It's been a busy week for freelance projects. On the art front--Dorothea Lange, Escher and Renoir. This week, I've claimed a a couple of lit topics, including Gwendolyn Brooks and Doris Lessing. For the latter, I'd read a good amount of short fiction I've read at various points, but none of her novels, so may go in search of a copy of The Golden Notebook, which sounds amazing. I'm reading a lot for that work in the mornings, and editing poems in the afternoons, mine and others, so I haven't found where I might steal some novel-reading time (not that since covid I've been doing much leisure anyway.
There was a great article on night owl introverts at the Atlantic this week and I kept nodding my head yes as I read it. So much so. I don't think it's my introversion that makes me a night-owl (mind you, my mother says I was the only baby she ever saw that would not only sleep through the night, but also sometimes sleep til noon.) My entire family, when left to their own devices and without work schedules tends to night owl-ness, even my mom who was a total extrovert, but would stay up pretty late after she retired. ) At the library, though, the nice thing was that no one was really around--no phonecalls, no emails really, so it was easy to work on stuff, even working the very slow front desk past 6pm.
When I was in college (with summer's off) and grad school (with mostly evening courses) I would stay up all night quite often, even when I lived alone and no one in sight. I love the city at night, when everything is less crowded --drugstores, movie theatres, the CTA. When the pandemic was rahing and i was home at first, then later working earlier shifts, I missed my 10pm bus people--the wait staff and retail employees headed home. The students freed from evening classes,. The theatre and symphony goers. Many of these people were missing in those weird months the second half of 2020, when I was working, but a lot of places were still closing early or not open at all. But when thriving, it was like its own society.
I do know that I need some social interaction--be that text or phone or in-person. I get lonely if I get nothng. While I played with the idea during covid-times that I would love to live in the woods far away from everyone, I don't think I'd like it as a long tern solution, but maybe a couple weeks would be heaven.
