It’s a rainy Sunday evening, and time for number 21. It’s going to get a little bit harder to know which number it is once we leave January.

Personal News

I put in a full work day yesterday, and I only managed to work a couple of hours today. I felt my brain getting smooth, and I needed to take a break. I’m still pretty far behind. I’m not sure how this week is going to be.

Upcoming Events and Such

Boskone in a couple of weeks, Norwescon a little bit after that, Baycon in July… there are still a couple of other trips I’d like to add, but it’ll be a struggle getting the time to go.

There is never enough time.

The Topic: Stopping Activities and Simplifying

There are chores we pick up at an early age, and tasks we acquire that give us no joy. A few years ago, I figured out I could make some of those tasks go away, and it was like a weight lifted off my chest.

I may have talked about this before. I hate folding laundry, and it seemed like I was going to have to fold laundry for the rest of my life, until I realized that I can just put everything on hangars. Putting shirts and pants on hangars doesn’t bother me as much as performing origami on them and cramming them into drawers. Socks? Just make sure they’re all the same and they can just go in the drawer as they are. Shorts and underwear don’t go on hangars, but that’s okay. Almost all laundry folding is gone from my life, and it is amazing.

I don’t like the buzz the car makes to remind you to put your seatbelt on. It turns out, as long as I fasten my seatbelt before putting the key in the ignition, I’ll never need to hear that buzz again. One less annoyance in my life.

It’s not so easy to put away the annoyances at work. The toolset for managing tasks and user stories bothers me more than it should, yet I have to interact with it every day. Now that I think about it, there are tons of tiny annoyances at work. It’s death by a thousand papercuts. I’m not sure how I’m going to simplify.

I’ve made some progress in eliminating Doomscrolling from my life. Killing Twitter was the major step. I spend less time on the other sites. I still check to see how my friends are doing, but I don’t obsess over it like I had been. If you’re trying to lighten your social media burden as I have, the first step is to remove the social media apps from your phone. Do this, and I guarantee an improved quality of life.

Simplifying is almost always the right choice. This is a pretty rich sentiment coming from me, as I overthink and overcomplicate so many things.