A few Measly Steps a Day

Damping down my mode as helped my client polish off and submit a grant yesterday. The more people, the more nutty it gets.

Also worked up a Second Notice our Board has to send to a scofflaw owner. Oh, the burdens of leadership.

A spring-summer friend is leaving town and throwing a party tonight. Which reminds me, I have some work to do on her gift.

Plus the usual rounds of yuck stuff.

Hi,

R, are you going to retire or semi-retire?

I've seen movies in the park. I recommend the experience. Me - plugging along. MInor health problems are making me irritable. It's about two in the morning, and instead of sleeping I'm typing. Rats!

Hey measlies, what to call my plans: retire or semi-retired? Right now, I'm doing might be called semi-retired as I'm collecting Social Security & continuing to work as a consultant (part-time more or less by definition). I'm either too old now or not netting enough income to trigger the reduced SS benefit.

Here's what's on deck: ending my 6.6 years of working as a consultant with a Sr. center in December This brings no more grant writing ,ever. Retired from that. I'm happy to coach other writers, though. For pay.

I also attend board meetings and take minutes. No more of that.

We applied for a grant with me as the lead for researching wayfinding in clinics and hospitals. When I wrote the grant I had the concept but not the word, wayfinding. Got news from my client that we didn't get it. That would have run out to Dec 2024. But not happening. So retired from that potential. I'd been told since childhood that I had a lot of potential. I guess that's run out.

My other client work runs out in December, too. So retiring from that.

My stint as board president is supported to run out in March. Don't have faith in the other owners so not sure what I might have to do to keep hearth together. One day at a time for this, but will create ways to get away a month at a time.

I'm also cancelling my business liability insurance after December and getting a refund if I can for the last 1/6 of the year I won't use ($700 a year, about $116 back) and if any pickup client can't deal with that fact I'll turn it down.

So, I'm going to float along and see what I'm called to do.

Reu2

Hi threaders, finding a comfortable rhythm among self-time, condo yuck, and friends. The last week of December I attended a meetup to preview the year and determined that friendship would be a higher priority and code named it: Oasis. I have lots of files and folders now scatters about with Oasis on the title. As my paid working time shrinks, social time expands. Ah, this could be happiness.

Condo muck and yuck.
Some semi-good stuff we're doing with a siding upgrade. Decided that our vetting from 4 years ago was thorough enough that we would continue with our chosen vendor. They came out on Tuesday, had a proposal yesterday, and am now drafting tweaks and getting the written summary ready for a board vote. We had $30 k set aside for repairs and painting. They proposed replacing it all, and the tab dropped in at $68K. BUT, on our Reserve Study for future upkeep we had $110K, which we no longer will need to worry about. So, for the long run, we're $42K out front and thus can afford this. It also means that we will be "fully paid up" on paper, the holy grail of 30-year reserve study work.

The yuckpit is that we finally sent a 2nd Notice of Violations to our Noxious Scofflaw (NS). Sent the first one in February. NS total fines came to $950. There are a couple of emails pending about all this which I will steel myself to look at after 1.31 pm today. 92 minutes from now. Note to self: Breathe. Remain calm and silent and let him vent and rant and tantrum at the hearing.

More fun, I've used one of the notetaking/recording/transcribing AI apps (grain.com) to make quick notes from Patricia Highsmith's diaries because I had to return them to the library and I didn't have time to type them all out. This was a couple of years ago. So since I had to pay for the premium service on grain this month to work through a grant, I used the extra features to download the transcript and then Claude (an AI chat) stripped out the timestamps for me.

Had about an hour of recording and the transcription was less than 50% accurate. Yuck. But then, I found that I could borrow the ebook from my public library. Ha! A chore became fun! All I needed to do was to use my page and date references to find the quote and take a screenshot to copy into my quotes file. Finished this morning. Feels great.

