Another late-night train
Going home late once again. My brain doesn’t seem to fire up until about five in the evening most days. There’s a Japanese illustrator/author named Gomi Tarô who has an interesting work schedule: he wakes up at around noon, takes it easy for much of the afternoon, meets with clients and editors and such, drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes, and starts working at around dusk. He takes a break to watch the news at eleven and then goes into serious work mode in the dead of night. Watches the sun come up most mornings and then goes to bed.
There was this great profile of him on a show (can’t remember the name now; I should Google it and stick a link here, though) that detailed this daily schedule. He’s famous, talented, and in demand, and he makes people conform to his hours if they want a piece of him. Interesting stuff. Michael Staley, a guy who worked at Japan Echo for a summer and then went on to be an editor at Kodansha International (lived in my apartment for a while, too), was lucky enough to do a book with Gomi recently.
Anyway, I think that without the day job—if I went freelance and was left to my own devices—I would probably end up in a similar schedule quite soon. It’s almost 1:30 in the morning now and I’m feeling alert and ready to write. (I’m on the train, where I can’t spread out work documents and get down to them, which is why I’m writing fluff to go on the blog later.) I’m not a morning person. I do love getting up bitterly early in the winter, when it’s still dark, to get to the mountains and ski, but that’s the extent of it, really . . . Coffee helps me a lot before noon but it can’t make my brain fire on all cylinders like it needs to if I’m going to really get things done.
Almost at the station . . . Time to wrap this up for now and write more and post from home.
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