47 days to go...

Writing in the evening is different from the morning. I am not sure which one I prefer. The morning brings freshness and energy to my writing.

The evening is more emotional, influenced by the moon I suppose. There is also as sense of time pressure to get the post finished before it becomes very late.

On balance, I would choose the morning, except when a topic needs more depth and feeling, which comes easier at night.

It’s 22:50 as I write this, and I value both the time to write, and to get to bed before midnight. My youngest daughter concurs with the latter, advising me forcefully in the past weeks that sleeping late carries the risk of meeting witches.

Back to the afternoon, when I was concentrated on my research work, for long hours at a stretch. So it’s only now that I tore off yesterday’s Zen page-a-day calendar sheet to reveal today’s quotation. It’s a poem by Buson, reading:

Snow-break also
Can be heard –
This dark night

In fact, tonight is dark, or at least it felt that way to me as I took a leisurely walk through the village to recharge. My energy was quite depleted. Dinner didn’t help. The walk didn’t bring me new energy either, but it was nice all the same.

Now that I’m writing again, I feel better. A glass of Pearly Bay red wine from West Cape region in South Africa, with a few slices of old Dutch cheese, soothe me further.

Managing one’s energy and health is important. What can we do without them? I realized today that I tend to forget taking breaks from work when I am very concentrated.

For tomorrow, I changed my schedule to start earlier and include several breaks with a bit of stretching to go with them.

Photograph: Light behind the hills, Microsoft sample picture. I never paid attention to them before.