How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being;
it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time;
it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
