A few Measly Steps a Day #2

4.7.25. One of my to do tools, I guess, is time blocking. UNTIL Saturday, I’d leave hard stuff due to other people till after 1.00 pm 3 or 4 days a week. Since Friday, I’ve seen our dear condo has a major crisis. Yet, I must keep a corner of time for myself soon after getting out of bed to keep my sanity.

Long ago I noticed my best mental state is 3 hours after I awaken (whenever that is). With this crisis, and incoming work, this is too long. So, today, I cut it in half, to 90 min., then added 15 minutes for those first moments out of bed to set up the kettle and wash my face.

During that 90 minutes today I posted here and on the film society discord channel.

Made a discovery yesterday that will boost my output rates. After I finished Shoji Morimoto’s Rental Person, I wanted to post several ¶s to the quote section of Goodreads. I’m also learning my new mini 7 ipad. So, dictated the section, and found the transcript. The transcript was over 90% right, much better than my vintage experience with MacSpeech back in the day. As I had everything set up by my desktop I wondered if the full sized keyboard could be patched onto my mini. Yes, it could. Plus, I noticed I can pause and continue on the same recording file. These are helpful things to know.

HI, everyone.

Bad morning - My computer was taken over by a pop up. Turning off the power didn't help. Good afternoon. Geek Squad fixed it.

Hi D, sad moments when we have to deal with intentional harm like that. Happy the Geek Squad helped. I remember their PR campaign before Best Buy bought them out.

Does the Geek Squad still make house calls?

I finished one short Python course and got the certificate. A second course isn't very useful (using Python to automate Excel); not sure if I'll bother to "test out of it" or just drop it. The best way to automate Excel is to learn VBA (which is built in) and use that. Just output the data to CSV, and then call the VBA macro to do whatever you think you need Excel for.

The openpyxl library is annoying. If you're "married" to Python, you're better off using Gnuplot, Octave or other data visualization tools rather than Excel.

I am considering taking courses online to get more ideas on how to use ChatGPT.

On the creative front, I have finished one short story which incorporated some thinking I have done over 12(!) years. It felt so relieving to condense so much thinking in a short story that I found myself more effective at and interested in my paid work. That in turn made me realize how important it is for me to balance paid work and creative writing.

Hello crew. SPG, thanks for the run-through on the various approaches to coding and applications you are learning. Just looked up VBA. It's the backbone for macros. Ha. I've used a few of those.

TCJ, congrats on getting your story completed. I like your winsight about toggling between creative and work dashes and how one supports the other.

Small adjustments today AND big messes grow messier before the settle down. The tweak was resetting my home page on Firefox. I use Teamup as my planner and calendar, and had it as the default home page for quick reference. Lately, it hasn't been acting right, so put it on Chrome, leaving me to find a new home page for Firefox. After some searches for things like daily reflections or quotes, I remembered that Vulture asked Gary Gulman to collect the 366 comedy tips he tweeted out one per day for a year.

First tip: record every show you do. Not sure how to apply that to my own life yet, but it's got me thinking.

The mess is our condo's bookkeeping service just changed hands, and the new owners need to be brought up to speed on what we need. They had a short and unprofessional non-handoff from the previous owners, thus the new owners are clueless. Meanwhile, 6 weeks of unpaid bills from our vendors are piling up. Who do they complain to: our Board, which is proper.

This being my home, and me being the most able & caring owners, I get to put my shoulder to these boulders and push against the frictions of poor planning on their part (why transition to a new owner during tax-filing season) and needed security checks at the bank. And, our new account rep lives in the Philippines (WTF?) Complicating matters is our condo owners failed to quorum in March and we only got a fresh board with the re-try in April. Oy vey.

Then, 3 days from now a major gig should drop in my lap.

Good grief.

Inside, I have Leisure Lynx and Condom Mess and they are alternately competing ~ dancing ~ usurping each other for my only body & mind, space, time, & effort. Today, I'm going to let Leisure Lynx run till I'm back from a play, and then Condo Mess will have its time until I watch a movie this evening.

I'll need to put in timeouts: sleep, naps, pauses, breaks, free moving moments, and rituals at the Wailing Wall.

Condo Mess getting messier as I’m convinced we must change out our bookkeeper. They’ve been bought out and their transition has been botched, they raised their prices without notice, yada, yada, yada.

Of course Leisure Lynx DID have a whole month planned for a paid project that now must swim with the Condo Mess.

CUT TO ritual at the wailing wall.

When I read Condom Mess, I could not believe my eyes. Then I continued reading and realized it was a typo in Condo Mess.

