Welcome To the Working Week.

I feel like a juggler running out of hands.

Everybody’s clever nowadays. I sat down to write some random thoughts on reading — yes reading — and at the same time put on some early Elvis Costello to block out other noise and, well, that’s the first song that popped up, so I made it the headline.

I really like it, actually. It works. (And yes, the subhead is a lyric from the song, but it ALSO works, so why not. Once when I was in college I used Costello song titles and lyrics for every single story I posted, so there you go, life is circular or some such thing).

Since I flew back from Portland on July 27, I knew it was going to be a month of Getting Shit Done, which roughly translates into doing Adulting; dealing with the death of my brother (mostly expected) and how his death changes the equation on the last four years of dealing with his “estate” as it were (short version: oh, shit, bad timing as always), doctor’s appointments galore, pet appointments galore, spending as much summer time with my kids as I can before they go back to college, writing (and honing) this Substack, continuing plans to launch another one (yep; but it’s totally different and nope it’s not the wine podcast thing I may have mentioned, though that is also in the works); perfecting the temporary liminal space of the Suburban Bauhaus residence in not-Oakland, trying to get some fiction writing done (what I call “fictional writing” when I’m not doing it) and reading, which often leads to actual fiction writing.

There are hilariously not funny financial issues. There are car problems. Medical stuff for me and the dog — his is worse and he’s so much better at handling it (for example, not writing a lot about it). In a scene from my upcoming film, “I Think He’s Losing His Mind,” I explained to Pepper that this week we both have appointments with an ophthalmologist ON THE SAME DAY. I died laughing. I think he just looked at me as if to say, “How many times did it take you to type ophthalmologist” correctly?

In the course of Adulting if we don’t get a break to drink wine and laugh about some of the chaos, then we will break instead of bend. Life is about surviving the bends.

It’s a lot. In a short amount of time.

Tim, how are you?

It’s not a crises, to be clear. It’s just the less than optimal state of being otherwise overwhelmed, under motivated and/or pushed away from the things one prefers to be doing. We’ve all been there. We are all probably there now.

On the plus side, a lot is getting done before I fly back to Portland in roughly 10 days, but of course I can only think about what’s not getting done. And I’ve settled, for some reason, on reading.

I am a slow reader. I am also a random reader — start, stop, read something else, stop, start something else, circle back to the first, reread what I didn’t absorb (spoiler: everything), get sidetrack by reading on my phone, etc.

I leave a stack of books in my wake like half eaten bags of chips, the top torn off, half the chips on the ground, a trail to the next book where the scene repeats.

I am reading and rereading “The Power Of Now” from Eckhart Tolle because I like enlightenment but also because what I might have dismissed years ago as pointless bullshit is now very much relevant in a changing life. I oddly don’t feel bad about the back and forth tussle with this book, because every time I pick it back up I love it, and rereading pages and pages of it only improves the message that might not have encoded itself on my brain last month because, I don’t know, I was yelling at someone to send me death certificates before I kill them?

I’m reading and rereading “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman and I’m slightly more annoyed at myself here because I should be able to knock this book out in a weekend or an Adulting-filled week, but I have not.

I have been distracted.

Which is funny/not funny because if you live until 80, as Burkeman’s book notes, that’s just about 4,000 weeks total. As Burkeman has acknowledged, those numbers are some tragic math. They make one want to stab Adulting in the neck and flee to Paris.

But I like the book because I relate to an obsession with trying to manage my time and failing and also, as the point of the book reveals itself, understanding that all of that is pretty pointless. Just live.

I’m reading “From Strength To Strength” from Arthur C. Brooks and of course I love it because it’s shockingly relatable but, like anything else, once I drop a book for longer than a month it’s like I’ve got to start all over again. In fairness, my memory has always been bad, so this is just a burden to bear.

Again, though, it’s the not finishing of it all. So annoying. Sisyphus much?

You may have noticed that all of those books are somewhat related and thematic, certainly to my life. I started my own personal second act (well, probably a third act — isn’t growing up and going to school all of our first jobs/acts, then careers can start after?), in 2019, and despite the tragically funny bad timing of it all I am thrilled to be on this particularly enjoyable, happy-making expedition despite needing to do five money making things instead of one. The problem becomes, as it always does and always will, where to fit in all the things we want to do in life while Adulting chips away at that time, just being happy with simple joys chips away at that time and lack of energy/enthusiasm/depression/whatever else Jesus already always jumps in to gum up the works as well?

I’m pretty sure one or more of those books has a section (I haven’t reached yet or clearly need to reread) where the answer is, forget it, kid, the world is Chinatown. You can’t ever fit it all in. How you divide up the importance and urgency of the list you want to complete is up to you and no one else, so either edit it to be more happy or resign yourself to falling dead somewhere in the middle of it.

I mean, that’s the bleak take, sure, but still. It’s not wrong.

Anyway, other books that I feel much less guilty about are my beloved go-to favorites, a mixture of reference work (which you can just flip through endlessly, book to book, with no inherent need to start or finish; the order is disorder, the information valuable no matter how you take it in), and my design and architecture books, which help me survive life itself.

I also love those books because when I Suck At Reading, and the embarrassment of having to mention in public that I’m still reading the same books I wrote about six months ago, I can always wrap myself in the excuse that, well, no, I didn’t finish those books but, wow, you should see all the reference books I’ve stuck a nose in this last half year and, wow!, all the hours spent expanding the cultural corners of my aesthetic brain by devouring Dwell and Divisare online.

Non-fiction is a great cover.

I have recommended many of these books in the past, but I have to say that Bryan A. Garner’s “Garner’s Modern American Usage” never fails to delight and intrigue as I sit with some wine and bite off small chunks of it, and Robert Hartwell Fiske’s brilliant “Dictionary Of Unendurable English” is never far from my side, no matter if I’ve made some of the unforgivable mistakes and language crimes he seethes at.

Another book I am perpetually rereading is “How Fiction Works” by James Wood, the acclaimed literary critic, though I can’t help thinking the font used on the Picador paperback version I have really messes with the title, since it’s two very different meanings if you see the italics and if you don’t.

What’s working in the background — of literary fiction, television, films, etc., is endlessly fascinating to study. Because sometimes it’s working frantically and sometimes it’s working effortlessly, all in the service of the same goal. The process is never boring.

And this is the point where I have to tell you the truth of how this ending works/worked: I wrote everything up until the end of the last paragraph. Then I took a longish break to listen to music, distracted from the goal yet again (I blame “Knee Socks” from Arctic Monkeys and “The Worst Year Of My Life” by the Wild Swans. Great songs both. And there were others! I couldn’t help it. I mean, I just completely lost focus and started taking notes about a “Resounding” column I want to write about music).

Oh, I also had to take the dog out.

And there I was. And here we are.

This is how things don’t get done. Or at least how they get delayed. You read it here first, people. Happy reading. Or not.