Back on the treadmill, again
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 06:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniI am a night person; the whole getting-up-at-dawn thing is completely lost on me. Mind you, I adore a watching a good sunrise just before retiring, but getting up at sunrise seems the height of lunacy.
When I was a freelance, I was, of course, able to largely indulge my personal clock. My best writing time is from about 7 p.m. to about midnight, and I would usually get to bed, eh, one-thirty-ish.
When I first arrived at the day-job, I wasn't sleeping well anyway, and by the time we were contracted for Duainfey, my natural clock was shot all to heck, not to say my nerves. For the last several years, I've been trying to fit the writing rationally around the day-job.
Since I have to be up at an Absurd Time anyway, I tried writing in the morning -- which doesn't work. The brain comes on-line at noon, no matter what time I'm forced to get vertical and put clothes on.
I tried Ignoring the constraints created by full-time employment, and wrote far into the night anydamnway, which actually worked OK for the writing, but didn't do particularly well by the day-job.
I tried coming home, catching a nap and then writing far into the night, which worked slightly better for the purposes of the day-job, but not as well as you might think in terms of the writing.
While all this was going on, I was getting acclimated to actually being awake during the day, so now I come home from work, drink coffee, and write, mostly productively, until my natural creative wake-up time or a little beyond, then have lunch with Steve and try to get to bed before 11 o'clock.
None of this is unique to me, by the way; any writer who holds a full-time job in addition to having a writing career, i.e. most of us, has had to come to terms with finding time to actually write the novel(s) under contract.
Anyway, now that I think I've achieved a mostly workable compromise in terms of working and, err, working, I'm stretching to add exercise back into the mix.
We have, in the basement, a treadmill. Now, I hate the treadmill, which imposes an artificial stride and also? Is boring. However, the treadmill is right here in the basement and! though I can't write at 5:30 in the morning, I can walk at 5:30 in the morning. Which I've been doing the past couple days.
My problem is, as I say, boredom. No television-enabled cable, so I can't watch cartoons. This morning I tried reading while I walked, but that's obviously a skill that's going to take some time to acquire.
So! Taking suggestions: What do you do to keep from dying on boredom on the treadmill?
When I was a freelance, I was, of course, able to largely indulge my personal clock. My best writing time is from about 7 p.m. to about midnight, and I would usually get to bed, eh, one-thirty-ish.
When I first arrived at the day-job, I wasn't sleeping well anyway, and by the time we were contracted for Duainfey, my natural clock was shot all to heck, not to say my nerves. For the last several years, I've been trying to fit the writing rationally around the day-job.
Since I have to be up at an Absurd Time anyway, I tried writing in the morning -- which doesn't work. The brain comes on-line at noon, no matter what time I'm forced to get vertical and put clothes on.
I tried Ignoring the constraints created by full-time employment, and wrote far into the night anydamnway, which actually worked OK for the writing, but didn't do particularly well by the day-job.
I tried coming home, catching a nap and then writing far into the night, which worked slightly better for the purposes of the day-job, but not as well as you might think in terms of the writing.
While all this was going on, I was getting acclimated to actually being awake during the day, so now I come home from work, drink coffee, and write, mostly productively, until my natural creative wake-up time or a little beyond, then have lunch with Steve and try to get to bed before 11 o'clock.
None of this is unique to me, by the way; any writer who holds a full-time job in addition to having a writing career, i.e. most of us, has had to come to terms with finding time to actually write the novel(s) under contract.
Anyway, now that I think I've achieved a mostly workable compromise in terms of working and, err, working, I'm stretching to add exercise back into the mix.
We have, in the basement, a treadmill. Now, I hate the treadmill, which imposes an artificial stride and also? Is boring. However, the treadmill is right here in the basement and! though I can't write at 5:30 in the morning, I can walk at 5:30 in the morning. Which I've been doing the past couple days.
My problem is, as I say, boredom. No television-enabled cable, so I can't watch cartoons. This morning I tried reading while I walked, but that's obviously a skill that's going to take some time to acquire.
So! Taking suggestions: What do you do to keep from dying on boredom on the treadmill?
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 05:28 pm (UTC)2.6 miles -- i try to do it every workday, but i probably average 4 days.