It reminded me how over twenty years ago I published an important document at work, visible to dozens of people who worked remotely across the globe. I edited and proofread the document late into the evening, keeping my colleagues in the office and perceptibly annoyed with my inability to let go and just publish it and go home and let others do that, too. But despite my efforts, a typo slipped in and somebody from Sweden caught it and pointed it out to me.

I had "pubic" instead of "public" in my document.

I do wonder, if I were able to get into a time machine with Grammarly in tow and be transported back into that time, would Grammarly catch that typo?

Great catch! I've also suffered the pubic, public miss.

Grammarly is a style of Ai, and my confession is I first recorded this post into my ipad mini, and then edited from there their Ai generated transcript. I'd thought I'd fixed it, only I must have not replaced the clipboard with the changes. Another factor is that I played with editing on the teeny keyboard I bought, on that tiny little screen.

I no longer am within the SF's editing window, so it will have ride on through time. Or maybe I'll delete the whole post and reload it. [Here's what I learned: there is a 4-hour window for editing/deleting a post. After than I would have to ask a moderator to delete it.]

Awoke this morning ignited by Rage about all the pressures I'm feeling. The nearest cultural phenom I could match it to was holiday rage. Quick search and found these tips:

The discrepancy between your model and reality may be perceived as a threat which can then elicit anger.

So, what can you do about it?

There are four actions you can take:

1. take a breath
2. Assess the nature of the threat, your model of the “world” and whether or not a real threat exists.
3. Think about what could happen if you react in the way you are just about ready to do.
4. Choose an appropriate response.

Okay, I'm breathing. Calming my self down. Saying: Just hold close to each moment for now.

My world model that's shredded is how I have mapped out the next 30 days to handle a complicated book review project. AND now comes an external bookkeeping service who was sold/bought and the new owners are clearly overcharging already, replacing staff without adequate briefing and training, meanwhile they are not paying our bills, which are piling up, and the unpaid people are, rightly, pressuring us for payment. Their getting up to speed to pay the bills may take another 5 days. They are charging their high rates for our time to get them on track again!

I'm in the center off all of these and it's an emotional carousel. Coping and assessing with a Coggle mindmap that's getting a lot of attention.

Breathe.

I am hypomanic. I accomplished more in one particular matter at work than I had, in that matter, over several months prior to becoming hypomanic.

But this is getting to be too much. It is not fun anymore. I am about to take Thorazine as a rescue medicine and hope that it will produce enough sleep to nip this deceluin the bud.

Walter Mosley in his Masterclass says get your hero in a predicament and then ramp it higher. I'm now in a Mosley story: my bank quite rightly declined to allow an out of country staff person at our current bookkeeping service to have signing powers in the account. Meaning: they can't write checks.

TCJ: oy. If you are into natural remedies, Valerian, kava kava, and other herbs have a soothing, relaxing effect.

My second monster project did indeed land as promised yesterday. Oh, what fun I'm having now!

I am through with this. Just dizzy as a side effects of meds, it through with it

Of herbs, I only tried Valerian root years ago to no avail. I should try kava kava. Maybe it will soothe me

I drink Yogi Tea Bedtime Caramel. It contains poppy flower parts.

My wife was discharged from the hospital. The COBRA election means two things:
1. I pay more than $2000 per month to keep the coverage. (Yuck!)
2. All co-pays are zeroed out because my wife met the out-of-pocket maximum (Yeah!)

I have a hernia operation scheduled for next week, but I'm not sure who can drive me home yet.

Update on the jobless thingie...
Soon after getting laid off, I signed up for a lot of things at a frenzied pace. Then I got a call from someone who said to go see someone named Reshaun and bring Birth Certificate, Driver's License, SS card, a piece of mail.

A few days beforehand, I had only a vague idea that I had to go somewhere. I forgot the meeting was arranged by phone. I couldn't find a trace of the meeting anywhere in my email. It even seemed like someone wanted to set me up for a good physical in person identity theft. Thank goodness I recorded enough details on my Google calendar to vet it out.

Anyway, I still have no idea what the "WIOA" program is, except that it helps "displaced workers" get re-trained for a new career and not have to meet the reporting requirements for collecting unemployment insurance. But now I'm worried I'll have to sit in a classroom in a nearby city for > 20 hours per week.

2. is not bad. I was in a similar situation in 2017 and I think everything restarted in the spring with copays and out-of-pocket maximum. Two deductibles per year, too. That they allowed to carry over the maximum from when you were employed to now that you will be on Cobra is a good thing.

Hi team mates. I see we're all struggling with surprise developments. SPG, whatever helped you "forget" that appointment, I want it.

