habit & sennett's the craftsman

Before trying to catch up on postings (sort of), I thought I'd reflect on the idea of the habit of writing itself. I intermittently drop the "habit" of posting entries here and those shifts are interesting to me. Often I've been in a frame of mind in which I look forward to posting and have difficulty selecting a favourite thing for the day because it feels like there are so many; other times, no favourite things arise on a given day; and still other times, I don't think about it at all. It's the last experience that interests me the most because it's on these occasions that I've lost the "habit" of writing. This whole blog drops off my radar. Oddly, when I'm busiest I write the most. But that makes sense: when I'm busy, I need structures to my day and I just fold blog writing into that structure. When I'm less busy, I rely on these structures less. Someone told me that it takes six weeks to develop a habit in such a way that it becomes second nature (that is, if you can just push yourself to do a thing for six weeks, after that period it will become a natural part of your day in the way that eating lunch or making coffee is not a chore but just what one does). In general I like habits that take me out of the mechanical rhythms of the day, that make me think about a particular moment in a new way or a decisive way, and that define the day differently than when I just move remotely through it. That said, there is something lovely about a totally unstructured day as well. And I'm sure there's some happy medium where habit meets fluidity and both improve each other.

All of this also made me think of Richard Sennett's The Craftsman. He doesn't talk about habit, per se, but he does talk about the value of craft—investing time in really mastering something slowly and attentively—and its fading role in our culture. This blog is not a craft in Sennett's terms--a thing made with one's hands--but my casual attitude toward it does maybe relate to the tendency he identifies in our culture to try something out, enjoy it for awhile, and then drop it and move on to the next thing. A certain impatience rather than a paying attention. In my own experience, I do love anything that requires concentration--from drawing to cooking to writing--and habits seem to suggest the opposite: that point where concentration is no longer necessary. But maybe not. Here's an interview with Sennett on his book.