I hope to write updates more often as a sort of diary in hopes that it will shed a bit of light onto my life as I navigate various projects.

With my new job, I typically work 4 12-14 hour shifts a week. Today was one of my 3 off-days.

I slept in until 7:00 am. Most days I wake up at 5:00 am. I tended to Marcel Marceau, our cat, and made myself some coffee. That process took roughly an hour between feeding, refreshing water, and playing.

From 8 to 10 I worked on a new project involving the haiku of Basho. I also answered some emails and had a great conversation with Gerald Nicosia, Kerouac’s biographer and a poet who I will be publishing early next year. At 10 I got some more coffee.

From 10:15 to 12 or so I spent more time playing with my cat while studying some new lines in the Vienna Opening in chess.

From 12 to 2 pm I played some chess online while listening to a documentary about the photographer and painter Man Ray.

At 2 pm I went to the supermarket and purchased some things for the dinner I would cook for my wife and I, as well as a lunch consisting of grilled chicken and mac and cheese.

By 3 pm I was home. I worked on editing some essays for my thylacine book for roughly an hour.

At 4 pm I began cooking dinner. My wife left work at 4 and it takes roughly 45 minutes for us to get home (we work at the same company a few towns over). Tonight we had a beef stew with onion, potatoes, and carrots over rice. While cooking I re-watched episodes of Daniel Naroditsky’s blitz speed run on YouTube.

I left dinner on low heat while I assisted my wife with bathing, getting her things together, and getting dressed. She has a number of disabilities that prohibit her from doing these things on her own some days. Today was not a good day for her.

We ate dinner from 5:30-6 pm. She ate then took a nap from 6 pm to 7:30 pm. While she was napping I wrote a few scenes for a film I am writing called Labyrinthine and did the dishes.

At 7:30 pm I woke her to take her next round of medications and fed the cat his nightly meal before gathering our trash and boxing up the leftovers from dinner.

I sat with my wife from 8 to 9 pm and we discussed our days and I gifted her her Christmas present. At 9 she went to sleep for the night.

I began drinking some bourbon at that point while listening to more of the Naroditsky speedrun and editing the Basho pieces I’ve written throughout the week and earlier today.

At approximately 10:30 pm I switched gears, still listening to Naroditsky, and began my work on translating Fernando Arrabal’s Echechs et Mythe (note: the linked version is the Kindle version as the print is quite expensive at the moment). I recently began translating this work from French and am making great headway.

From 1:30 am to 3:30 am I studied more of my Vienna course. I have been using Chessly 2.0 (which just launched a few days ago) and I cannot recommend it enough.

This last hour I have been straightening up around the apartment while listening to the fantastic documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present on HBO Max. I have watched it before, but I find it extremely inspiring so I often put it on in the background while I work on other things.

Other happenings: I got some mail, 6 books (The Collected Early and Later Poems of Paul Celan, a poet I have been reading deeply lately, Abromovic’s Walk Through Walls, Jean Cocoteau: The Juggler’s Revenge, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and some collaborations between Paul Eluard and Max Ernst), I paid some bills, I organized my cash on hand (something I am saving to help support a trip/move to France), and shaved, something I rarely do, opting instead to just trim.

Tomorrow I plan to continue working on projects and doing some cleaning around the apartment (laundry, sweeping, etc). I will likely go to sleep around 9 pm tomorrow and not sleep tonight, just nap from approximately 3- 6 pm tomorrow.

What does your schedule look like?