On that positive note I bid good day. R

Sounds like semi-retirement on the way to full retirement to me. Congratulations, and good luck. I like the idea that friends are in your plans.
I had hoped I was done with spending money for a while., but Tom says he needs a new truck. I hope he can hold out for another year, as we've gone through most of our reserves. I don't like buying on time as it costs twice a much that way.

I'm getting my house painted. Needs it badly. Plus there's bare wood where dry rot has been replaced.. I was hoping that was the last big expense.

On a hopefully fun note, this Saturday, I'm hosting a Creativity Unlimited group. consisting of a writing group that was dying and some creative people in my church. Wish me luck. I'm bringing my karaoke machine. I hope nothing can go wrong . . . go wrong . . . go wrong.

D, looks busy and expensive for you for a spell: a new truck, house painting, repairing bare wood, set off by creativity unlimited.

Have you used Kilz paint? We are looking at it for our siding project. it's 35% cheaper than Sherwin Williams and generally gets the highest marks on review sites.

Party should be a blast, and if something goes wrong ... goes wrong ... goes wrong make it part of the time.

Today I'm approaching as a "pre-production" day because I won't get a clear run of time. Tomorrow and Friday and possibly Saturday are my production days. All around some creative yet yucky stuff for the condo. I'm inviting Joy, Fun, and Surprise to buddy along with me. Going with the Seinfeld method of getting to it every day till it's done. Immediately I started thinking of ways I might find help or compress the work. I'm in good company.

In a look about period with regards to practicing drawing. It's something I'll be a beginner at for a long time. Darren Fisher parlayed a practice of doodling into a PhD and now career rebooting people's drawing practice, said this:

Quote:

So choose an art style you love and copy it. Encourage children to while away hours drawing. Don’t worry about how it turns out. Prioritise the conscious experience of drawing over the result. With regular practice, you may find yourself occasionally melting into states of “flow”, becoming wholly absorbed. A small, regular pocket of time to temporarily escape the busy world and enter a flow state via drawing may help you in other parts of your life.

Drilling down.

1. Choose an art style you love ... Right now, it'll be single panel New Yorker style snapshots of living or creative insight.
2. Copy it. Permission to copy! Mimic! Lookalike! Style self after ...
3. Encourage children to draw. Well, encourage everyone to draw is better phrased.
4. Don't worry about how it will turn out. This is THE SWITCH that stopped most people around the age of 8. Stopped me, for sure. Other kids could draw, I couldn't. Instead of worrying ... celebrate how it turns out. Find one line, one shading, one curve where the improvement arrive this time. And make a new drawing right away with tweaks.
5. Prioritise the experience of drawing. The conscious deliberate experience. This is building out fresh neural tracks. Let it happen.
6. A regular practice ... a regular pocket of time ... and maybe you might glide into the long sort flow state.

Today's task is finding the Staedler non-photo blue pencil. Or Prismacolor Verithin. The idea is that you use the blue pencil to sketch first then overdraw in black the lines you like. When scanned the blue wouldn't show up. Turns out that modern scanners DO see the blue, but I guess I'll find out. Review by someone stalking Lynda Barry's syllabus AND lives in Seattle!

Have fun with the art, R. I find that drawing makes me happy. I think it's because it uses the right side of the brain. I keep forgetting about how good it feels just to draw. (I started drawing during a workshop. I embellished my agenda. Since then, I embellished many agendas, especially during boring meetings.

The painting job is in progress. No, I'm not painting the outside of the house. I hired someone. This is really weird. The paint from the last house painting has been peeling off. My painter planned to clean up the places where the paint was peeling - pressure wash and scrape. It turns out he's scraped about three quarters of the old paint on the house. I don't know what the previous painter did, but it sucks.

WRiting - I think I have one edit left before publishing "Refuge and Warm Tea." I'm redoing the ending of "Through Unfamiliar Waters" and then I'll put out a second edition. I have some new marketing ideas that i'm scared to try. And I'm goofing off shamelessly because I don't want to face the hard stuff. I'll write up a to do list someday soon.

that's it for me.

