Before I get to the main topic of this week’s blog, I want to mention that this is my 53rd blog of 2024. Each Monday I add the previous week’s blog to the archives, and this week I’d reached 52 entries for 2024 and still had another week to go. At first I assumed that I’d miscounted the number of blogs for the year, but I hadn’t. The only other possibility is that there 53 Mondays this year. And there are! I did the math and realized that 365 is not divisible by 7, and the remainder needs to go into an extra day. This year the extra day is a Monday. Actually it is an extra two days (Monday and Tuesday), as 2024 is a leap year. The surprising part is not that every year has 52 weeks plus a day or two, but that I could have lived for seventy years and never noticed it before.
Now for the last blog of 2024…
Both my coffeemaker and my writing routine come with automatic timers. My coffeemaker shuts off by itself to prevent the pot from burning out. My ability to write shuts off by itself to prevent me from burning out.
It might seem that I am forcing an analogy here, but I don’t think that I am. Right around 10am each morning, my ability to write well comes to a halt. If I get up at 6am to write, my writing stops around 10. If I get up at 9am, my writing still stops at 10. Logic would say that I should always get up at 6, but I don’t.
On days when the writing comes easily, I sometimes try to give myself an extra hour, but I shouldn’t bother. Anything I put down on paper after 10 is rarely worth the effort. If I was writing to make a living, I would have major financial problems. Because my writing is a hobby, this 10am time ceiling might actually be a good thing. I have a bike to ride, fish to catch, books to read, naps to take, lawns to mow (in the summer), and driveways to shovel (in the winter). I can’t spend the entire day wordsmithing.
When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin, the instructor of one of my art courses had us do still life sketches of objects on display at the Wisconsin Historical Society. The first thing all of the students saw when we walked through the main entrance of the Society’s building was an elaborate clockwork study desk designed by John Muir when he was a student at the University.* Somehow a series of gears that was part of the desk’s design automatically raised and lowered textbooks to a reading position. After an allotted period of time, whichever book Muir was reading would be picked up and replaced by a different book. He had designed the desk as a way to make sure he gave all of his courses equal time.
I saw Muir’s desk at least forty times that semester, and I even sketched parts of it a couple of times. Still I could never figure out how it worked. Fortunately I don’t need a mechanical desk to schedule my day. John Muir may have needed a timing device to tell him when to stop one activity and start another. My brain does that all on its own.
* Photo was uploaded from the Wisconsin Historical Society website at www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS2641.
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