One Writer’s Daily Schedule for Living in Isolation

In the last posting, I wrote about being stranded in Tel Aviv because of COVID19 and my necessity, as a writer, to handle being isolated in the apartment.  My answer was to make a strict daily schedule. This post begins an outline of that schedule.

William H. McRaven, (ret’d) a four-star navy admiral, expert in counterterrorism and strategy who oversaw and executed Operation Neptune Spear said: 

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed, will have turned into many tasks completed.”

His reasoning makes sense to me, and I like the idea of a four-star admiral advising us to make our beds. So, the first item on the daily schedule is to make my bed. 

The days pass.

I get up and make the bed. 

The general was right. Even before I’m out of my pajamas, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. And after making the bed, it seems natural to follow with other small tasks. I pull back the ceiling-to-floor curtains that enclose the porch, and then open every window in the apartment. 

What difference does it make to me, as a writer, to have a schedule, to organize my day, to be orderly? What is the admiral trying to say?

This is what happens:

Cross currents of cool morning air come rushing through the rooms, ushering in the squeaky voices of children and the gruff barks of dogs from the street below. (People with dogs and children or both are allowed outside.) One parent or the other parents other strolls along, coffee in hand, patiently attending to their child’s running commentary about the sticks on the sidewalk.)

A gentle breeze stirs the curtains, glides over chairs and couch, along the television, over the books and wraps itself around my shoulders. Living now in an aura of fear, I take great pleasure in this river of air flowing over me. Here is an invisible gassy mix of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, a little water vapor, and a tiny percent of other gasses rushing in the window refreshing me after a night’s sleep. And here are my lungs, threatened by COVID19, but for the moment, capturing the air, the oxygen, and expelling CO2 for the plants.

In bringing concentration to simple tasks, I discover that I start the day not just with my bed made, but with conscious attention to detail. This apartment and my journeys within it provide me with a much bigger world than I have ever acknowledged.

In the next blog, I get coffee, Yeah!! And I discover that this warm, sweet drink has a mottled history of adventure, seduction, and betrayal.