I'm exploring a quote from Eileen Caddy about tough situations:


Watch Love Open All Doors For You

If you find yourself in a situation which is hard to accept and love, there is always something you can do about it if you want to; for as you go into the silence and seek within, Spirit will throw the light of truth on the situation and reveal to you why you are where you are, and why you are doing what you are doing.

You may be sure there is a very good reason for it and that there are vitally important lessons to be learnt. Until you change your attitude and learn to love where you are, who you are with and what you are doing, you will have to remain in that situation. As soon as those lessons have been learnt and you truly love what you are doing and do it wholeheartedly for Spirit, then you will move on to something else. Watch love open all doors for you.

~ Guidance received by Eileen Caddy

Even have begun to collect theme songs: CSN&Y, Love the One You're With (rewritten to Love the Mess You Get, I will Survive, Love is all you Need, I can do That (A Chorus Line). Humming Luv the Mess you Get all day.

Wow, you all have your challenges.


I don't know why typos are so hard to find but they are. I can proof the same piece ten times and still miss typos. This isn't a typo story, but - I reread the same piece probably twenty times over the time period of a year and a half. Didn't see the mistake. Weasel was threatening Alex with Alcatraz. Didn't see the mistake. Finally realized that the prison had been closed about fifty years before the book was supposed to take place. What makes this particularly sad is that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Alcatraz Island is in SF Bay.


SPG I bet your happy to have your wife back home. I hope she's healing nicely/all better.


My calming down medications of choice are Magnesium glyconate (prescribed by doctor,) and decaf green tea.


My life is pretty simple at the moment. My challenge - I caught a stupid cold, and I'm laying low till the germs die off. I'm loving arranging flowers for church. I am not loving doing admin work for church.


Also, I have some walnut burl that I'm polishing up for a fundraiser.


That's it for me.

Have a lot of good days, everyone.

p.s. the name Liesure Lynx - brings back good memories.

What a good quote, Revu2!

Also, since I am a late comer to the thread, mind telling me what is behind the name Revu2? Does it have to do with reviewing your own work?

What appointment?


LOL hehe

SPG, This appointment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SquarePegGuy Then I got a call from someone who said to go see someone named Reshaun and bring Birth Certificate, Driver's License, SS card, a piece of mail. A few days beforehand, I had only a vague idea that I had to go somewhere.

CTJ ~ Re: Revu2, source of this nickname is floating in my 'vague memory' part of my brain. Something to do with reviewing plays. Also, a play on words with the idea of support being a type of review of one's experiences. The "2" likely comes from wanting a # to unique-itize my handle, and this was the 2nd forum, following our exodus from Barbara Sher's discussion site because Barbara was shuttering it.

Theme for today is "Random." Originally meant 'great speed' and 'headlong rush.' The 1650's added "having no definite aim or purpose, haphazard, not sent in a special direction," A post on Reddit/etymology said "so it shares a common root with modern French randonner (to go for a hike)."

So now I can add it as a facet of several similar ideas I use to discharge pressure:
A. a Listless Day.
B. Meander.
C. Putter Around. And now
D. Random acts of Mood.

Hi SPG, I failed to notice your comment on my comment had a comment of laughing smiliies. Got me. Message to self: slow down and look for the tells.

Caddy's phrase: do it wholeheartedly for Spirit, has been rolling around me head. So, like I do, I google searched it, and found an interesting blog. Patrick Buggy riffed on Brené Brown's 10 Guideposts for wholehearted living.

Guidepost 1: Cultivating Authenticity and Letting Go of What Other People Think

Put Guidepost 1 Into Practice:

A. Identify who you are when you’re at your best. Make a list. (“When I’m at my best, I am ______.”) Then, make it a habit to show up in that way. Celebrate your best moments with a “That’s like me!”

B. Notice when you’re trying to please others, or get caught in worrying about what others think. Note these moments with a “Needs work” and shift back to your authentic self.

As I have set aside today for dealing with the condomess, I'll get many moments to practice. Showing up at my best is putting what other owners, and the crisis vendor of the moment, are doing or not doing aside, focus on only the pieces I want to take up today, do them with a smile (yuck, do I have to?), and celebrate my progress. Accept I may not get it all done.

As to pleasing others, I've been gradually stripping that out of my thinking and behaving. I'm more succinct and direct (while reining my "blunt" side.) I want no misunderstanding about what I think and feel about being people getting a free ride off my efforts. As most of today is solo time, I'll be swatting my grumbling away as I wholeheartedly [we'll see] do the other chores.