certified gold, or “what the dingus?”
I have this habit where I will wake up in the middle of the night with piece of brilliant writing that I HAVE to jot down before I forget in the morning.
And then I wake up to a Notes app full of these.
I generally have zero idea what precipitated these lines, or what I was intending to do with them. But they’re there, by George, they’re there! And I don’t have the heart to delete them, out of deference to midnight Gab and her eccentricities. (If I don’t believe in her, then who will?)
For me, a day of writing generally looks like this:
10:37am: Wake up, refreshed, well-slept, ready to start
12:00pm: Properly nourished, mindful, and prepared, a.k.a. I’ve scrolled TikTok for 45 minutes while sitting on a Pilates mat, and answered emails while eating a scalding bowl of couscous.
12:00–3:00pm: I’ve set aside three uninterrupted hours to write! What a gift! I will spend these hours watching Minecraft YouTubers and eating a flour tortilla with shredded cheddar cheese on it. I will have a blank, titled Google Doc at the end.
3:00–10:00pm: Abject panic/misery that I have procrastinated. Will look up salaries for media consulting on Glassdoor. Will browse commercial real estate properties in Portland on Zillow and debate opening a yarn store. Will eat pie for dinner.
10:02pm, while peeing: A lightbulb moment.
10:03pm-1am: Furious, wonderful, productive writing.
1:04am: Eat a block of cheese.
1:06–2:30am: Pass out in the clothes I wore today.
2:30am: THE GREATEST IDEA OF ALL TIME. HUMANITY CAN THRIVE ON THE RAW ENERGY BEING PRODUCED BY MY NOGGIN RIGHT NOW. I MUST PUT PEN TO PAPER (i.e. thumbs to phone screen) AND ACCEPT THIS DIVINE GIFT OF REVELATION.
2:33–10:37am: R.E.M.
10:37am: Awake to an iPhone note that reads, “Tiny birds in euphoria with dance period half hour comedy”
Follow this schedule, and you, too, can be an artisté, also pronounced dingus, from the Latin for “girl who cannot make the obvious connection between nightly dairy consumption and mild psychosis.”
