👟👠 Let's talk about it... (#95)

Hi ! Welcome back. We are done with February! (OMG). Today I am writing about work, work and more work. And flowers on patios. And talking instead of writing. And girlfriends writing letters to wives, and also mistresses apologising to wives for affairs…. 😀 - Eve D.❣️

What I did this week:

It would probably be easier to talk about what I didn’t do this weekend: I didn’t walk or visit the gym. Not even once. Meh, you win some you lose some. I was busy: I am in “deep-work” which means I need to be left alone with no interruptions so I can think things through and then act on them. Lots more about my work week below, but for now let’s just agree that it was a “quiet week”.

🌸 Micole cleaned out our patio, which we totally underutilise. Once she moved stuff around we realised what we needed was an outside table so we could eat dinner there every night. And guess what? Turns out we had a garden table just lurking in the corner of one of our unused rooms. I suspect that you do not have six-person furniture floating around your house, that you have completely forgotten about. That pretty much sums up my house. It’s a place that keeps on giving, but usually what it gives me is a lot of headache. My house is a character in my life, kind of like New York was in Sex and the City, but in a much less glamorous, less sexy sort of way. I am going to write about it in some future newsletter. But! The patio is well on its way to being pretty (we bought new plants!), and I am enjoying the outdoor dinners (except….bats!).

💰️ Our suburb committee wants every house to have its house number painted on the sidewalk, to make it look homogenous and helpful (no obligation to do it though). They were looking for a kid entrepreneur to do this, so of course I volunteered Zac, and he got the job. This might be a disaster in disguise! We received the paint and the stencils this week, and thought…how difficult can this be? It was bloody difficult! We had to abandon ship after painting just one digit, and needed a “better system, and better supplies”. 🤣 We try again next week. (If it works he’ll make a pretty bundle though, so there is hope 💵 )

🧗‍♂️ As a consolation reward, Zac went rock climbing, which is a workout and a half. His friend and he were sweating buckets by the end of it. They had fun, and I had fun because although I took my computer to work I actually gossiped the time away with Laura.

☕️ As my consolation reward, I went the Americano with whipped-cream route. because if you’re not going to the gym, or working out in any way, why not go all in on the fad and also consume a ton of whipped cream??

⛸️ The Olympics are over but I am still in love with the Alysa Liu’s final skating piece. Whenever I see it online (often!) I treat it like everyone treats Tom Holland’s Umbrella performance…I pause whatever I am doing and I watch it. I don’t think I included the link last time so here it is: Watch watch watch!! (And wait for 1:52min to see her joy overflow.)

“Not working 9-5”

I don't “work” on Fridays, which is probably not that uncommon. But I also don’t “work” on Mondays. I thank my father for this. He refused to make any major decisions or changes on a Monday, and I have extended his line of thinking. It’s one of my smartest decisions.

First, let me quickly clarify that when I say “I don’t work” I mean “I don’t dance to anyone’s tune”. I am not available for meetings, phone calls, emails, or (God forbid) any deliverables. I cannot begin to explain to you how freeing it is to know that I have the whole day (two, in fact!) to catch up on stuff, think things through, pick up scattered pieces and quieten the mind. Monday is for deep strategy, research and prep work; it can still be stressful but is manageable. Friday is much more chilled - it’s when I try to catch up on reading and the Zeitgeist in general. And although I never actually get more than one or two uninterrupted hours (life still happens, and by “life” I mean “kids”, mostly) I do appreciate the intentionality of a slower pace.

The one massive advantage of having a “work-free” Monday is that my Sundays are calm. I used to take Sunday night to plan and prepare for my week ahead, and sometimes I will still do this but only if I want to. Otherwise, I don’t have to worry about it, because I know that this is exactly what Monday is for. Huge win!

