Word Meds: Annie Dillard Reflects on Calendars and Chaos

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing."—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

It's tough to remember those genius, and deceptively simple, words when we find ourselves only half-participating in a conversation or paying attention to what's around us while absently (compulsively, non-urgently) scrolling through emails on our phone. 

Dillard also writes: "A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern."

Schedules help shape our days. But they can also imprison and blind. The trick is to know when to listen to this "mock-up of reason and order," and when to just listen.

PS Pardon the gratuitous cute-pet-porn. But come on, is there a better example of a day well spent?

Photo by Krista Mangulsone on Unsplash