There is a saying that it takes 28 days to break a habit Sandra Bullock starred in a film called "27 Days" playing an alcoholic who needed 27 days to wean her from the booze. I haven't gone swimming now for 12 days and I'm going crazy. Sure it's nice to sleep in - don't sleep but I read and write (and empty the dishwasher), but last night i stayed up till 3 a.m. because I didn't have to get up to swim. So today was (almost) shot. Not quite, because today is New York Times day. But I need my swimming schedule; it keeps me in line.

I'm not disciplined. I have to impose rules and regulations and rituals and routines so that I can get through the day. I think I must get up tomorrow and go ahead and have a shower in the changing room as if I were going to swim. Maybe that will help.

I've had extra time to think - of course, that's not true, because I think while I swim. Well, I'm still thinking about my Book. And I think I need to write another chapter. Not such a bad idea, because as long as I keep writing I won't get too panicky about finding a publisher. Or an agent. All my contacts have retired or died.

Persistence will get you nowhere, not if people don't answer their mail. Not even in 28 days. I think they've broken the habit of letter-writing, not to say courtesy.

"Perhaps the future of the travel book is the travel blog with al its elisions, colloquial tropes and chatty stream of consciousness...Anyone with a computer can be in touch." Paul Theroux

I hadn't read this when I began my blog but it's what I had in mind. I'm not sure about the colloquial tropes, but I can probably include them, when I understand what they are.

As most of you know by now, I'm going around the world in 2015 - not the world, but the southern hemisphere - by ship, and I plan to write a travelblog. So I've been trying to get accustomed to the discipline of a daily blog, that is, in addition to my daily diary and Day-Timer, my morning swim, and my chill-out with a murder mystery while pedalling on a recumbent bicycle at the end of the day. Some days are harder than others, harder to fit everything else in because life with its tramlines goes on and on.

Losing my morning swim, by mandate, is both good and bad. Right now, at this moment, I could be writing my blog and that's what I'm doing, but in 20 minutes I would normally be in the pool. So I have 40 extra minutes coming up to do something different. I could sleep, always a good choice. Empty the dishwasher. Plan my clothes - maybe even get dressed. Look up trope.

I know the word from its use in poetry or music, but Theroux applies it differently. A trope, according to my online dictionary is "a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression; a significant or recurrent theme; a motif." Well, I guess my swim is a metaphor; I call it my Wet Meditation, though my thoughts are dry. Dry thoughts in a dry land?

So I looked up "Gerontion", of course, T.S.Eliot's poem that ends with this: "Tenants of the house/Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season". Well, I was close. My swim is a trope, my inner dialogue the dry thoughts, no, the thoughts of my dry brain...in a dry season? I guess that's me right now, going through a dry season (three weeks). I'm dry right now. High and dry? Or all wet?

I could be swimming right now. Sigh.

Is this a colloquial trope?