Occasional writing. Mostly for myself.
I went back to paper this winter, after years of trying every application that promised to organise my thinking for me. None of them did. What they organised was the act of filing, which is not the same thing at all.
The notebook has one advantage the software never had: it is finite. When a page is full, the thought has to end, or continue somewhere else. That small constraint turns out to do more for clarity than any amount of tagging.
An experiment: up at five, no screens before seven. I expected to write more. Instead I mostly sat by the window and watched the street get light, which was not the point but has been the better part of it.
By the second week the hour stopped feeling early. By the third I understood that I had not gained time — I had only moved it, taking it from the end of the day where I was wasting it anyway.
Fourteen books last year, down from forty. I remember all fourteen. I could not have told you the titles of half the forty.