Michael

Personal Odometer

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That title, personal odometer, might bring to mind age or anniversary. Indeed those are the most common personal, human odometers. If you are a runner or cyclist you might track miles or kilometers traveled by running or biking.

Your life can contain many odometers if you care to track them. This is especially true if you are improving a skill. Tracking consecutive days of action to hit a target or to grow a streak as large as possible is a powerful motivator. Photographers take on 365 projects, creating an image a day for a year. Many groups have a 30 day challenge, frequently in April and September. Auto-complete in my DuckDuckGo session shows 30 day of … yoga, thankfulness, poetry, gratitude, and more.

A few days ago I completed my 700th consecutive day of practicing Spanish with Duolingo. Meditation Helper shows that I’ve spent over 120 hours meditating and yesterday completed 160 consecutive days with a meditative session. On my phone Google Fit reports yesterday I did not hit my modest goal for minutes walking, breaking a six day streak. This morning I filled my fourteenth morning pages notebook. A practice that has many enthusiastic practitioners.

Consecutive days are not the only personal odometer to track. Tracking the number of books read, people mentored, pounds lost, money saved, or any countable whatever is a possibility for a personal odometer.

Tracking your personal odometers, why? Life progress can be easily lost. Tracking helps you pay attention. It illustrates how many first steps you’ve taken on your journey of 1,000 miles.

Multiple Notebooks

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I read Dorris Lessings’ The Golden Notebook decades ago.

This book is an experiment of sorts. The structure is: A main story (which can be sufficient by itself) and then four other notebooks Anna Wulf created in order to keep her sanity. Then there is the “Golden Notebook” where everything is supposed to be assembled together and should help her make more sense of her chaotic life, mental break-down, including the severe writer’s block she had.
In the basic story “Free Women” Molly and Ana(a successful novelist) are best friends, they are both divorced and have children. One of the ex-husbands has a difficult relationship with his wife and lovers.
Additionally:
-the Black Notebook is about Anna’s experience in Central Africa, during and before World War II.
-the Red Notebook is about Anna’s experience as a member of the Communist Party
-the Yellow Notebook is a novel she is writing about her failed love affair
-the Blue Notebook is Anna’s journal about her emotional and personal life. Most importantly the analysis of her dreams by her psychoanalyst. At times the dreams take over her real life.

Summary from the Multnomah County Library

The concept of having a different journal or diary for different aspects of life was appealing and stuck. Until this year, I never implemented it. It always seemed difficult enough to keep up a single journal. Over the past couple of years I’ve developed a strong habit for Morning Pages. 365 Photo Projects, and an excess of Facebook and Twitter posts. The Morning Pages and 365 Projects have enriched my life. The social media posts seem to be a black hole that do little more than be a distraction.

Because Morning Pages and 365 Projects work, this year I’ve embraced the multiple notebooks. Both sets of work embody paying attention. They include:

  • Morning Pages – ala Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way
  • Week Book – a page each Saturday about the week that just went by
  • Sketch Journal – heavily influenced by and following ideas in Lynda Barry’s Syllabus
  • Face Book – a 6×9 inch book filled with faces. Initial work using the exercises found in Andrew Loomis’ Fun with a Pencil
  • Hand (and foot) Book – goes with the Face Book and because Carlos Villa recommends one
  • Exercise Log – a page a day of what I’ve done physically. I strongly suspect I’ll be motivated to not have blank pages

I’ll update this entry in 2019 with how all the notebooks are working out.

Blood Meridian

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The subject of beautiful depiction of disturbing things rises again as I read McCarthy Cormac’s Blood Meridian.

All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlight advanced up the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot.

The novel relentless floods the reader with beautiful prose. Prose that describes a band of violent men riding murderously through Mexico and the American West. Sometimes they are mercenaries. Mostly they are a swarming pack of malevolence.

If you’ve read The Road you have an idea of what this book is like. However, Blood Meridian makes The Road seem hopeful and cheerful.