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How do I measure my productivity...?

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It's 10:30 in the morning on a lovely autumn Tuesday. Sun is streaming in through the window and I am sitting paralysed in front of the computer. Today I have no excuses. I have seven glorious hours in front of me before I have to go teach English, and then only for an hour and a half. Whatever frustrations I may have with my life, not having enough time to write is no longer among them. I have at least four hours during the work day most days of the week. My work, while disagreeable, does not tax my energy. I can become the writer I always dreamed of being, so what's the problem?

The question I'm asking is how should I evaluate my productivity? In most professions, productivity appears to be a measure of how much work a company can squeeze out of you for as little money as possible. I suppose a worker can evaluate his own productivity in terms of the amount of money he is able to wrest from his employer for the least amount of work. My job, however, doesn't make any money. I don't write for a living, nor do I see a clear path to doing so. What I write is also not widely read or talked about, so how should I evaluate my progress? How do I know it's worthwhile?

Not only do the traditional measures of productivity not apply to me, they can also be brought to bear on what I'm doing in an extremely critical way. If my productivity can't be measured in dollars, what good is it anyway? After all, we need dollars (or euros or lats) to live, and if my work isn't producing them I just might be wasting my time. I can hardly argue that my work is enriching the world, because an extremely small portion of the world reads my work. Nor am I prepared to argue that my enormous genius will be discovered after my death, a la Emily Dickenson. By all traditional measures of productivity I am wasting my time. I am self-indulgent, perhaps delusional, and I may be doing serious damage to my future financial health by not engaging in some traditional productivity.

Time is marching on. It's now nearly noon and what do I have to show for it? Not much productivity going on today, even in the blog writing department. Everywhere drums are beating out the cadence “grow up.” What's needed now is courage. In the end, I think that's what separates those who live extraordinary lives from the rest. I need the courage to believe that what I'm doing is right, that what I'm writing is important, if for no one else than for myself. But what exactly am I doing? I write in my blog on a fairly regular basis, but writing a big project remains elusive. Where is the courage to dive in? The drums are getting louder. I should just throw all my energy behind finding a job that makes more money so I can have more to spend in my leisure time.

12:30 now. I'm thinking of my walk to work. Every day I walk among gorgeous Jungenstil buildings in Old Riga. Many of the apartments have ornate balconies. Ah, I could be a writer there! I would sit on that balcony with a cup of coffee and watch the city. Perhaps I'd smoke a cigarette. The energy and tragedy of the city and of life in general would reach me on that balcony, and I'd dutifully record it. Why won't the energy reach me here? Is this early '80s Soviet building blocking out the feeling of the city? Would I be a better writer on that balcony, or would I just feel like one.

1:00 PM, and the reality of the day is beginning to creep in. I have to go teach in a few hours. I should leave early and send off my property taxes. There is also Latvian homework that has to be dealt with, and better now than this evening. All these distractions! It's a miracle I can function. Of course I'm being facetious, but the drums are beating louder. The real world is crashing in on my little home and leaving me without the will to continue. It would be so much easier to just get things done.

When I had a productive job I'd scoff at the “writers” and “artists” at the local coffee shop. Who on earth were they fooling? I had nothing but contempt for the people who sat there scribbling during the workday in the vain hope that they were the next H.L. Mencken. And now here I sit, albeit in my own apartment, writing an essay that no one will ever read. Perhaps I was wrong to judge my brethren so harshly. Maybe they weren't aspiring to syndication. It's possible they were writing for writing's sake. Of course, back then I was jealous. I'm not jealous of my former internet company self today, but I miss his self assurance. Nothing makes one so sure of himself than chasing money. Perhaps it would be useful for me to remember that I was chasing money so I could sit in a coffee shop being unproductive.

Perhaps I should move to the country. Fresh air! Simple living! A country house! The ideas will float through the window on the spring breeze. No more worries, until the power goes out, the firewood needs to be chopped, and boredom sets in like rigor mortis. Lots of writers have found inspiration in the country, but few of them seem to have stayed there very long, and when they were out in the woods, they had someone else chop the wood.

The day is rushing by and it's almost time to make excuses. Soon I'll have to get dressed and go to work. Do I really know what I'm doing for class? Remember property taxes! I still have time to get the homework out of the way. All I've written is a letter of complaint to myself. Why don't I try to write something important? I need a muse. Wait a minute, I have a muse! I have a lovely, wonderful, 24-year old Latvian muse named Baiba. She is, I can say without exaggeration, the muse I've always wanted. I remember complaining to a gorgeous barista-cellist in Seattle that I was having trouble putting ideas on paper, and she purred at me in her smoky voice that I needed a muse. Well, now I have one, better than I ever dreamed, except now I can't complain that I don't have a muse.

The internet allows me to keep in touch with friends, keep up with events, and it keeps me from doing much writing. Baiba is right, I spend too much time on the computer, or better, I waste too much time on the computer. If I had spent all of this time today actually writing, I would have already written pages and pages. Unfortunately there's the papers to read, email to check, and naked girls to look at. If I was smart, I'd unplug from the network and turn this computer back into a typewriter, but I can't bring myself to do it.

Occasionally I look back at what I write and I'm proud. I still like the effort I put forth on the essay about old video games, and my piece on grading myself is well written. I don't think I'll view what I'm writing today so favorably. I tell myself that it's all a part of a process, and that even when I write poorly it's better than nothing at all. It's the effort that counts, an effort that makes me no money and, at least today, gives me no pleasure. It's simply not productive and I find myself losing faith.

It's two thirty and I've moved into the kitchen. Here I can write on the counter that has been sagging since Baiba's previous roomate decided to sit on it before she moved out. I'm brewing a pot of coffee I don't actually want and watching a big truck deliver several months of coal to the odd, castle looking house across the street. Yes, lots of people heat with coal here, and the smoke is just as yellow and greasy as T.S. Eliot described in the opening lines of Prufrock. Back in Seattle, the idea of people receiving a load of coal would have sounded exotic. I'm amazed at how commonplace life in Riga now feels. Coal or communal heating, the ancient trams, strolling among beautiful buildings and beautiful girls. How adaptable I am! And still it doesn't inspire me to write.

I'm remembering a conversation I eavesdropped on between John Grisham and a middle aged aspiring writer. The conversation took place at an outdoor cafe in downtown Charlottesville, VA. Grisham had read the lady's manuscript and was trying to find a gentle way to tell her it was hopeless. While I'm not sure, I believe Grisham had some sort of social obligation to her, perhaps she was a neighbor. He kept hammering the point that writing had to have a “laser-like focus” in order to keep people interested, and that her story meandered all over the place. I hated everything about that conversation. I hate Grisham's writing, and the idea of him giving anyone anyone advice on prose was maddening. What I hated even more was that his advice was 100% correct. But what I hated most was the woman, obviously a wealthy and bored housewife who for lack of anything better to do had written a book. What's more, her writing was shoddy and undisciplined, just like mine. She was a complete dilettante being advised by an extremely successful writer. More than ten years later the woman still haunts me. The charge of dilettantism fills me with dread to the point where I almost lose hope. I am reminded of Jeff Bridges line in The Fabulous Baker Boys: “We've always been small time, but we've never been clowns.” I am afraid.

Now it's almost 3:00. I guess homework and the property taxes will have to wait unitl tomorrow. Or perhaps if I start right now I can get the homework done. What do I have here? A record of the creative process? An utter waste of time? I'll add it to my pile of blog entries and see what happens. I have an idea that I'll put them all together to see how many pages I've written. I don't know if that will give me the courage I need to be a writer. I hope that something will.