A new way to manage everything in your day
Oh, hi friends!
Since the day is already underway, I’m going to try that classic trick I call “hour by hour.”
Instead of looking at the day ahead and everything you have to do as a jigsaw puzzle where you try to make everything fit as it comes up, let’s simply go…hour by hour.
From 10-11, you’re going to do X. (I’m eating breakfast, writing this newsletter, and listening to a new song.)
From 11-12, you’re going to do Y. (I’m Zooming with composer Shosh to work on some songs.)
From 12-1…you get the idea.
Stagger your hours. A brain-taxing activity followed by something less intense.
And yes, things will come up. You’ll have emails and texts and time-sensitive emails and the rest of it.
But you’ll still have a roadmap. Hour by hour.
"What I celebrate is the pursuit of an artistic practice in which freedom and flexibility are ours for the taking. I celebrate the sudden pivot, the mad dash. I celebrate the late-night flight from a manuscript to a play, the shift from collective collaboration to painstaking solo work.
I celebrate the moment in which we hit a wall, and then take a left and walk in a different direction.
I celebrate artistic mobility—the courage that can take, the willingness to fail, the willingness to start over.
I celebrate how much possibility lies in a new set of perceptions that—over time—turns into a new way of perceiving.
I sometimes encounter—and sometimes fall prey to—the idea that to engage in multiple artistic practices is to be a dilettante. That one can only be Serious in a single medium, and all departures from that medium are shallow engagements….
Every time the voice gets into my head that tells me I don’t know what I’m doing and I have no right to do it, I look for the other people pursuing fluency in multiple forms, and I feel braver."
Playwright, novelist, and TV writer Jen Silverman on writing across multiple forms of media. This is one of the best essays I’ve read in years and will speak directly to you if you’re afraid of what you might lose if you don’t commit to one idea or one practice. (Who, me?)
Do it all, she says.
“The right terrain for your next journey is the place that calls to you, not always the place in which you’ve been living.”
File This Under ‘Best Lede of the Decade’
CHARLOTTETOWN — A flippered forager was taken away in the back of a police cruiser Sunday morning after it was found wandering the streets of Charlottetown.
Lillian Reynolds had just put the kettle on when a dark figure shuffling down the sidewalk prompted her to stop everything and call 911.
"I said: 'There's a seal going down the road!'" Reynolds said in an interview Tuesday. "You know how they move with their little flippers going, on their tummies. He was just motoring past the house."
Thanks to John Fitzgerald for sending me this story about a seal found on Prince Edward Island. It reminded me to have fun with writing...
I will leave you with this quote: “He put up a good fight," Const. Justin Drake said in an interview Tuesday. "I mean, how do you grab a hold of him? There's no neck, there's no arms."
Do you like these daily emails? Please share with a friend!
You can also support my work by checking out my new motivational journal, Do It For Yourself, designed to guide you through your creative and work projects.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara