Hello from London!

     
     I remember a cold day in June in Chicago. It's memorable enough that it was cold in June in Chicago, but also because it was, all in all, a lovely month.  I was on a cushy fellowship, living in a fantastic city, learning incredible things, looking at incredible pictures, and reading incredible books.  On that particular cold Sunday, I was sitting in a Caribou Coffee, reading a book I had picked up in one of the many used bookstores that I haunted in that city, happy to be living-- for once-- in a place where there is the choice of not one, not two, but frankly uncountable bookstores to visit, all within reasonable walking distance.**  While I know that I should not take advice from plastic cups that hold sparkling green tea lemonade, the message printed on it has (for good or for ill) stuck with me. 

Life is waking up an hour earlier 

to live an hour more. 

     While I know that by now, my sleep debt could probably be better measured in months rather than days, or even weeks,  there is something lovely about being out and about before the daily grind begins.  No matter how tired I am, or how little I've slept, I know that if I roll from bed straight to work I will feel terrible-- like life is nothing more than workworkworksleepworkwork. This goes double now. I've been in London for the week (happy Spring Break to me!), trying vainly to finish my first chapter, something I told myself I would finish back in January. But then the doldrums set in. Then the writers block set in. Then a conference paper set in.  Then the post-conference paper writing anxiety set in. And now the 'how is it that I've been seriously working this for more than three months and I'm not done' anxiety set in, along with the looming reenrollment deadline anxiety.  So I've been at the British Library from opening time to closing time-- 10 and a half hours-- trying to read the letters I want to read, and write write write.  I have just shy of 10,000 words, but it is simultaneously too long and too short, and my argument is not so good.... and I tend to get carried away with all this worry.   
     So, it is all the more important for me to wake up an hour early and take the tube to a neighborhood I've not yet been to, and take the time to see the city before it fully wakes up. The subway is still blessedly empty, and I emerge to quiet streets, perhaps with a dog walker or two, depending on the neighborhood.  Then, sleepy employees begin to trickle in to cafes and coffee shops. Slowly, doors open, and the dog walkers give way to young mums and dads taking their kids to school, only to be replaced with brisk-walking black-suited businessmen and women, and other harried workers.  Eyes are on smartphones or the metro newspapers.  Hoards pour into the tube stops in neat, ordered lines.  The air is full of quietly stamping feet and the beeps from validated Oyster cards.  Stand on the right. Hustle on the left. Wait for descending passengers to leave the train. Mind the gap.  My mind turns once again to the things I must read, the chapter I must right.  But that hour has made a world of difference. And of course, there is coffee along the way.  

** I have been told that I tend to walk unreasonably much.  I don't think this is true; in fact, I don't always meet my fitbit step goal of 11,000 steps