Monday - 304th

Time to launch the new schedule. An early wake up, a spirited sprint to feed the animals, and a walk the (once again clouded over) farmette lands...

And a relatively early breakfast. So early, in fact, that I was going to leave poor Ed to his dozy state upstairs and eat alone...

... but he heard the commotion in the kitchen and so in the end I had company for the morning meal.

And then I returned to my Great Writing Project. As you may remember, it is a childhood memoir. My younger years may have been unremarkable, but I lived in interesting places and at interesting times and so I began the effort of putting it all into a story form many many years ago. I've rewritten each chapter quite a number of times. Too many to count. Not too long ago, I concluded that I only needed to do one more rewrite of the final chapter and I'd be done, but now I'm thinking I cannot get away with just that. As you get older, you may lose a clear recollection of the details of your younger years, but I'm not too worried about that. I've recorded the details. What does change over time is the way you look at them and think about them. You gain perspective. Your understanding of what took place decades ago keeps adjusting. Like a camera lens, where you take more of the blur out with each year.

Perhaps the inevitable conclusion is that it's best to write your memoir the day before you keel over.

At the very least, it's best to review your childhood after a sufficient number of years have passed so that you can develop some distance from what took place. Caveat: be sure to do it before your brain cells lose their capacity to process an overabundance of information, and before they lose their flex, so that you can no longer forge perceptive linkages between what you see before you and what took place a long time ago.

Of course, it's impossible for anyone to fully realize that they're teetering on the brink of dottyness, but I think I'm not there yet. Still, today I reopened my text with renewed determination.  And I made some changes to the first two chapters. Of course I did. I cannot reread that damn thing without making some changes.

In the afternoon, Ed and I went skiing. We have a small window for this now: the snow is getting a little thin in some spots and we expect a two day warmup in midweek. So we ski, against a bracing wind and it's wonderful!

(we take the trail that runs close to Lake Waubesa)

And the sun sets and I feel that today was not wasted on too much reading. Evening now. Time to click on all those email links and see what's happening in this world.