Woke up this morning, rolled over to grab my book (Angie Thomas’s _The Hate U Give_), and spent an hour in bed, reading. I’ve been doing this off and on since the New Year, and it’s just lovely — somehow it makes me feel like I’m ten again, which I think was the year I spent most of a summer in bed reading book after book after book.
I didn’t stay in bed; other things to do today, including get me and Anand fed breakfast (Kavi gets her own and tends to sleep ’til 10 or later on the weekend anyway these days — she’s turning into a teenager). I’m going to go out and do a little raking; there’s a lot of spring clean-up to get through in the yard this sunny weekend.
Then a few hours writing; I’ve blocked out 10 – 1 for that, followed by a game of Terraforming Mars with friends. Then more writing in the evening — one of my discoveries this year is that it’s easiest for me to write at at start and end of day. I’m kind of useless in the middle of the day for that kind of work.
It seems weird that at age forty-six, I’m still figuring out things like the best times for me to read and write. But for much of the last few decades, I’ve had external constraints — job, small kids — that made those rhythms impossible. And I may again — next year I’m on an afternoon teaching schedule, but the year after that, I might be back to mornings. And of course, who knows what other constraints might emerge? We’ll see — it’s a moving target. But it’s good to at least keep revisiting it, tweaking the patterns of the day for optimal happiness.