“What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?” — E.M. Forster

“Alas”, said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”

   “You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

— Franz Kafka’s A Little Fable

“I want to be alone… with someone else who wants to be alone.” — Dimitri Zaik

Cartoons about reading and the writing life, by Tom Gauld for The Guardian:

P.S. Wouldn’t the Noisy Alphabet print make a fabulous starting point for a kid’s bedroom or playroom design?

What I’m learning is that it’s okay to ask for help and ask for grace, even if it’s embarrassing, even if you disappoint people, even if in the process people find out (gasp!) that you’re not a super-person, but just a regular person, a person who gets sick and tired and emptied out sometimes. — Shauna Niequist in Savor

Do you ever have so many things to do that you become overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all? A. A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh) captures this perfectly in his poem about a shipwrecked sailor. Although I must say, after all the snow we’ve had in New England this winter, the sailor’s basking on the beach doesn’t sound too dreadful to me; and I would be praying not to be saved!

The Old Sailor

There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew
Who had so many things which he wanted to do
That, whenever he thought it was time to begin,
He couldn’t because of the state he was in.

William James on the importance of routine (what he calls “habits of order”):

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.

via Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

I’m not sure about misery-inducing, but it certainly is tiring having to make hundreds of tiny decisions every day. Should I get up now? When should I shower? Eat? Exercise? Nap, or play with the cat? Is it time for tea yet (again)…? Self-employment has its perks but my boss is a bit of a softie, so it can be hard some days to get the work done. One of my goals for 2015 is to cycle through all the advice I can find, looking for tips and tricks to help me stay focussed and productive. The idea of routinizing as much as possible makes sense – far easier to manage exceptions than to make decisions (to edit rather than to create, if you will) – so I’m going to give it a go. Any other suggestions? What has worked for you?