(title quote from Kipling, of course)
Some weeks back, as I’ve blogged about I decided to push my day from seven writing hours to eight, with the fifth day for blogging and email. Surprisingly, despite the increased amount of care our pets need these days, it turned the end of the day from this hour when I do nothing to one that’s productive. As with most changes, there are downsides.
First off, I keep forgetting to take breaks. This makes it harder to get the non-writing stuff done — writing my GOTV postcards, calling contractors, catching up on non-writing paperwork, etc. — and also leaves me more exhausted at day’s end. Not good.
It’s particularly bad for working on Jekyll and Hyde because if I’m watching a movie or a TV show, the impulse to finish it and then take a break usually wins out. But then I just queue up the next episode or the next movie.
Not taking breaks means that I also don’t do my exercise. I’ve had to break my exercise periods down into five-minute bursts, occasionally ten minutes, as I’m usually watching the pets and they get in the way. Either Wisp assumes my body language means “I want to pet you.” or Trixie stares up at me wondering why I got off the couch and abandoned her.
She’s hard to say no to.
Setting a timer is a good way to make myself take breaks but I’m rotten about doing that. I need to start. Either the “pomodoro” method (five minutes every half hour) or the last 15 minutes of every hour. I do them both, erratically, and they both seem to work.
I can also get really bad about taking lunch breaks. It’s good to sit down, read, eat slowly but I keep rushing back to work. Still, I’ll get the hang of it.
My one day for blogging and emptying out email isn’t work as well as it did at the start, either. I’m not sure what the problem is. Well partly it’s that I’m active online on various blogs more and the comments add to the email but beyond that … I don’t know.
This week was reasonably productive despite a number of errands: car in for a minor repair, getting fall covid and flu shots before Secretary Brainworm shuts down the access, various paperwork stuffs that had to be done. The writing time went heavily to watching Dark Shadows‘ parallel world plotline, plus rewriting more of the book. I’m feeling more confident now that the chapters are taking shape (should have been shaping them sooner, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that).
I got a couple of stories for The Local Reporter out of this week’s city council meeting, one on lessons learned from Tropical Storm Chantal, and one on Carrboro’s long-term development plans. And a Con-Tinual Whodunnit panel I did awhile back is live on Facebook.
On the Plush Dog front, he’s adapting well to walking in his harness and is reasonably quiet when he’s stuck in the cage alone (the gabapentin doses help, I’m sure).
Not an exciting week to talk about, but such is life. All rights to images remain with current holder. All-Star cover by Irwin Hasen.
