Month: December 2012

Daily Routines of John Grisham and Ben Franklin

For a long time now, I have been interested in the daily routines of successful people. Here are two of my favories:

Author John Grisham’s routine, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 5, 2008:

When he first started writing, Grisham says, he had “these little rituals that were silly and brutal but very important.”

“The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I’d jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week.”

His goal: to write a page every day. Sometimes that would take 10 minutes, sometimes an hour; ofttimes he would write for two hours before he had to turn to his job as a lawyer, which he never especially enjoyed. In the Mississippi Legislature, there were “enormous amounts of wasted time” that would give him the opportunity to write.

“So I was very disciplined about it,” he says, then quickly concedes he doesn’t have such discipline now: “I don’t have to.”

Ben Franklin’s routine, source unknown:

Ben Franklin Daily Routine

OneWord: Five, Game, Sate, Scatter

Five: Across the street, backed by climbing ivy and silver graffiti hearts, is a young couple sitting on a green cement bench. The axis of his world tilting towards hers. A lean to her gravity – to the sunny disposition of her beautiful smile, and all of the kind things that come with it. And then he lifts his left hand, which is covered by a mitten, and runs it along her right jawbone to pull her cold lips to his.

Game: We played a game each night. As a family, while sitting at our kitchen table, talking face to face. The best thing was that for an hour or so there were no phones, no TVs, no invasions from the world. Except, perhaps, the occasional neighbor dropping by for a cup of sugar or an old friend from downstate checking in. It was the four of us and our cards and conversation.

Sate: To sate his desire, and growing appetite, for a slice of Lakeshore Berry Crumb pie from the Grand Traverse Pie Company downtown, Chris went to the trouble of bundling up in his vintage 1980’s one-piece polyester lime-green snowsuit, complete with snap on hood and matching Smith brand ski goggles, gassing up his 1987 Ski-doo and motor-sliding down the middle of M-37. It was, after all, the worst blizzard since the inception of his snowsuit.

Scatter: “Scatter, Buster, before mom sees you on the tile.” The dog sulked backwards to his usual spot in the corner of the TV room. He was safe for now, but unhappy and wanted to play.

Link to OneWord.com, which prompts me with each of the words and provides one minute to write about that word. Sometimes I run long.

Poking Fun at Alpha Parents

Here is an excerpt from an articled titled, “Why You’re Never Failing as a Mother,” from the website/blog Pregnant Chicken.

You are in the trenches when you have a baby. To the untrained eye it seems pretty straightforward and easy – you feed them, you bathe them, you pick them up when they cry – but it’s more than that. It’s perpetual motion with a generous layer of guilt and self-doubt spread on top, and that takes its toll.

Feeling like you also need to keep on top of scrapbooking, weight loss, up-cycled onesies, handprints, crock pot meals, car seat recalls, sleeping patterns, poo consistency, pro-biotic supplements, swimming lessons, electromagnetic fields in your home and television exposure, is like trying to knit on a rollercoaster – it’s [omitted swearword] hard.

We live in a time when we can [G]oogle everything, share ideas, and expose our children to amazing opportunities, but anyone that implies that they have it figured out is either drunk or lying (or both) so don’t be too hard on yourself.

Your job is to provide your child with food, shelter, encouragement and love, and that doesn’t have to be solely provided by you either – feel free to outsource because they didn’t just pull that “it takes a village” proverb out of the air.

In a similar tone, I’ll point you to a recent poem I read in the New Yorker magazine titled, “Goodnight Nanny-Cam,” which is parody of the book, Goodnight Moon.

Winter Is Here!

The snowblower started right up, but wouldn’t keep going when I activated the drive or blade levers. I quickly abandoned that and returned to shoveling. It took about an hour and forty-five minutes to shovel the main driving areas of the driveway, which is good enough at this point. Hopefully, the snowblower will work better when it’s not 5am and dark. Time for work, coffee, and a cinnamon roll.

Kicking and Naming

Lindsey is often laying on the couch watching TV in the evenings, with her hand cupped against the lower portion of her baby bump feeling Mr. Rogers kick. She’ll get my attention and not only can we feel him kicking, but we can also see it when watching the baby bump. It’s unbelievably cool, although sometimes my presence appears quiet him.

Naturally, we link this activity to Mr. Rogers’ potential future athletic prowess at such sports as soccer and track. And the next step is to think of names from those sports. However, the only two soccer names I know are Ronoldo and Pelé. Nothing against those names, but they are not at the top of our list!