 7. Then drink, dinner, whatever Netflix I happen to be engrossed in, and bed. Nothing is better in a freelancer’s day than to feel you’ve earned your pleasure. (Go to bed at the same time every day, too. You’d be surprised how many fewer Ambien you’ll need from Tops.)
Be Realistic About Temptations
Structured breaks are a particularly good way to handle social media. Twitter didn’t exist when I was first figuring out the freelance life, but it has become as much of a distraction for me as it is for everyone else—lately more than ever, of course, when our lives have been wholly online. You’ll feel better and more in control if you admit that you’re going to be posting, but create pockets of time for tweeting, Instagramming, Facebooking, and the rest. I’m quite active on Twitter, but I look at it only in the morning, at lunchtime, and when my workday is over.
Ditto for consumption of other media—and entertainment. (I watch a huge amount of TV—but only after I’ve knocked off for the day.) If you “just peek” at CNN or Netflix, you’ll never get back to work. Save it for your evening cocktail. This may hurt, but…the world will go on without you, and you don’t actually need to know about everything as it’s happening. (In fact, a little distance will make it easier to handle when you do plunge in.)
Dress the Part
The Covid-era joke about conducting business Zooms in your underwear was funny for a few weeks. No more. Work is serious: Take it seriously, even if no one is watching. That means bathing, shaving, hair-combing, and the rest. Since March 7, 2020, no one has been close enough to me to know how I smell. Still, I dig out the Santa Maria Novella every day and spritz. If you feel like a human being, you’ll act like one.
Finally, remember: It will end. If there’s one thing you learn from the fall of the Roman Empire or the intrigues at Versailles, it’s that everything really does pass. And if today we know about how bad the crisis was back then, it’s because some people, at least, kept their heads, woke up in the morning, got dressed, went to their desks, and wrote the words in their journals that comfort us today.
Which reminds me: It’s time for Saint-Simon. Gotta go!
This story appears in the May 2021 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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