{"id":7416,"date":"2016-06-26T01:06:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T01:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=7416"},"modified":"2016-06-26T01:06:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T01:06:57","slug":"only-have-time-for-essentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/only-have-time-for-essentials\/","title":{"rendered":"Only Have Time for Essentials"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAt 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essen\u00adtials.\u201d
\n\u2014 Vir\u00adginia Woolf, diary, 3\/22\/1928<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I stum\u00adbled upon this quo\u00adta\u00adtion ear\u00adli\u00ader this week. What struck me most about it was that it expressed a thought I had back in Feb\u00adru\u00adary, when I turned 46 myself, although my ver\u00adsion of the thought at the time was admit\u00adted\u00adly less elo\u00adquent.<\/p>\n

I said to myself, \u201cChris, you\u2019re 46 now. You don\u2019t have time for bull\u00adshit any\u00admore. You don\u2019t have time for ephemera. You can only spend time with peo\u00adple you tru\u00adly enjoy, and you have to cut out of your life all peo\u00adple and activ\u00adi\u00adties that either don\u2019t make you feel good or that sap your time and ener\u00adgy. Your writ\u00ading is para\u00admount.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Meadow_VT_photo_by_Chris_Orcutt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the years I had already win\u00adnowed my friends to a select few whose com\u00adpa\u00adny I loved. Sev\u00aden or eight years ago, I stopped watch\u00ading cable TV, with its relent\u00adless com\u00admer\u00adcials and anx\u00adi\u00adety-induc\u00ading 24-hour news. I stopped doing all famil\u00adial \u201coblig\u00ada\u00adtions,\u201d which I had found stress\u00adful reminders of the pass\u00ading of time\u2014time I should be writ\u00ading. I let myself drift away from past acquain\u00adtances who had become bur\u00addens to me. And, this year, I stopped par\u00adtic\u00adi\u00adpat\u00ading in social media. In fact, I only go online now every oth\u00ader day, to do book-relat\u00aded research or answer emails.<\/p>\n

Get\u00adting off social media has been a ter\u00adrif\u00adic boon for my writ\u00ading. No longer post\u00ading pho\u00adtos or writ\u00ading about some\u00adthing that hap\u00adpened to me, moments after it hap\u00adpened, has made me reserve my need for self-expres\u00adsion for my books. I\u2019m no longer dis\u00adsi\u00adpat\u00ading my ener\u00adgies by spend\u00ading hours online try\u00ading to pro\u00admote my books and my \u201cbrand.\u201d I\u2019m no longer feel\u00ading the per\u00adpet\u00adu\u00adal sense of dis\u00adcon\u00adtent about my life and the state of my writ\u00ading career that I felt when I had to wade through every oth\u00ader so-called writer\u2019s \u201clook at me, look at me\u201d<\/em> crap.<\/p>\n

My friend Jason Scott has likened my new approach to a samu\u00adrai sword-mak\u00ader: I\u2019ve shut myself off from most of mod\u00adern soci\u00adety to live in the moun\u00adtains forg\u00ading, ham\u00admer\u00ading and tem\u00adper\u00ading steel into swords, day in and day out. This is an accu\u00adrate anal\u00ado\u00adgy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Chris_Orcutt_Typing_VT_photo_by_Chris_Orcutt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week I returned from a 3\u2011week writ\u00ading sojourn in the Green Moun\u00adtains of Ver\u00admont. I\u2019d always want\u00aded to shut myself off from every\u00adone and every\u00adthing for a while and see what came from the expe\u00adri\u00adence. The house\u2014my friend\u2019s vaca\u00adtion house, high in the mountains\u2014didn\u2019t have inter\u00adnet access or even a tele\u00adphone. (To make any calls, I had to dri\u00adve down the moun\u00adtain to a town where I could get a cell sig\u00adnal.) There was satel\u00adlite TV, but the only show I watched was Lit\u00adtle House on the Prairie<\/em>, in the after\u00adnoons a few days a week. I ate health\u00adily, exer\u00adcised dai\u00adly using my TRX, and med\u00adi\u00adtat\u00aded. I did some film\u00ading of the expe\u00adri\u00adence with an HD cam\u00adera Jason gave me. Most impor\u00adtant\u00adly, how\u00adev\u00ader, I wrote, on my Roy\u00adal man\u00adu\u00adal type\u00adwriter or in long\u00adhand (mak\u00ading pho\u00adto\u00adcopy \u201cback\u00adups\u201d of my work at the local library), and spent the long moments between sen\u00adtences star\u00ading out at nature: trees wav\u00ading in the wind, rain pour\u00ading down, rain\u00adbows form\u00ading, turkeys for\u00adag\u00ading on the edge of the woods, and, once, a black bear strolling across the lawn at dusk.<\/p>\n

