Confessions of an American Blog Writer/Reader

Looks like I've found more fodder for my voyeuristic tendencies at

http://www.dailyroutines.typepad.com/

You too can experience the quotidian quirks of your favorite writers and artists! Maybe you will find a kindred spirit who shares in your neuroses.

Mr Campbell, for one, (see below) sounds like a man after my own heart. I generally admit this to only a chosen few, but when I have alone time on the weekends I like to divide my day into a series of "units" (as Will refers to in About A Boy). Fifteen minutes of reading, 15 minutes of yoga, 15 minutes of movie trailers, whatever. It's totally neurotic and totally pleasant to me because it makes the day feel stretched out so long!

Joseph Campbell

So during the years of the Depression I had arranged a schedule for myself. When you don’t have a job or anyone to tell you what to do, you’ve got to fix one for yourself. I divided the day into four four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four-hour periods, and free one of them.

By getting up at eight o’clock in the morning, by nine I could sit down to read. That meant I used the first hour to prepare my own breakfast and take care of the house and put things together in whatever shack I happened to be living in at the time. Then three hours of that first four-hour period went to reading.

Then came an hour break for lunch and another three-hour unit. And then comes the optional next section. It should normally be three hours of reading and then an hour out for dinner and then three hours free and an hour getting to bed so I’m in bed by twelve.

On the other hand, if I were invited out for cocktails or something like that, then I would put the work hour in the evening and the play hour in the afternoon.
It worked very well. I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight.