Fiction Monologue: Saul on the day

Saul sat at his lap top and started typing:

"I was reading Bukowski's book 'Hollywood' and liked the slice-of-life approach. So I think maybe I'll try something like it. I don't know if I'll be any good at it. But I'll just write and see what happens.

"Okay, I guess I'll work backward since my memory is best about things that just happened. I woke up around eight and lay around in bed. I was just thinking about various things and flopping around, but I was comfortable enough. Fiona was asleep. She would have these little snores now and again, very light. A feminine snore. I apparently have annoying, whiny-sounding snores. Like the snore is complaining about something. Fiona once recorded me snoring to give me an idea. Funny thing is I snore like my mom--when I heard it I thought that, and not like my Dad who has a good snore, something that sounds like it comes from the mouth of hell. Loud. I remember as a kid hearing him one night snoring so loud I thought maybe he was hurting himself.

"I think I dreamt but I don't remember the dreams. For some reason the idea of a menacing face leaps out at me. Oh, no, I do remember some of my dreams. I was at the office, and I was at my computer. The screen was a massive round screen the size of an one of those inner tubes kids ride down snowy hills on. Or float in pools in--I'm from the north east so I think snow when I think of those things. We have pools in New England but they're almost pointless. Hey, want an expensive pond for ten months a year?

"Anyway, in the dream I was at my work station and someone came up behind me and I was looking at some site on the internet and wanted to shut it down, and I couldn't. The person shook my hand and told me that I was doing a lot of work, compared to my coworkers.

"Another section of the dream involved a dishwasher being installed in our kitchen. It was our house but didn't look anything like our real house. The super, Maxim--who is our super in real life--was this bald almost alien looking guy--that is the menacing face I was remembering. He shook my hand with a crushing grip--I normally don't have sensations in my dreams. He had a HEPA mask on, and took it off and said, "Maxim, nice to meet you." Real-life Maxim is a short Russian guy, but this guy was a bald, tall Middle-Eastern looking man.

"That is an odd phenomenon in dreams--things are taken to be familiar things but are represented in unusual ways--my dream office was considered familiar, but was nothing like my real life office. Ditto my house. Ditto my super. Weird. In the dream the versions of life were sort of better in some way.

"And the places are also somehow other places. I think my dream house was my residence but also simultaneously understood to be a place I was a guest at. Or something like that.

"I slept a lot last night. I was in bed at 7pm and was in there till 9am or so this morning. With say 3 hours of interruptions in there. So 11 hours of sleep. That's good. I slept from 7pm to 9pm or so the first leg, and Fiona, who was out with her friend, came back and I woke up and talked with her a little bit. Fiona found the cat had left a shit on the floor. She cleaned it up and got into bed. Then the cat jumped up on the bed and I saw a nugget of shit hanging from her behind.

"'Oh, she has a shit hanging!' I said and picked her off Fiona and dangled her off the bed.

"'Wait, it's okay. I'll just use a tissue to get it.'

"'I just want to get her off the bed first.'

"Fiona got a tissue from the bed stand and got the shit while I dangled the cat over the floor, and Fiona got up and flushed the shit. She came back into the room and got in bed. The cat sat by the window looking embarrassed.

"'You can come back here. It's okay,' Fiona said. The cat hung out by the window a little longer, but then jumped up on the comforter and sat on Fiona.

"'Hello, you little shit,' Fiona said and laughed.

"That day I had woken up at about 6. I skipped the shower. I got my clothes on. I love skipping the shower, because I can just get on with the day. I feel sort of bad in the mornings often, so the less I have to do early on the better. I had been tracking my energy patterns. I had a spreadsheet. Every hour I would note how I felt. I didn't do it for the first couple hours of the day but I probably would rate those hours something like 3 out of 10 or something, 1 being the least energetic and 10 being off the walls.

"At work I start off usually a bit low energy, around 7am, averaging something in the 4 out of 10 area. Then I rise up to something like 6 out of 10 around 10am. 10am is my peak. Then I slowly descend till the end of the day. Often there is a dip after lunch, what I have heard called the 'postprandial dip,' which I get from time to time, but the average trend is just a rise to 10am and then a decline of 4 out of 10 energy or so around 3pm.

"And during the week my pattern seems to be high energy on Monday, say a 6 out of 10 maybe, and then a decline to Wednesday to say 4 out of 10, and then Thursday leaps up to something like 6 out of 10 and declines on Friday a bit.

"The numbers are probably a bit off, but that is the general pattern. You want to catch me at my highest energy, meet me at 10am on Thursday.

"I haven't been good about tracking my time in my free time, but I should. It seems more important to know what my energy patterns are like when I am doing the stuff for me and my loved ones rather than work. Though I guess work is for me and my loved ones in a more indirect way. It's not fun always, though it's usually not bad, but it's not something I would do for fun.

