365 True Things: 178/Ch-ch-changes

I'm not very good at hearing the lyrics to songs. Like, today: David Bowie's "Changes" popped into my head, and I realized I had no idea what the words are, short of that stuttering ch-ch-changes and the rubato time may change me / but I can't trace time (though until just now, looking at the lyrics, I didn't know that word was "trace").

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, turn and face the strange. Ch-ch-changes.

The song entered my thoughts because I'm thinking of making some changes. I want to make some changes. I have a tendency to scatter myself too thin, and I'd like to cultivate more depth.

After my post the other day about work, a friend emailed me—he actually took me up on my question at the end!—with some suggestions. Here's what he wrote:

anything is possible i suppose, but i believe that to do your work you need to allow hours in a row, not breaks between editing bouts. you need to have 1/2 the day for your work, 1/2 for the other work. there goes games and tv all to hell  where they belong.

your work needs the time to become. it needs meditation, active writing meditation. no nothing around you but your ideas and filling paper or screens with whatever until some of it warrants keeping. it takes staring at something until you know what it needs. that can take a long time. 4 hours of your stuff with no interruptions except the breathers you take during which the meditation doesnt stop, just the fingers do. then a walk and errands. then 4 hours of their stuff which will seem lighter because you already did your work and theirs is no longer in the way of yours.

I so appreciate both his thoughts and his taking the time to send them to me.

But of course, I responded flip:

1. I’m glad to know someone is reading my daily meanderings.
2. There are various personality types, as you may well know (see, e.g., http://roostmusings.blogspot.no/2015/08/365-true-things-143istp.html).
3. I simply can’t work four hours straight and stay sane. And/or productive, more to the point.
4. The older I get, the more tunnel-visioned I get as well. Which means, if I have editing work in, I work on editing.
5. The main problem is, when I DON’T have editing work in, I am all over the place. Not working on much of anything.
6. E is what I need to be focusing on. Get the work-work done, and then free up some me time. And then do something good with that me time.
7. Lists. Lists are what I need. Maybe.
8. Yeah, I also need to toss the iPad out the window. You probably don’t want it, do you?

Then:

And my final missive:

10. Time is all we have.

This morning in my email, I found a new message: "from A to J is a lot. you may have completed your day's blog."

Maybe not quite. Maybe I need to keep giving some serious thought to making a few ch-ch-changes, to allow better use of my time—which really is all I have.

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes

I don't know quite what that means, but I do know that I want to stay awake. I don't want the days just to float through my eyes. As they do when I don't guard my precious time.