"There are voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter the world." -- Emerson

I am very much a creature of fixed routines.  Though I keep a written journal as well as this blog, I generally do my writing in the evening.  In the morning, I usually rise, read the newspaper along with my breakfast, either do my chi-gong or walk, then come home and shower, to begin my day. 

At our think tank in Santa Fe, it was strongly recommend that we take up the exercise of writing three  morning pages by hand upon waking.  The pages are meant really to be stream of consciousness set rather directly after an evening of rest and dreams.  Sometimes the pages will be lists, sometimes ways of working out half-formed notions or ideas.  

Had I finished the Washington DC end of my train trip, I would have arrived home this morning. I did not manage to write morning pages consistently while on the trip, perhaps in part because the line between sleeping and waking was never more blurred.  This morning I see if I can rise a different way, and slightly alter years of habits.

For those interested in following some of my homework through reading, the reference book is called "The Artist's Way at Work: Riding the Dragon."  It is written by Mark Bryan, Julia Cameron, and Catherine Allen, the founder of The Santa Fe Institute, and published by Morrow.