the shape of a day

With a recently minted graduate degree and several exhibitions and publications on the rise and a half-time teaching position and an every-now-and-then job with a record label and two high-energy little boys and the various short-term jobs that cross this family's doorstep, we've entered a new phase of life. It's not entirely unlike the past two years' juggling of school and adjunct teaching, but it's a little stranger. Something like a cross between being on an interminable vacation and being busier than we've ever been. It has to do with time flexibility-- a blessing and a curse. It's entirely up to us to make the shape of our days... to finish what's in front of us and hunt down more opportunities as artists in order to survive as a family in an expensive city. Because our lives don't take the shape of a typical clock-in job, I think both of us sometimes feel incredibly lazy and useless, even as we chase our boys in circles and feed them and take them for walks while the other person corresponds or frames or works on drawings or researches boy scouts. By reading journals of other people involved in disciplines like ours-- writers, musicians, other visual artists, etc-- I know this feeling is common. There's so much in-between time when you're not cranking out work, but you have things brewing and steeping and waiting to be formed. What's goofy is that even forming this humble blog entry helps me put a form to the formless, and gives me some sort of relief. I start to understand why someone like Gerhard Richter has a set schedule every weekday (this quote taken from a Michael Kimmelman NYT article):

"He sticks to a strict routine, waking at 6:15 every morning. He makes breakfast for his family, takes Ella to school at 7:20 and is in the studio by 8. At 1 o'clock, he crosses the garden from the studio back to the house. The grass in the garden is uncut. Richter proudly points this out, to show that even it is a matter of his choosing, not by chance. At 1 o'clock, he eats lunch in the dining room, alone. A housekeeper lays out the same meal for him each day: yogurt, tomatoes, bread, olive oil and chamomile tea.

After lunch, Richter returns to his studio to work into the evening. ''I have always been structured,'' he explains. ''What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting.'' He claims to waste time -- on the house, the garden -- although this is hard to believe. ''I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things. Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself. It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.'' As he talks, I notice a single drop of paint on the floor beneath one of his abstract pictures, the only thing out of place in the studio."

When I first read this in graduate school, it made me feel claustrophobic. Now it is utterly relatable. Though my personality would never allow this much structure, the appeal is palpable. But even Richter feels that he "wastes time"!