After I’d closed down on Thursday, I realised I hadn’t done my daily words. My eyes were tired and I’d finished early to give them a rest. But not ticking that box didn’t feel right when I still had a few minutes left. So I fired everything up again while I hand-wrote my daily words, and I added them to the 36-project spreadsheet.
In the end, the only job I didn’t do on Thursday (apart from finishing the hard copy edit) was revising the premium Take One Idea… story for Patreon and Medium. That’s the ‘me’ client…Or one of me. So that moved up the priority list for Friday, along with the hard copy edit. I had something like 47 pages left of that to edit and I wished I’d just sucked on a lemon and got on with it on Thursday. But I suppose that when my eyes have had enough, they’ve had enough, and there’s not a thing anyone else can do about it.
So, Friday morning we managed to oversleep. During the night the dog had woken the poet before he woke me and while he was up, the poet took a couple of painkillers as he had a bit of a throat. The painkillers made him groggy and he slept through his alarm, which meant I slept through as well. Only half an hour, but that’s a whole time slot now.
I started with a dirty cuppa for me and a Throat Coat for him, and I fed the dog his breakfast. I put some washing through, I emptied the dishwasher, and I fed the birds. So far, the only job missed was my reading half-hour. We both took the dog on a short walk (don’t do nothing just because you missed something), and when we got back it was straight into work. I dived into the hard copy edit, completely forgetting my daily words.
I lifted my head above the parapet a couple of times, fetched us all a drink of water (make a healthy choice every day), and started to type up today’s blog post. However, when the poet went into an impromptu Teams meeting, I switched to editing again and put my headphones on. I have a very noisy keyboard that clatters loudly when I type. Apparently it’s something to do with being a touch typist, I can hear the keys clatter so I know the letter has registered.
When I have my headphones on while I’m typing, I have a typewriting sound app playing every time I hit a key or the carriage return…sorry, the Enter key. The keystrokes clatter and the Enter key pings and makes a sound just like the one a typewriter makes.
At midday it was time for our breakfast (16:8 fasting) and as he was in another Teams meeting, I went and made it for us. I played a game or two while I ate, then while he played in the garden with the dog for a bit, I came back to today’s blog post. Soon as I reached a point where I could stop, I went back to the hard copy edit.
Once I’d hit 10 pages and changed chapters, I went back and did my daily words for 15 minutes. I quickly updated my finances for the week. And I did my weekly backup.
Talking about my weekly finances, my year end accounts are now ready. That’s what happens when you do them as you go instead of leaving them until 2 days in August! (Which is what I usually do.) What a lot of time and effort that seems to have saved. Now, as soon as I get my tax assessment form, I can just fill in the boxes and off we go.
Then it was back to the hard copy edit. But after almost 4 hours on this, with eyestrain, and with interruptions from phone calls, the dog, text messages, the dog, the doorbell, the dog, I finally gave up, leaving the last few pages and the screen edits for today.
Also on the schedule for today: dental appointment. (Eek!)
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
