Midweek pick-me-up: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Hello, {NAME}! This is the Brain Pickings midweek newsletter: Every Wednesday, I plunge into my twelve-year archive and choose something worth resurfacing and resavoring as a timeless pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit. (If you don't yet subscribe to the standard Sunday newsletter of new pieces published each week, you can sign up [here]( – it's free.) If you missed last week's archival piece – Shel Silverstein's sweet allegory for the secret of love and the key to lasting relationships – you can read it [here](. And if you find any value and joy in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – over these twelve years, I have spent tens of thousands of hours and tremendous resources on Brain Pickings, and every little bit of support helps keep it going. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [FROM THE ARCHIVE | How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Choosing Presence Over Productivity]( [anniedillard_thewritinglife.jpg?w=680]( meaning of life]( has been pondered by such literary icons as [Leo Tolstoy]( (1904), [Henry Miller]( (1918), [Anaïs Nin]( (1946), [Viktor Frankl]( (1946), [Italo Calvino]( (1975), and [David Foster Wallace]( (2005). And although some have argued that today’s age is one where [“the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning,”]( there is an unshakable and discomfiting sense that, in our obsession with [optimizing our creative routines]( and [maximizing our productivity]( we have forgotten how to be truly present in the gladdening mystery of life. From [The Writing Life]( ([public library]( by Annie Dillard — a wonderful addition to [the collected wisdom of beloved writers]( — comes this beautiful and poignant meditation on the life well lived, reminding us of the tradeoffs between presence and productivity that we’re constantly choosing to make, or not: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]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. [anniedillard5.jpg?w=680]( She goes on to illustrate this existential tension between presence and productivity with a fine addition to history’s great [daily routines]( and [daily rituals]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The most appealing daily schedule I know is that of a turn-of-the-century Danish aristocrat. He got up at four and set out on foot to hunt black grouse, wood grouse, woodcock, and snipe. At eleven he met his friends, who had also been out hunting alone all morning. They converged “at one of these babbling brooks,” he wrote. He outlined the rest of his schedule. “Take a quick dip, relax with a schnapps and a sandwich, stretch out, have a smoke, take a nap or just rest, and then sit around and chat until three. Then I hunt some more until sundown, bathe again, put on white tie and tails to keep up appearances, eat a huge dinner, smoke a cigar and sleep like a log until the sun comes up again to redden the eastern sky. This is living…. Could it be more perfect?” Dillard juxtaposes the Danish aristocrat’s revelry in everyday life with the grueling routine of a couple of literary history’s most notorious self-disciplinarians: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Wallace Stevens in his forties, living in Hartford, Connecticut, hewed to a productive routine. He rose at six, read for two hours, and walked another hour—three miles—to work. He dictated poems to his secretary. He ate no lunch; at noon he walked for another hour, often to an art gallery. He walked home from work—another hour. After dinner he retired to his study; he went to bed at nine. On Sundays, he walked in the park. I don’t know what he did on Saturdays. Perhaps he exchanged a few words with his wife, who posed for the Liberty dime. (One would rather read these people, or lead their lives, than be their wives. When the Danish aristocrat Wilhelm Dinesen shot birds all day, drank schnapps, napped, and dressed for dinner, he and his wife had three children under three. The middle one was Karen.) […] Jack London claimed to write twenty hours a day. Before he undertook to write, he obtained the University of California course list and all the syllabi; he spent a year reading the textbooks in philosophy and literature. In subsequent years, once he had a book of his own under way, he set his alarm to wake him after four hours’ sleep. Often he slept through the alarm, so, by his own account, he rigged it to drop a weight on his head. I cannot say I believe this, though a novel like The Sea-Wolf is strong evidence that some sort of weight fell on his head with some sort of frequency — but you wouldn’t think a man would claim credit for it. London maintained that every writer needed a technique, experience, and a philosophical position. [annie.jpg?w=680]( At the heart of these anecdotes of living is a dynamic contemplation of life itself: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s? [The Writing Life]( is sublime in its entirety, the kind of book that stays with you for lifetimes. Illustration by [Wendy MacNaughton]( [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Each week, I pour tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which has remained free for more than a decade and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider supporting my labor of love with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now](