Chris and Ingo are deep into their one-week film camp, battling illness and heat with blessed routine.

I scoot around the edges of all this activity, going to and from my day job, setting aside a stack of Ingo’s drawings at the end of the work day, knowing I was right to sign up for my own one-week writing camp in September to work on my book.

Strangely, though, just yesterday, I almost cancelled it, thinking of the expense, of missing work, and worrying about the point of it—big-picture worries that pose a real productivity threat for me.

Even my daily writing routine has been at risk.

I am unsettled by big distractions—The too-public nature of blogging! The dangers of social media! If I were to follow it to its source it is probably my complete absorption in the political news cycle.

It takes more than a Trump to bump Chris from his routine but mine can get off kilter not only by global worries but also smaller, nagging family worries (will my son find housing next year? When should I visit my mother?)—and, of course, fun: the Olympics!

All this results in a sudden confusion of priorities and worry over time passing and how best to spend it. So I look to the Chris-Ingo film camp and watch their halting, steady progress and try to stay focused.

I also find inspiration in this description I found in a library book at home about John Singer Sargent’s work habits, written by a cousin who watched him work.

“Having chosen his subject and settled himself with the sunshade, hat and paraphernalia all to his liking, he would make moan over the difficulty of the subject and say, ‘I can’t do it,’ or ‘It’s unpaintable,’ and finally, ‘Well, let’s have a whack at it.’”

So, too, every morning, I put on my sunscreen and bike four miles down the river path. I order coffee at O Café and find my favorite seat by the window for an hour of writing before work.

In Singer Sargent’s case, wrote cousin Mary, “Perfect absorption would follow,“ although she did hear him mutter at intervals, “Demons! Demons!” and “The devil’s own!”

The hat, the sunshade, the coffee—it both frees and tethers the demons.