How Will You Spend Your Days?
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.
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.
of course,
how we spend our lives.
What we do with this hour,
and that one,
is what we are doing.
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.
--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 2013