Speaking of work…:

If I wasn’t working as a <waves hand madly at all this>, I’d be a writer. For sure! I cannot tell you how I wish I could just retreat not for two days but for ten days, or twenty, and have no obligations other than to write what I want. And yes, yes, yes. I know this is not the definition of a writer. Real writers write in between work shifts, or at break of dawn, or at midnight if they have to. No excuses. And boy, do I have excuses.

I watched Micole garden on the patio this week, and I was reminded how, once, many many years ago when Micole was very sick as a toddler (story for another day) I took up gardening as a means to stay sane. I signed up for a two-year landscaping course (part time), and spent countless hours in my garden. Today, that seems like an impossible ask. Despite “not working” Monday and Friday (see above), there is no way I could take up gardening at this scale again. I literally do not have the time for it. My weekends are packed, and so are my weeks. I could (maybe) squeeze in an hour here or there, but my garden is big, and there are other priorities.

It’s weird though, isn’t it? How did I have more time as a startup entrepreneur and single mom of a (sick) toddler than I do today? It doesn’t seem right. I should be phasing work out, not phasing work in. This is what I mean when I say I miss the Covid days. I need life to just slow the fuck down, thanks.

Let’s talk about it…

Last note about work…. With AI in the air (and everywhere else), there are clever apps that take a dictation from you and the reorganise your ramblings into coherent thoughts. I was sent a beta version of the AudioPen desktop version to play around with (it’s great!) which kind of led me down the road of speaking into my phone instead of writing. So that’s what I am doing now. I talk into my phone (or my computer) all the time, and Google keep transcribes everything I say. This is far from AudioPen’s system, because Google Keep does not organise or “clean up” my thoughts; it just serves as a reminder of things I don’t want to forget. This is obviously not revolutionary, but it is new for me, and I am loving it. It means I can drive and think out loud, and then have a record of the process. It’s a massive time saver, and it’s also slowly teaching me to speak coherently on-the-spot, under pressure.

Out of interest, this is an example of the transcript note that resulted in the section you just read: “We can also speak about how I am getting used to the idea of talking and dictating notes as opposed to typing and writing them um freeze up a lot of time and it also clarifies the way I speak and it helps me together my thoughts quicker but it's so very much work in progress”. (I laugh at myself every time I tell my computer or AI that “we“ are going to be doing something.)

What I found online:

💓 I know linked to an article about dementia last week, but here is another one. It’s written by a woman as a letter to her boyfriend’s wife. The wife has early-onset dementia (has had for ten years), and lives with them (and her two children). How beautiful and amazing is that? Read it here.

☀️ This is a story about interesting paths a climate-change journalist chose, in order to follow her heart. Her story is inspirational, but the reason I am sharing the article is because I found this to be such a beautiful, intelligent piece of journalism. A joy to read. 

What I watched:  

I watched Brendan Fraser’s Rental Family, which is set in Japan and is about how an American actor is hired by a local agency to offer people “emotional connections” by role-playing whatever roles they deem necessary to heal trauma etc.

I am not going to give anything away (it’s a somewhat-gentle, good movie that will spark a lot of conversation), but after I watched it I went down Wikipedia rabbit hole and there are agencies like this in real life in Japan.

Here is a wild example of the service they offer: a man can hire a woman to pretend to be his mistress, and to apologise to his wife for having an affair with him. You are already wondering, “wtf?”, right? To clarify…1)when a woman discovers her husband’s affair, the affair is considered the mistresses’ fault and if she apologises there is a good chance the wife will forgive and forget the whole thing and 2)under this agency-scenario, the wife forgives the (fake) mistress, and the husband continues to have a secret affair with his real mistress. Like I said, WTF?

Next week:

I’m looking forward to spending the weekend with G (I am cooking him dinner. It will be duck a’la something-or-other!) and then another week of grinding away, I guess. I really need to get back into the gym, and back onto a trail, and also back to reading fiction. It’s also my last week of being 52yrs old, which I will try to not think about too much.

Thanks for reading!

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