Lunch

The premier blessing and curse of my life right now is its self-scheduling nature. Today I find myself in a familiar bind: I started practicing around 10, worked, put in fingerings, yadda yadda yadda, and around 1 I begin to feel the first pangs of hunger. I say to myself: "You should eat, you won't get any good work done if you are hungry." But then my eyes stray to one or another measure and I manage to eke out another 10 minutes on that... these "last-minute" practice windows are often the best ones, the most distilled. Then fatigue sets in again, my mind wanders back to lunch, and I have to be my own boss, and decide when I can eat. Delaying the decision, temporizing, I go in the other room, I check my email, I wander back to the piano, I find another productive 5 minutes, and then slowly rotating into this vortex of indecision is the question of what exactly do I want to eat? What, when, how, where: all these questions hover, unresolved. Perhaps I could decide every evening exactly what I will do the next day, make a precise schedule. But something bothers me about this: it seems to counter my free will, the joy of living in the moment. Then again, since each day of free will seems to bring the same, seemingly predetermined, indecision, what kind of free will is it?