Hi crew, awoke today with scattered thoughts about chores, duties, follow-ups, etc. It was hard to drive out these "unwanted intrusive thoughts." Apparently, someone has named this and so it's written about on the blogs.

Here's the deal: choose my thoughts. Then I thought, what's my currrent project to fantasize about about? Pause. I repeated the question. Silence. Huh, I'm without a project.

So I then spent a very merry 10 minutes thinking about what my project will be. And the what last one was. The last one was copying quotes from Patricia Highsmith's diary. This round, I spent 20 minutes yesterday searching for a list the questions Lynda Barry pops on every page of his graphic philosophy book What It Is: the formless thing that gives things form. Ha! Now here's a project. I'll do it as a discussion prompt on Goodreads. Barry early in has a page on ... unwanted intrusive thoughts. She doesn't name them like that, but that what they were.

Having a creative project to hide in makes me a much happier, less grumpy, more patient person.

Off to Goodreads to get started. Revu2

From bridge writer Mike Lawrence: "Avoiding a fight is wise if possible."

Just what my muller has been mulling. About issues about the condo. I'll leave it at that.

Last nite, to bed without doing my nitely rituals due to exhaustion I suppose. But recovered some verve today. Remainder of the day kinda casual: nap, then out to hear some personal storytelling. Taking a stack of index or business cards to doodle on.

Which reminds me of the measly principle, also know and the William Stafford principle. When Stafford was asked what he does if a poem is not up to his usual standards, he said, 'I lower my standards.'

So, drawing seems to up status. Cezanne drew. Van Gogh, Monet. Rockwell. Schultz. Scott Adams. Lynda Barry. R Crumb. They Drew! Yikes.

But doodling? Can't name many famous peoples. Or maybe any. So I'm lowering my project title from "Learning to Draw" to "dabbling in doodling."

I'll doodle some tonight while listening to stories. Mostly catching lines for captions and doodling some doodles while I do. Revu2

Drew a random message card and it read: tidy up. Good reminder and I'll spend my time today getting to as much as I can.

I want my sense of my body to be ease. I find I tense more when working, feeling a tense body is more active? I dunno. Breathing and ease are my reminders.

Tidy Up. Breathe easy.

Let's Flow! Revu2

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. So my house is painted. The painter and his crew spent about a week scraping old paint off the walls. It seems that the previous painter used cheap paint. You could just peel it off like orange peel. Anyway, the job is finally over. The colors are pretty masculine, so I'm going to add some girly touches. I'm going to write "peace" across the garage door, and I have cutouts of doves for either side of the sign. They're coated with housepaint, so they should stand up to the weather. Also, A dove with an olive branch will be flying across my mailbox.
I love drawing. I think it's a left-brain/ right brain thing. I makes me happy. Yesterday I was thinking about what makes me happy (besides eating and watching TV.) the answer is drawing, scrapbooking, making pretty things like doves flying across my mailbox. Why don't I know this all the time? No, playing solitaire doesn't make me happy. Bad thoughts run through my brain when I do it. Don't know why. And the bigger question - why do I play solitaire when it doesn't make me happy????? Writing is happening. As predicted, rewriting the end of Through Unfamiliar Waters is harder than I expected. But it's happening. I have one epilogue to go, and then I'm done. I wonder what it would look like if I had a deadline. Hmmmmm.
Today, I took a friend to Kaiser. It was fun in that I don't see my friends as much as I used to. COVID got us used to being alone, And we don't just go out for lunch or something. Another Hmmmmm.
Cool possibility. She god a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. She says it's wonderful. I've resisted the idea. I have some apnea, but I'm afraid that I"ll sleep worse with a stupid cup attached to my face. She says that she feels more together - as if her body and her mind work better. When I get a bad night's sleep, I'm dumber than dirt. The thought of having my old brain back is an appealing one. I see the sleep doctor in September. I start Physical Therapy on Friday. We'll see what modern medicine has going for it.

