Friday 17 January 2025: Life’s too short

Image by Anja from Pixabay

Once I’d fed the birds, had breakfast, got dressed, all those kinds of things, I checked in at my desk and went to collect the third lot of videos for the space opera workshop. But they weren’t there yet. Dean Wesley Smith is a bit of a night owl and often goes to bed at 5am in the morning. They’re about 6 hours behind us, so I wasn’t worried, and I got on with something else instead.

I finalised yesterday’s blog, chose a picture, and published it, and I shared the gig list. I also finished proofreading The Old Annexe so it could go into the bookazine. I checked the workshop, still no videos.

I went a bit off piste then and ended up writing a newsletter. I’d not done one since September, but I often go in to check everything is all right and that nothing’s changed. Well, something had changed. The entire dashboard had changed. So, of course, I had to have a play, to make sure I could still navigate my way around things.

And, oh, it was so easy! So easy I was able to move things around, delete blocks without worrying I wouldn’t know how to put others in, inserted blocks, wrote text, wrote titles, replaced images. And before I knew it, I had a newsletter!

Two of the images were too big for the image requirements, so I went into Affinity, checked the size of one image that wasn’t too big for the requirements, and they were the same! They were all .png files too. But I changed the two that weren’t working to .jpgs, and they worked! 

It only took a couple of test messages for me to check it all over and I sent it out. Before the day had finished, quite a few people had opened it. And then I spotted a mistake. I hadn’t made one of the titles bold. Ah well. If I can get into the habit of doing it every month, I’ll remember to do these things more often.

But, oh, what a dream it was to just go in, write it, move things around, and send it. EmailOctopus if anyone’s interested. I don’t know where I found it, as it doesn’t seem to show up in any of the newsletter provider roundups. But the basic (free) plan gives you 2,500 members and 10,000 emails.

I checked in with the space opera workshop. Still no videos. So I went back to The Old Annexe. I reformatted it and inserted it into the bookazine. The only thing I have left to do now is the welcome letter, which is already mostly done, and, oh yes, a brand-new short story from scratch. I have the outline for The Ace of Swords, but I haven’t got around to it yet. 

The poet came home from work and set off a chicken casserole for tea. He was off to his second band practice of the year to give another 9 songs a go. I gave up on the space opera workshop for the day (I hope everything is all right), finished today’s blog, and closed down. I had a pudding to make, a pear crumble or a pear sponge, whatever I decided when I hit the kitchen.

I still have Fallen Angel Act 1 to write, which is about 5,000 words. I still have The Ace of Swords to write, which is another 5,000 words.  And I have the space opera workshop to finish.

As I was closing down, I found out that a friend of the poet’s had died. It was as we were looking at that friend’s FB page that I saw a mutual friend had also died. And last week we lost another. Life’s so short. Too short to expend energy on things we can’t control.

Have a great weekend!

2 thoughts on “Friday 17 January 2025: Life’s too short

  1. Email Octopus sounds good! I’m so glad it’s so easy. Will definitely take a poke around there.

    Sorry to hear about the loss of friends. It can happen at any age, but we’re at the age now where it happens more often. Condolences to both of you.

    1. It was so much easier. Just one example, the font size. It used to be: tiny, smaller, small, regular, large, larger, huge… that kind of thing. Now you can choose *which* font (not just one), and sizes that go up from 6 to 106 (eg) with halves in between as well. I really like it, it works for me, and it’s starting to look nice when they come in too.

      Thank you. Three friend deaths between us (one each and a mutual) in under a week, two of them on the same day. That was tough.

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