A good ballpoint pen is hard to find. You don’t want disappearances of ink, failures in connection. Something smooth and rolling is preferable and easy on the eyes.
My mind wanders before the day even starts. Should I contact this person, apply for that job? Back to the page. Focus. Write a string of words that actually makes sense. Or not. Write any words at all.
I did it. I looked at my computer. I let blue light infiltrate my consciousness. I usually don’t, you see—not in the morning. I try to hold mornings sacred, even though I find them difficult. An alleged, or perhaps notorious, late sleeper—that’s me. The wheels are spinning, but slowly. Very slowly.
Still, I try to make mornings mean something. I refuse technology. I read a book on real paper and then see if any words of my own want to formulate on a page. Pen and ink, pen to paper. There is joy to be found in the morning, even for people like me.
This wasn’t always the case. There was a period in my twenties, before I realized my iPhone had no place in the bedroom, before I realized how much happier I would be without it—when I jumped right into email, or worse, social media. But now I’m free from distraction. Free from addiction. Free. Free from the obnoxious tic that just wants to scroll one or ten more times.
Free from ads, dings and pings, incessant demands for my attention. It became critical for me to explore my own brain, thoughts that are mine and mine alone, before they were splintered and diluted by technology. My own attention. Where does it go without the tyranny of the screen? When left to its own devices?
Give me real paper; I like the feel of it, the lines, the potential—holding something in my hands that doesn’t shine blue. The morning is aglow but in a whole different way. Call me old-fashioned, if you must. In the style of Eddie Izzard, give me ink or give me death. Ink or death, you say? Ink! INK!
I started enjoying what I came up with each morning—on real paper, that is—more than what might appear in my apps and emails and texts. Here is my brain and I will use it for me—and okay, maybe for you, but later. Later.
Though I am not a morning person, it’s true, I finally figured out that devoting early hours to my favorite thing—words—is one way to live, one way to figure out what the hell it is I have to say.
Academia, I thought at one point, is definitely for me. Then things changed—a corporation filled with smart people, actually, is what I prefer. Imagine that. But no, it turns out, more than morning exercise, more than prestige, more than being defined by my work—what I like is words on a page. Paper and ink, married together. Someone else’s or mine.
The thing about taking time for your own thoughts in the morning is that you somehow go off into the world more fortified—like you’ve had the breakfast of champions without ever taking a bite. You’re sitting in traffic or walking into a meeting but your feet seem more firmly on the earth, in a way—more tapped in.
You might be able to give your time to others more freely and enthusiastically, in my experience, because you’ve cultivated your own world first. No exceptions.
What’s the thing you’d do if you could go to work one hour later each day? My partner studies thousands of tiny musical notes on a page. He adopted this model two or three years after I did, and I tried not to feel smug when he started gushing about his brand new mornings. So much happens in the first hour of his day, he says, if he doesn’t look at email. In those first 60 minutes, he gets his best work done.
If he doesn’t look at email. That’s been an abnormal thought since at least 1996. Twenty-five years of email. Twenty-five years of splintered attention. Remember when email used to be fun? What’s in a morning—another email, or something bigger?
Paper and ink, it seems, co-exist most happily in those early hours. The day is new; ideas are fresh. Thoughts are bold and unafraid. If we start a revolution, why don’t we do it in the morning? We’ll need some paper and a pen.
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*Eternal gratitude warrants a bastard asterisk. Thanks to each and every one of you who subscribed this week. I truly appreciate you putting eyes on this little writing project.