Later,
D

Hi measlers. Ms. D, great you got that painting finished. We're trying Kilz paint for our siding redo that begins .... Monday! The contractor texted me that they would start that day on Wed. and it naturally scrambled my day. I walked up and rented 2 of those easels for No Parking spaces. Used a folding hand truck, two wooden cubes taped together, a couple of long porcelain tiles, and gloves. About a mile to get back, up and down hills and across a busy street. Made it, of course. Years of experience scavenging in NYC.

I'm suspecting doodling, drawing and such are much better calmers than solitaire.

My struggles right now are Way too Much To Do (WTMTD). I'll list in another post.

Friends are a true balm. Cherish all of them. We're learning that many people we know are wrestling with medical/health challenges right now. Makes us sad.

Did manage to play in a bridge tournament yesterday. Scored around 38%, not too good. Still had fun and it was my first tournament. revu2

Great news! Peace never goes out-of-style. Thank you for making your part of the world a better place!

What I like about Solitaire is that it satisfies my inate need to put things in order. Also, it's not a totally mindless activity -- it does require some strategy.

Yay! Keep at it! Good for you! I heard that a famous writer once said, "I don't like writing; I like having written."

I love my CPAP machine. I wrote about it on my blog many years ago. If you do get one, make sure the DME company does a proper mask fitting on you. Then be sure to clean the mask (and perhaps your face) prior to the first use. My mask was set too tight, and the edges dug into the bridge of my nose and I got a skin infection. I used to have a "cup-like" mask (Fisher Paykel FlexiFit), but I switched to Nasal Pillows, which the new sleep doctor recommended. The improvement in comfort was unbelievable!

thanks for the information, Square Peg. Guy.

On my Steinbeck thread I've copied in an article on dealing with pressured and busy times. That's me, yet again. I'll walk through it and comment for my own benefit. Thought it might be of help on this thread because it's about doing measly things, sometimes.

Quote:

Quick Summary However much you try to slow down and avoid activities that consume time and energy to no purpose, there will still be occasions when you are going to be busy and pressured. That’s a simple fact of modern organizational life. So how to deal with it? 1. Always think ahead about the most likely consequences, not just the ones that you want to happen. The idea here is simple: to try to avoid causing yourself more problems and stress through a moment’s thoughtless action. One of the commonest consequences of being under pressure is a failure to look ahead. It seems so important to get a quick result. But cutting corners, taking risks without proper consideration, and rushing into precipitate action can all cost you far more time in cleaning up the mess afterwards than you saved at the time.

Ha, where was this advice a week ago? We've had our third MacBook adapter fail in less than a year (all after market) and I thought to get a refurbished one because they are so heavily tested before being re-sold. Ordered the MagSafe adapter ... we need the MagSafe 2 adapter, I am reminded after I open the package.

I think the key might be to take a Polish Minute as a last chance to catch unwanted results. A Polish Minute is a ritual moment of quiet right before leaving to house to review if you've gotten everything you require for the errands ahead.

Revu2

There's a story I heard about a child rushing up to the school house steps pushing their bike. The Assistant Principal was standing there and asked, "Why didn't you get on the bike?"

The kid replied: "I was running so late I didn't have time."

I get the point. Even pressed for time, taking time to bring in the right tools or help won't slow you down, but instead increase your pace.

I'm actually needing a tricycle or trike, AI is one wheel, support is another, and an assistant is the 3rd. AI is onboard and I'm getting better at my instructions. Support is onboard as my partner offered to help "any way she could." Support would be great, though how she supports me needs work, in my emotional opinion.

The 3rd, getting an assistant I'll make some effort on today and see what happens. Had one but she now has a full time job and once or twice she withdrew because of exhaustion from doing too much.

Venturing forth in search of a fresh and bright assistant. Wish me great success. Revu2

Oh brother, this is the one for me.

Quote:

2. It’s always worth taking ample time to get a message across to others. It’s the same temptation: to rush through some phone call, message, or conversation because you can’t really spare the time and you have so much still waiting for you to do. Resist it! If people can see that you’re harassed, they’ll often try to be helpful by saying they understand when they don’t. Few situations are more maddening than discovering, too late, that someone you were relying on for a key element in a project misunderstood what you said that you wanted.

