From the time my wife leaves until she walks back through the door, I work in solitude. Save for my daily brushes with the neighborhood cat, woodchuck, and goat, it’s just me and my thoughts, all day. Unless, I get bored and fall inside the entertainment portal in my pocket. I’m mostly safe from its lure during the morning hours, but come three o’clock, my fingers need little excuse to tap Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Instagram, or Twitter.
Here, I take one of three paths: silence, education, or entertainment. If I choose silence and keep my head above its water for fifteen minutes, it’s a wonderfully nourishing afternoon of work. I listen to the birds as writing and furniture ideas seem to pop out of the furniture’s wood grain. If I choose education—The Drive Podcast for example—I work alongside it well, leaving the work day inspired by something I heard. If I go with entertainment, the quality of my work is erratic. Part of myself seems to be waiting for the speaker’s next polarizing comment about politics, news, or anything Oklahoma sports-related. As the work day ends, I feel an empty hangover from the media gluttony.
Moving forward, I’d like to protect the silence and defer to education when a distraction is absolutely necessary. Those hours, which add up to weeks over a calendar year, are incredibly valuable source material. This is where I figure out what to do next with my life. This is where I discover what to write about each week. And those afternoons rub off on my evenings, which leak into my mornings, and on and on and on.
I have no plans to disengage entirely from the news or the latest Oklahoma football recruiting buzz. Yet, creative momentum is invaluable, and solitude is where it builds. If creativity is essentially my job—I’d argue it’s all of our jobs—then making the most of solitude is my primary responsibility. And entertainment just doesn’t belong in my workday; I’ll catch the spring football buzz this weekend.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(From the mystery, certainly in the solitude, came a humbling furniture encounter this week that reminded me why we wake up every day. Here’s the essay link.)
