Again and again, starting over

None of the days in this month have been going according to plan. All broken up, gone awry, plans made and broken, unexpected surprises that pop up, being pulled this way and that. This morning, I rearranged all the drying, coated hanji, in keeping with regulations of this building, since hanging things on a line looks too much like laundry drying, and that is an eyesore to the neighbors, and so on for a million more characters in the contracts. Boring. But I am a big rule abider so I only let the sheets flap in the wind for a couple of days.

I realized that I ONLY feel okay not working if I am working. HA! So, if I want to watch TV or a movie, I feel anxious the entire time unless I have something in my hands to keep them busy. This is what I did on Sunday night. Last night, I got to have a long speed reading session and finished Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments. I liked what she said about work, while mentioning her ex-husband:

Stefan knew more about work than I did but not, I think, much more. He was tormented by the discrepancy between his painterly ideas and his ability to execute those ideas on the canvas, and he dramatized his torment endlessly. He would crash about in the studio, smoking, cursing, throwing paint on the canvas, but not, I suspect, thinking hard about the problem before him. The knowledge that work is patient, sustained labor--no more, no less--was not wisdom he had as yet taken in very much better than I had.

I get tangled up, too, with the "patient" and "sustained" parts, but every day is a chance to learn those things all over again.