I'm miss using speed reading. When I read email I need to get through 50 to 80 emails a day as quick as I can. My latest mistake is applying that same fast read to everything I read. This has had the follow muffs:

1. mistook "calcium carbonate" for "sodium carbonate" at a sale at a massage supply store. I can't use the calcium version and because it was a close out sale there's no return. $10 lesson.
2. read a friend's email as confirming morning meeting times when she'd written afternoon.
3. ordered the wrong adapter for my macbook: the magsafe (1) and not the one I needed, magsafe (2).

Lesson and adjustment: BEFORE starting to read set approach: Is this OK for a skim and "star" or must I take my care?

link to post

Quote:

3. Consider every request to attend a meeting with the greatest skepticism. Your default position should be to stay away. Avoid any meeting with no clear agenda, no obvious ending time, and no purpose that makes sense to anyone except the organizer. Don’t assume you can go and quietly do work at the back. It’s more discourteous than staying away and it rarely works.

To underscore my seriousness about this, I've made a table with these 9 tips across the top and MR BIV in the first column. MR BIV comes from the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain and means M istakes, R ework, B reakdowns, I nefficiences, & V ariations.

I've picked the cross with avoiding meetings with I nefficienies. My pain is that 'meetings' are often fun! I mean meetings in the sense of a gathering of a group for any purpose. Like, to talk about film. Or a current one, we had tentative plans to go to a Tom Robbins (yes, the writer) celebration in a nearby town that I am weasling out of due to needing that time for work on a grant. Or even last night ... friend was performing with her band and I didn't go to her show because I have to protect my energy. Even yesterday after a nap I didn't have much focus so I did little things like attach a button and logged and filed receipts.

On the other fingers, I'm counting down my days to retirement. Around 122 today. Many, many meetings will be wiped off my slate.

What you wrote about is so true, and I can always use the reminder. For me it's often "did I remember to bring everything? Phone? Personal effects that I don't feel like posting here? Things I promised someone I'd bring?
I've been horribly lazy lately. I think part of it is physical - never mind the details. And part of it is mental. There are things I want to do that I don't know how to do - find someone to photoshop my cover art. Make my website - no I still haven't done much with it. I think I do know how to sign up with Pubby and find out what Amazon has that's like Pubby. Right now, I'm finishing the editing, which I know how to do, but once I'm done I will have to face the fact that I don't know . .. .
Success is motivating, and I think I need some success right now.

I'm thinking about Barbara Sher's comments about making lists that start at the end and work up the beginning.

Anyway, Good luck with all your endeavors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by delightful I'm thinking about Barbara Sher's comments about making lists that start at the end and work up the beginning.

Reverse Planning. Big fan.

About your other new challenges, those could be more fun than you might think. They're different, fresh skills, new connections to people.

My review quote today:

Quote:

4. Practice at least a dozen firm but polite variations on “no” until you can say them in your sleep. Then use them whenever needed—which will be all the time. The best way to stop yourself becoming overloaded is to refuse to take an anything else. If the person giving you yet more work is your boss, ask for clear priorities, explaining that you need be sure what to drop to make way for the new piece of work. You’ll be surprised how often this will make a boss reconsider.

I'm pairing this with 'V ariation' from the affirming side. Living in Seattle after moving here from NYC, I see lots of people confused about "No." They too often will agree to something and then later fail to show up or follow through. It wasn't till I'd found the book, "I Wish I'd Said That" by Linda McCallister that it finally made sense. The issue is what is the speaker intending. In the style she calls 'reflective' someone agreeing to something which they have some probability of failing to do is acceptable because their intention (probably out of awareness) is to keep THIS conversation harmonious. They feel a "no" would be disruptive and the other people might not see them in a good light.

At great expense (meaning my assistant did it) I've reproduced her test and listed a thumbnail of the scoring. Take a look.