Study\u00ading nature this intense\u00adly and read\u00ading and med\u00adi\u00adtat\u00ading on a short book on aiki\u00addo, The Art of Peace<\/em>, remind\u00aded me of a cou\u00adple of prin\u00adci\u00adples regard\u00ading cre\u00adativ\u00adi\u00adty. These are ideas that I learned either in my read\u00ading of Walden<\/em> and oth\u00ader phi\u00adlos\u00ado\u00adphy years ago, or when I was a Boy Scout and spent whole days<\/em> in the woods, but which prin\u00adci\u00adples I had for\u00adgot\u00adten:<\/p>\n

Nature is in a con\u00adstant state of cre\u00adation, but it nev\u00ader stops to con\u00adtem\u00adplate how its lat\u00adest cre\u00adation (the new blade of grass, the spi\u00adder web, the rain\u00adbow) will be received. Nature just cre\u00adates and moves on. Nature nev\u00ader ceas\u00ades. Nature focus\u00ades on only the tru\u00adly essential\u2014the cre\u00adation and per\u00adpet\u00adu\u00ada\u00adtion of life. Nature doesn\u2019t waste time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Rainbow_VT_photo_by_Chris_Orcutt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The book I\u2019m writ\u00ading now is a mem\u00adoir about my life when I was 16. Of my three weeks in seclu\u00adsion in Ver\u00admont, I spent most of that time recall\u00ading events from 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, it was very stress\u00adful work. Why? Because I was forc\u00ading myself to relive uncom\u00adfort\u00adable emo\u00adtions relat\u00aded to sit\u00adu\u00ada\u00adtions with peo\u00adple I had either loved or hat\u00aded. There were a few days when I recalled events so painful, it turns out I had blocked them out for 30 years. On one of these evenings, the feel\u00adings I was reliv\u00ading were so painful, I broke down and had three beers\u2014this, after a year of sobri\u00adety unfor\u00adtu\u00adnate\u00adly.<\/p>\n

On bal\u00adance, how\u00adev\u00ader, the Ver\u00admont sojourn was a great expe\u00adri\u00adence for me, and the most impor\u00adtant thing I learned is this: I don\u2019t want<\/em> a lot of what mod\u00adern soci\u00adety has to offer, and usu\u00adal\u00adly I don\u2019t need<\/em> it either. I tru\u00adly came to under\u00adstand what Hen\u00adry David Thore\u00adau meant when he advised peo\u00adple to \u201csim\u00adpli\u00adfy, sim\u00adpli\u00adfy, sim\u00adpli\u00adfy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 46 now. I only have time for essen\u00adtials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAt 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essen\u00adtials.\u201d \u2014 Vir\u00adginia Woolf, diary, 3\/22\/1928 I stum\u00adbled upon this quo\u00adta\u00adtion ear\u00adli\u00ader this week.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,75,22,23,7,76,8,208,209,10,26,292,13,14,233,15],"tags":[290,94,97,289,111,291,155,287,281,222,93,288],"class_list":["post-7416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft","category-fiction","category-memoir","category-pencils","category-pens","category-personal","category-process","category-publishingandthemarket","category-social-media","category-social-media-technologyandinternet","category-technologyandinternet","category-typewriters","category-vermont","category-writers","category-writingexperiences","category-writing-life","category-writingtools","tag-art-of-peace","tag-chris-orcutt","tag-craft-2","tag-green-mountains","tag-memoir-2","tag-nature","tag-orcutt","tag-sojourn","tag-thoreau","tag-vermont","tag-writing","tag-writing-retreat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7416"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7432,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7416\/revisions\/7432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}