25 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
25 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: 'Back at It'
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date: '2010-03-30T08:18:57-04:00'
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permalink: /back-at-it-2/
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tags:
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- writing
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---
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I’m deep in a funk this morning, and am having a hard time yanking myself out of it.[^1] So I’ve decided to overcompensate by writing a bit about something that actually is going well: getting my priorities a bit straightened out and getting back to work on my [revisions](http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/plannedobsolescence).
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A few months back, I switched over from using my tried-and-true clock radio on my bedside to using my iPhone as my alarm clock, plugged into a [nightstand charging dock](http://us.kensington.com/html/17448.html). It worked fabulously, but over the last few months, I’d gotten into a Very Bad Habit: when I woke up, before even turning on the lamp, I’d reach over and grab the iPhone and check my email, catch up on Twitter, etc.
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I had the sense I was being efficient — hey look, I’m just now brushing my teeth and I already know what’s going on in the world — but what I was in fact doing was derailing the work train of thought, undoing any chance that I’d be able to do the thing that [I’ve known for years](/new-leaf/) works best for me: taking the first half-hour of the morning, before I do anything else, to write. If I let the day come crashing in, it’s all but impossible for me to reclaim it, to carve the necessary headspace back out in order find clarity on the project.
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So Sunday, after I got home from the [NITLE Summit](http://www.nitle.org/events/event.php?id=49), I unplugged the charging dock and moved the old-school clock radio back to my bedside. The iPhone stays on my desk overnight, and I quit all of the networking applications on my computer before I go to bed. And when I get up, after brushing my teeth, feeding the cats, and making coffee, I crank up [Concentrate](http://getconcentrating.com/). I’ve created a project that opens the document I’m working in, opens the CommentPress version of the book in a browser window, and blocks all of my networking sites — email, Twitter, whathaveyou — for 30 minutes.
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And for the last two days, I’ve spent that 30 minutes getting myself back into the project. Slowly and somewhat painfully, yes, but it’s working.
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That, I need to remember.
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—–
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[^1]: Said funk is coincidentally not entirely unrelated to that which I was apparently in [five years](/an-utterly-self-indulgent-moment-of-whining/) ago [today](/regrets/).
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