Test (it's set to "viewer" make a copy to use)

Style Descriptions

Once had a great riff with someone as we fantasized about marketing a set of cards with variations of NO on each one. One for any occasion.

Here's a quote we might have used:

“Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

Comment on yesterday: better left behind. I just couldn't settle in, made lots of mistakes, and had to deal with messes anonymous students leave as they move out. Stuff like blocking the sidewalk with furniture. Plus, in an effort to avoid mistakes I held up an email so I could review it later ... and there was no later and I forgot to send it!

OK, breathe.

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5. Learn the two key ways of reading: skimming for relevance and filleting for data. When you skim a document, your sole purpose should be to decide whether it contains anything worth reading. Let your gaze run down the page looking for key words and phrases. If you find any, put a small “x” in the margin and move on. Then glance over the number of “x” markings. Less than 5-6 means don’t mess with it further unless one of those is essential. Filleting is going back to the “x” marks and collecting the data you need. The best way is to make your own notes in a small book. Then toss the original.

Good reminder. I have many small books, but one main large spiral bound, college ruled notebook. One of the ways I "fillet" the data is by adding any quotes from books to goodreads or here on the quotes thread. I like the feeling of knowing where they are, that they are automatically tagged as my contribution, others can find them, and there's computer search to get back if I want.

Ah, reading, and other simple delights and pleasures are trimmed to their bones over the next several days. Yucky and I don't Like It!

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6. Don’t accept what you’re told on trust, save from proven sources. When you’re rushed, the temptation will be to “save time” by accepting what you’ve been told. Always check. It’s well worth the time. You’ll look an idiot if the information isn’t true, and no one will accept the excuse that you were in a hurry.

Ay! Dealing with this around data transfer from my mutual fund to my broker. The last time I called to find out what had gone wrong, the broker said they would put in another request to the mutual fund. And that I should allow 2 weeks before calling back. I called the mutual fund the next day and asked did they received the transfer request? Nope. It now took most of an hour with calls back and forth and then setting up a conference call. That whole dance was 2 weeks ago, and still the data hasn't arrived!

It works in the other direction, too. This week I called the recycling pick-up service to alert them that our bins were moved to the opposite corner of our driveway due to construction. Really needed during a busy week? I dunno, but it covered me in case they missed it and wanted to charge me for a return trip.

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7. Become familiar with the notions of estimates and orders of magnitude. You can often spot an error or problem almost instantly, without any calculation, by realizing that it is impossible. That’s especially true with numbers. If you know the answer has to be less than 10, and if what is on the page is 14.7, it has to be wrong. No more analysis is needed than that. One of the most useful skills I ever taught myself was the ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the right answer. I rarely needed to know any more to save myself huge amounts of time on analysis.

Yup. When I think of this I sense something is out of scale. As I collaborate a lot, I find aligning all team members at the right level of precision at each stage a continual dance. Around the drafting stages details like punctuation and grammar are dimmed because whole sections might be tossed or rewritten. After the rough work is done, structure and clarity rise to the prime seat. In the last stretch run to a launch grammar and punctuation get our best attentions.

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8. Know when to stop. The more you’re under pressure, the more you will be tempted to press on working well beyond the point where your attention and effectiveness begin to fail. Don’t do it. It seems as if it will help, but you’ll most likely either have to do all that work again or waste time clearing up the mess you made for yourself. And you’ll have denied yourself the rest needed even to do that properly.

Everyday question for me. My goal of working 4 hours a day on a grant is seldom reached. Some days I can't fit in more than 2.5 because of other interruptions. A long day might mean 3.5 hours, but then I must stop.

I stop less from today's momentum than to protect my tomorrow's store of energy. I've discovered that overextending leads to much worse results the next day. Say I work 5 hours on Monday. I wake up Tuesday tired out, and a mediocre half hour is hard because my mind feels like it's full of fog.

There are many options to pre-arrange with myself when to stop. Pick one, have back-ups.