Quiet Time
Although college broke me of rising with the dawn, I remain a morning person at heart. I’m most energetic in the mid-morning, mentally and physically. I’m more likely to take on projects then, happier to deal with people, and I’m even smarter—I think through problems fastest around 9 or 10 am. All of which makes it odd that I’m at my most creative on evening walks.
I exercise by walking, preferably in the late afternoon, but often after supper if I’ve been busy during the day. And it’s on these walks that I have my best ideas, whether ideas for how to structure a chapter or ideas to spring on players in a role-playing session. Tonight was a lovely night, with clean spring air, and I had five distinct ideas for my campaign and this blog.
I credit the quiet.
Hermit though I may be, there’s time alone and time alone. Home is full of distractions. We haven’t hooked up our television, but Eileene works at home, and she downloads television shows, especially British shows unavailable on DVD here in the States, to watch while she works. I myself leave the radio on until 10, when the programming switches from news to a call-in program, and we’ve pretty much got the internet connected 24/7. Throughout the day, I’m surrounded by chores of one kind or another: housework, writing, or other. When I’m working, I’m thinking about the task at hand. It’s possible to think while washing dishes, but not to think very hard. Likewise, when I’m playing. I’m thinking about play. My almost daily walk is a block of time when there’s absolutely nothing to think about but whatever pops into my head.
We don’t value quiet enough, and it’s getting worse. Neither of these observations is original, but they are true nonetheless. We’ve collectively wrung our hands at diminishing attention spans since the dawn of television, but the information revolution, with iPods, Blackberries, and cell phones make it possible now never to have some quiet. Sometimes I wonder how many great inventions, high works of art, or spiritual insights we’ll lose because the people who used to have them increasingly consider constant input, with no time for digestion of that input, the normal state to live in.