An Ordinary Day
The almost silent hours of the night, tainted with a purplish reddish-grey sky, create a magical fold in time. The highway sounds from distant traffic are slowly winding down, It is a beautiful Spring night, one day before the Flower Full Moon. While her preference is the light of the day, these late hours have become precious. The flow of each creative work night is only interrupted by the heavy, burning feeling in her eyes. But sleep is fully appreciated; getting at least seven hours is a kept promise.
The ritual is simple: it starts with a quick shower or bath before stepping into her flannel pajamas—worn out but cozy from so many washes. The laptop is always waiting on the bed or the couch, depending on where she worked last. A full cup of water is the next step. It is suggested to stop drinking after 9 p.m., yet the constant state of alertness from her days prevents her from feeling thirsty earlier. Dropping this bad habit is a promise reserved for a slightly older version of herself.
YouTube plays in the background on the television when she works from the living room, or soft, light music when she’s in the bedroom. It is a nice ritual, even if it still feels unusual or new. Working while everyone else is sleeping is what works—for now. Silence, the kind that means no one "needs her," is a requirement for her creativity to flow.
***
The next morning, eyes still closed, her left hand reached for the laptop. Her eyes had given in the night before, too heavy to manage getting up to put the device away. Did she want to work from bed? Yes. Oh, that familiar state again this week, where exhaustion threatened to keep her nailed to the bed. But she wouldn't allow herself time to backtrack; it was best to jump into where she left off last night.
Her studio missed her. But the studio was also the coldest room in the house, which was why she was happy to have a better handle of Photoshop. It sounds indulgent to work from bed in her PJs, but this is how she squeezes time, how she steals time, and how she tricks time so that her life moves forward—even if in smaller steps than she imagined.
***
Up until this year, she had tried and tested 100+ schedules and routines. None worked longer than a few months; six years is long enough to conclude life was not only teaching her a hard lesson, it was stating a fact: things have changed.
The night before, she had laid out a plan, but getting up and grabbing her Wacom to work from bed felt like too much. Not a problem. It would be Substack instead.
Routine: enter email address and type in password... Simple in and out, grab a feature image from Substack to add to Pinterest. She glanced at the view count—why? A deep sigh.
Life, the Universe, the matrix? Whoever runs this show decided to pull her away from her mind and into the present. What happened next would have thrown her off a couple of years ago, even last year...
She clicked the download button. Nothing. Closed the window and re-opened it. Still nothing. Almost closed the site but noticed that the little bars on the internet icon were gone, replaced by an empty, grey globe.
Why is it so hard to just sit and wait? She had to open the internet settings. This time everything was blank. Blank is not normal. She had to get out of bed and walk over to another room to check the router. The green light was off. She was about to unplug the router to plug it in again...it was a power outage.
She had to laugh. She'd fully accepted or surrendered to the unexpected quality of ordinary days. It confirmed her final detachment from rigid schedules and routines.
Agh...last night she had been too tired to fully charge the lap top and her cell phone. Where is the cell phone?
40 percent!
What was the text number for the electric company? She needed to text "OUT" to find out when the power would be back.
It took a full ten minutes for the electric company to reply with an estimated time: almost four full hours to fix the problem.
Tiredness, this time, played in her favor. Too tired to fill the refrigerator for the week. And the freezer would be alright for at least twenty-four hours.
Her brain immediately brought forward: eggs, bacon, cheese, and yogurt—items that would be spoiled if not consumed. It was breakfast time, anyway.
Worn out matching sweats had replaced her career clothes. In the beginning this felt liberating. Now it just feels like preservation of her carefully curated wardrobe. It is the blue set today. She then jumps into white sneakers to walk down one flight of stairs into the kitchen.
Problems to tackle always centered her into the present; this made her ask: "was she subconsciously attracting problems to solve?"
"Buy a tea kettle" read the first line of her imaginary to-do notebook. The one she had was electric which, by the way, she purposely bought as she hated waiting for water to boil.
She grabbed a small pot and filled it with water. Set it on the stove. No clicking or sparking sound—just a hiss. She had to turn off the gas before running upstairs to grab matches and an incense stick; she would need it to stay present and centered.
Lately, she'd been half-listening to tech-world complaints on YouTube. She found her brain connecting her current dependency on electricity to a possible near future dependency on smart-tech. What would a power outage be like for people with fully smart homes? While she considered herself pro-tech, her opinion shifted after upgrading to smart lamps and radios; when they were not constantly charged, there was no light or sound—making them just as cord-dependent as the old days.
"Who has time to charge all these 'smart' devices?" she thought. Not so smart, after all.
Lost in those thoughts, she grabbed a disposable baking sheet and loaded it with sliced bacon. She opened the oven door and quickly realized: the gas oven only worked with electric power. She would have remembered if her mind had not been on autopilot.
Waiting for the frying pan was an inconvenience, but lately, cleaning it was even worse. Ten years ago, she had spent $150 on that pan, tired of her fried eggs sticking to cheaper alternatives. She believed in paying for quality tools; and took care of them. Now, however, she felt a twinge of shame seeing it sitting neglected on the stove, coated in baking powder to soak up the grease residue, waiting to be washed.
After washing and drying the pan, she transferred a few bacon slices from the baking sheet. Set the pan on the gas burner next to the small pot and turned the flame to medium heat. Her imaginary clock said it was almost time for her mom to wake up, time for the responsibilities of the day to begin. She promised herself to stay present; otherwise, the bacon would show her the error of rushing and not paying attention.
Placing half a dozen eggs in the boiling water and setting the timer for eleven minutes was the last step before stepping away from the kitchen. No—turning the heating flame off the frying pan was actually the last step.
While the invaluable hours of the morning were spent managing her alarmed brain (domestic she is still not) and managing an uncontrolled event instead of writing or illustrating, she was proud. Last year, she would've dramatized a power outage to the point one would think the world was ending—because, domestic, she is not!.
The Universe took mercy on her; it offered her a wink with a text that read: "electric power is back on." Two hours sooner than estimated.
There she goes! What she calls "the in-between-hours" of the day are about to begin. But that is a story for another day.