note to those who wanna try

Transcribing is not a breeze. I pounded hard this afternoon on Grace Lee Boggs' interview. We have about 2 hours worth of stuff. I gave it a good hour of transcription work. I now have 1 hour and 45 minutes of stuff to get through.

Writing emails takes time. Especially when it's going out to people you don't know. You think it's an easy thing, 10 minutes tops. But then you want to make a good first impression, use the right language, and if you identify a writer you will also have a bit of the perfectionist in you, and before you know it, half an hour has gone by.

A handwritten letter is a fucken commitment. I've learned now that if I want to take my time with it and be thoughtful, especially for someone I love, I can't start it late at night. I need to set up a four-hour block where I do nothing else but write that letter. And I mean nothing else--no eating, no listening to music, no other distractions.

Cooking a meal rarely happens in less than an hour, when you include all the prep work, the chopping. Doing the dishes is a half hour minimum for me.

Ironing your clothes can take an hour, and you do not want to rush this.

Preparing my appearance in the morning takes fifteen minutes minimum but I always hate how little I can do in that time. 45 minutes is more reasonable. Especially because there are some mornings where I brood for 10 minutes on how to dress myself up for the day.

Shopping for clothes, now that I'm getting in the habit of it finally, can take hours. I never used to understand why my parents and sisters and other friends would take so long, but then again, I did not give a rip back then about how I looked. Once you start caring, you can't go back to 15-minute outings for a new wardrobe. (No lie.)

I note all this for those who wanna try and who, like me, can be very bad about estimating the time needed for the basics. I'm starting to understand the strict regimens the twin sis, the Mom, and many others have figured out for themselves, and why they're needed so badly. It's not to fall into comfortable patterns so much as to be fully aware of your needs and your body's needs. It's more than time, it's structure, it's health, it's responsibility. So when I come home from another long day at work and decide I can goof off for a few hours, playing guitar or reading or napping, and then get surprised and angry at how late I have to stay up doing the necessities--writing emails, cooking meals, sprucing up my appearance--all this really means is that I don't know self-care as well as I should by now. Not that playing music or reading isn't important for self-care; it's more how I make it work, how I avoid putting absurd stresses on my body and mind.

Grace Lee Boggs mentioned a tenet I have been dwelling on quite a bit: "learn to manage your despair." I've learned so well know how to live with despair, but when my daily life feels out of sorts, and I fall asleep unexpectedly and I wake up 5 hours later realizing I haven't put the food away, or when I run to catch buses and cuss at myself to high heaven when I miss the connection to another bus, or when I note blankly that I was supposed to call someone and only noticed this two weeks after the fact, I think this all means that I am not managing the despair, just letting it seep in and start fraying all the edges and sucking on my brain. I wanna try something different.