I bet St. Augustine didn't wash his hair every day either.

So I’m still trying to nail down my new daily routine. Before I started working from home, I had some fancy ideas about the schedule I’d set for myself, the rules I would honor. “I’ll make myself get out of bed everyday by nine,” I’d say. “Then I’ll shower. Every day!”

Yeahhhhhhhh. That’s not really how this is playing out so far. When I made those grand claims, I seem to have forgotten that I am me, and the only thing I love more than ignoring at my own rules is sleeping. Not to say that I’m not working. I’m actually getting a lot of writing done, just not exactly in the manner that I’d envisioned.

I can’t say what I do in a typical day, because I have yet to have a typical day. That part is nice. That part is also making me nervous for some reason. Maybe it’s hard to shake my sort of midwestern, vaguely Protestant upbringing. I’m working, just not during the same time period as everyone else, and that is weirding me out a little.

Like today: I actually woke up early, worked for a few hours, and then took a nap from 11-1. Then I worked some more, but I also ate several ice cream sandwiches, organized some old photographs, and took a bubble bath. I did not put on pants until moments before my roommates were due home. And even though I crossed off all the items on my daily to-do list, I still feel aimless and sort of guilty. I’ve determined this is from the nap and the lack of pants. But those were also my favorite parts of the day! Oh lord, grant me pants, just not yet.

The best part of this new lifestyle is that I can finally keep the hours I’ve always wanted to keep. I can write during the part of the day I’ve always felt most inclined to write: 11 pm – 2 am, sleeping until 10 am. I’ve never been one of those people who wake up before their alarm goes off in order to do extravagant things like read the newspaper or drink coffee before leaving the house. Why would I do that? I also don’t sleep on mink sheets or brush my teeth with orphan tears. I am the type of person who will sleep until the last possible second and then leave the house with wet hair, fifteen minutes late, everyday. But now I don’t have to be that person! And I don’t have to pretend to feel guilty about it! But I still do, a little bit! Hopefully I can tie a string around that tightly enough and eventually it will atrophy.

I recently sent out a few emails to people on my wish list for the Cringe book, some famous, some nerd-famous, all awesome. Today I got a reply from one of my favorite authors in the world. She wrote a very nice email, saying she was sorry, she didn’t have any of her old teenage writing anymore, but thanks for thinking of her. That sucked, but the best part of this was she wrote me back about fifteen minutes after I sent my email. I like to think this means that she was also sitting in front of her computer all day, not wearing pants. I just might make it after all.