From: http://catchingdays.cynthianewberrymartin.com/2015/04/01/how-we-spend-our-days-katrina-kenison/

"My husband props up his iPad at the breakfast table, eats his oatmeal, and reads the Times online. Yesterday morning, I did the same—a mistake. The front-page story was about a young black vet in Atlanta suffering from PTSD who was running naked through his apartment complex. It was perfectly clear to anyone with eyes that he was unarmed. A cop shot him anyway. Twice through the chest. Once my tears began, they wouldn’t stop. I spent the day in aimless mourning, grieving for all that is wrong—with me, with us, with our country, our world. I took a long walk and made soup and talked with both my sons and didn’t write a word.

Today I sit down with my bowl of fruit and the book that arrived in the mail yesterday, Abigail Thomas’s new memoir about aging and writing, illness and grief and friendship. The title is perfect for those of us who’ve rounded that corner into the homestretch of middle-age, who struggle daily to make our own peace with life as it is: What Comes Next and How to Like It. We are all hoping to learn the secret.

“I wasn’t writing all the time,” this marvelous writer admits on page nineteen. “Days, sometimes weeks would go by without my doing anything at all. I began to feel like something left too long in the vegetable drawer. Then I had the bright idea of starting a weekly writing workshop. There would be a point to me!”

No wonder I love her. And oh, the joy of beginning the day with good sentences—priming the pump rather than bleeding the heart.

My husband fills a Tupperware container with the remains of last night’s dinner, brushes his teeth, claps a baseball cap on his head and makes his exit. I’m grateful for his good cheer, his work, his steadiness. It’s not lost on me these days that while I’m between books, he’s earning the salary that allows my life to be what it is: a luxury of time. For the next nine hours, the house is mine.
Resisting Abby’s good company (this is hard, but it’s a writing day) I close my book and survey the scene.

Once, a student in my own weekly writing class told us that she writes every day, all the time—in doctors’ waiting rooms, at stoplights, while on hold on the telephone, in the middle of the night. She flipped open a well-used notebook full of her dense scribbles—snippets of essays and scenes and dialogue and prose poems awaiting her finishing touch. I was in awe of her output. It occurred to me that, really, I should be taking a writing class from her.

Were it not for the words I somehow have managed to write, and the thousands of hours I’ve spent sitting in my kitchen and staring out the window in order to produce them, I could not call myself a writer. I do not write at stoplights or in the middle of the night or while on hold. Not ever. I write in hard-won secret pockets of time, in solitude. I sit still as a hunter perched in a blind in the forest, breathing quietly, waiting for words to come into view.

This morning, before I reach for my laptop, I need to get a few things done. I water the houseplants, fill the birdfeeder, start a load of laundry and vacuum the dog hair off the floor. Scrub the stubborn remnants from last night’s roasting pan, carry the recycling out to the bin, straighten the magazines on the coffee table, scribble a grocery list for later.

Setting the house to rights is unavoidably, irrevocably, part of my process. It’s not always easy to know where to draw the line. The other day my friend Maezen, author of three fine books and an archive of brilliant articles, and a Buddhist priest who knows a thing or two about discipline, posted this on Facebook: “I’ve washed every shower curtain in the house. I think this means it is time to write again.”

My first thought: “No, no, there must be grout to clean yet.” My house is never tidier than when I’m preparing to head off into the silent woods of myself. Before I can slip away, I must always rinse out the sink, fold the dishtowel.

Now, my house-wifely duties done, I stand once again at the kitchen counter, gaze out to the mountains, and call my friend. I listen to a heart-rending account of last days and final hours, family members arriving, memories spilling forth. My task in this moment is simply to be here, phone at my ear, holding space for her tears. It occurs to me that “How we spend our days” goes hand-in-hand with “This too, and this too.” Perhaps they are two sides of the same coin, reminding us simply to embrace all the truths of our lives with wise and tender hearts."