Tidying

I did a bunch of tidying today to prepare for getting back to work and going into the office. Some of the cleaning has less to do with the work, but more to do with my headspace.

For example, my painting desk has been a dumping ground for everything for the last four months. Things needed to be put in their proper places or have places made for them. Then I went to town on the bathroom cupboard, specifically my side. It was full of expired sunscreen (I burn easily, so I always keep a healthy supply on hand), old painkillers, and various other items like toothbrush heads for an electric toothbrush I no longer own.

Getting those two spaces organized and tidy felt good. And that’s when I tackled my nightstand. Is it still called a nightstand if it has drawers? No idea. Anyway, it's clean now and feels like a better space to be in.

Later in the day, my laminator arrived from Amazon, and I set about laminating my go-to recipe pages that currently live in an accordion-style file folder. No more spills marring my sacred spells…  errh, recipes. Again, this is just another thing that will make my life a little easier. Also, it feels way better to pull out a laminated recipe page compared to a floppy copy paper version. The tactile feel of things is important. If holding something, like a cherished tool or pen, gets you to use it more often, well, I think that’s a good thing.

Did I order more lamination sheets after I ran out of the ones that came with the machine? Yes. Yes, it did, and I have no regrets.

My BYOK is somewhere. Where? No idea. It was last scanned somewhere in California on Sunday morning at 4:28 a.m. I am really hoping to get it this week before returning to work.

I got little writing done last night, other than a blog post. So I fell about a thousand words behind last night, but I plan to catch up on the weekend. Luckily, we currently have no plans. It was funny that it felt terrible not to write. As if I had done something wrong. And I missed it. That feels good to miss writing, because that means I’m enjoying it.

I’m also trying out writing in different places using both formats of dictation and typing. Right now I’m in bed writing this, as the house is quiet and everyone is going out for a walk. That means I have no need for a silent cave to use dictation. One thing I have been experimenting with as well is different microphone setups. I don’t feel I found the right balance as of yet. I basically want a microphone on a boom that wraps around my head but doesn’t have any earphones. The ones I found are more for use with sure microphone transmitter packs and don’t work well with my laptop.

I’d like to experiment still with one of the other options Dragon has, which is to record the audio onto a device and then have it translate the sound into text. This is one of the reasons I purchased Dragon, was its ability to use audio files for translation. I think this will come into play when the weather gets nicer and I’m outside walking.

I was listening to a new audiobook by James Islington, “The Will of the Many”, and so far, it’s been very enjoyable. It’s got a bit of fantasy and science fiction elements that are blending well together. Looks like so far there’s going to be two books in the series which came out in audio around 2023. So, there should be a new one coming out soon, I imagine.

Another author I’ve discovered recently, and maybe you already know about him, his Yahtzee Croshaw. He’s got a series of books titled “Will Save the Galaxy for Food”, “Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash”, and “Will Leave the Galaxy for Good”. They are very fun stories with great sense of humour.

Okay, off to write some stories.

Good night, all.