"Well, so tracking my energy in general seems like a good idea. I got the idea from reading Scott Adams' book 'How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big' which should be taught in classrooms. I should buy that book for everyone I know and give it on the condition that they read it and give it away, or give it away to someone on the condition they read it or give it away, so the book just circulates through the population.

"I like that idea. I'm sure the book would end up sitting on someone's shelf. The thing is that you might mean to read it and then just forget about it, and so you're not really breaking my rule of reading it or giving it away. Maybe I should put a deadline on how long you should hold on to the book. I don't know. I have no way of enforcing this rule. I need to get some thugs to do my bidding. Flunkies. Thing is I would only be giving this book to friends and friendly acquaintances, so I wouldn't be sending my flunkies to go beat up on them for not following my rule about reading and giving away the book.

"That appears to be the only problem with this plan...

"Anyway, in the Scott Adams book, Scott recommends you focus on maximizing your energy as your main priority, so you have energy to do the other important stuff.

"Actually, from a dark side, this reminded me of what I read in the evil genius Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf', which was that he believed that the first task of his effort to grow his malevolent Nazi movement was to train organizers who would recruit more people who would organize--the focus was on recruiting recruiters, if I remember correctly. The energy of the movement was in its growth, so focus on the agents of growth. Focus on what energizes the movement most. The dark side of this approach, perhaps. All the more reason for counterforces to adopt useful methods to oppose the bad guys.

"Arguably Britain sort of focused on energy after they had been ejected from the continent by the Nazis post Battle of France. Churchill wanted to keep his forces working the periphery and working with guerrillas on the continent, husbanding his forces and preserving their energy while courting the Americans, whose manufacturing and population might could considerably expand the energy of anti-Nazi efforts. And Hitler squandered his energies against the USSR.

"Scott Adams, in any event, wisely I think recommends focusing on maximizing your energy, thinking about what energizes you, observing what energizes you, and then doing more of that--or avoiding or minimizing what drains you. So I started tracking my energy.

"Anyway, I go to work. I ride the 66 Bus to Harvard Square. I have my headphones on, plugged into my Kindle. Kindle has a text to audio app that allows the Kindle to read to you in a computer voice. So I read most books this way, or 'read' I guess. It's much more efficient for me to 'read' this way than the conventional ways. As experts have observed, sometimes people subvocalize when they read. I do this. So when I read I make a little voice in my head that speaks the words I read. Speedreading advocates try to get you to stop doing this but I find not doing this is annoying. So by listening to text I cut out a step in experiencing a text--I don't read and subvocalize anymore--I just have the Kindle read the writing to me. And this frees me up to walk around or look out the bus window or close my eyes so I can relax. I don't know how much energy vision takes up, but I think I've heard it's a fair amount, and so I can preserve energy this way.

"And I do. I often have the Kindle reading to me while I close my eyes and ride the bus in the morning.

"I was listening to a book, 'Lean for Dummies' about Toyota's approach to reducing waste and streamlining their production line. My boss was interested in introducing Lean ideas into our work system, and I had been interested in Lean myself. I had heard of it and read a little bit about it. It seemed opportune to learn more about it.

"The 66 bus comes a little after six to the end of my street. It's maybe a third full by the time it gets to me. Sometimes I miss it and take the 70 Bus to Central Square in Cambridge, or the 86 Bus to Harvard Square. The 66 Bus is most characterless in terms of the people who ride it. It's hard to do a thumbnail sketch of it. There are people, usually attractive young women, in exercise gear, who ride it to Harvard Stadium down the street, I guess. Or maybe they are running along the Charles. Take the bus from the ugly places to the pretty places to run.

"And then maybe a handful of students at Harvard or working people are on the bus. The bus does seem sort of democratic in the sense that it seems like a guy in a casual professional outfit might be riding with a construction worker, usually a white guy with a tan and paint on his pants, or Central or South American people (I'm guessing)--I see a lot of them coming out of the city to go to the suburbs. I wonder what they are doing? Landscaping? Working in kitchens? Mall or hospital janitorial staff? They're seldom in obvious work clothing--you work in an office you wear office clothes to work usually--if you work at a restaurant you usually put on some kitchen-wear when you get there, I guess, so you would wear your casual gear before you get there presumably. If you work as a janitor you might wear a uniform that you put on when you get there, perhaps. Landscaping I'm thinking you would look like a construction worker--durable, comfortable, well-worn clothing--the latinos I see don't seem to be wearing this stuff, just normal casual wear.

"I don't know. The latinos often travel in groups and seem cheerful and friendly and talkative. I've read there is less mental illness in the latino population and one theory I've read is that it's because of strong community ties. I could believe it.

"I used to drive to work, but my car died and I didn't want to spend the money on a new car. I used to live in the suburbs, so a car was necessary. But now that I live in the city, I can take public transportation. I can get to my work in the suburbs via bus and subway easily enough. It's interesting. You never see the same people in cars when you're driving to and from work. All cars seem new, the people in them new, as you drive along them. But I regularly see the same people on public transportation on my commute."