Daily Journal – Day 543: And the slump continues

Or maybe it doesn’t.

Woke up early and didn’t write and forgot to meditate. Why yes, I really need to get back to my routines.

I did read a lot, though.

I had breakfast and my husband showed up early and then we had our little excursion to the hardware store. That store always feels rather overwhelming and the way my husband organizes his hardware store lists and post-its doesn’t really help. But we got most of what we were looking for even though it meant trudging up and down all the aisles to find things repeatedly.

We came back home 90 minutes later, put all the stuff away and then continued to talk about the most pressing renovation projects. Next up will be the painting of the balcony. The thing that we have been planning to do for about three years or so. My husband had already found the first sander but we have two and we always use them both when working on the balcony. That’s a lot of wood to free from paint and unlike my mother-in-law I am perfectly happy using power tools.

So we went to the garage which is stuffed to the gills with boxes, bicycles and all kinds of things but the missing sander was not where it was supposed to be. We decided to get rid of about half the boxes and rearranged the rest in a way that we can still reach the shelves in the back. No sander. There’s a mattress in the garage and I was thinking about putting it on top of a pile of boxes. The pile had a slope, though, and so I lifted the uppermost cardboard layer to see if that could be made plane and lo and behold – the missing sander. So now we at least have the necessary equipment to start the whole balcony thing.

Now we only need to get lucky with the weather so that we have a few dry days in a row at a time where we can devote huge blocks of time to renovation work. Fun!

Then we went out and had Chinese food and sushi for lunch. It was nice to do something together as a family. As nice as watching the „Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat“-documentary over the past few days. We keep talking about it. The boy doesn’t really have a clue about cooking and nutrition but at least he is interested. Not enough to read the book but that was to be expected.

We came back home, I read and read and played „Ocarina of Time“ again (I tried the boss level on the first dungeon three times or so before giving up for the day.) and then I finally cleaned the house. I did take too many breaks and managed to finish reading the Eric Barker book but I prevailed and the house is habitable again until next week. (I keep feeling weird when talking about my Friday cleaning sessions because they are so superficial. It does make a positive difference but there are parts of the house that haven’t been touched in years. I guess that renovation will take care of that eventually.)

Meanwhile my husband had worked in the garden, putting carrot seeds in the ground and getting the garden beds ready.

Then the boy and I watched „Star Trek: Nemesis“ while I knitted on my handspun Coriolis sock, I was so tired that I almost fell asleep in front of TV. It wasn’t that the movie was bad, just some exhaustion, and then it was already time for bed.

Of course, today I will do everything right, shrug off the slump, write 4,000 words, run 8 k, do strength training and sew two pairs of yoga pants.

Or something.

Oh, and Claudia commented on yesterday’s post and asked me to write something about the Eric Barker book (“Barking up the wrong tree“). I really, really like it. He is talking about the things that make people successful, a lot of which go against common wisdom. It feels like he has done his research and his writing is really good. I started his book after being very disappointed with two books about productivity in writing and not only does he present the facts very clearly, he also uses stories and humor to make the whole thing very memorable and alive.

If anybody is interested in this I do recommend the book but the thing of his that I have been reading for ages and that always gives me something helpful to ponder is his newsletter. Which can be found on his website.

Of course I started a new non-fiction book right away. I’m finally reading „Grit“ by Angela Duckworth. Since I only scored 2 on the grit scale (it goes from 1 to 5) I’m thinking I could use a little more of it. I used to think that grit was inborn but it seems there is room for improvement.

Who knows, maybe I will wrestle the slump down eventually.