Inspired By In March 2024

Thinking about:

My eyes. I wish to take a picture of how I see the world today. I want to measure and remember how far I can see, the crispness of my focus, and what colors look like today. I want to compare how I see the world today with how I’ll see it in a few days after I get a new lens put in my eye and my cataracts removed. My left eye gets done today, and the right eye in two weeks. It is completely wondrous that this is even possible.

Structure.

My life feels too loosey-goosey at the moment. I float from one thing to another without intention. I meet each thing as it arises: yoga, a little housework, bathing, reading, writing, dog walking, cooking, shopping. The day evolves. When a task presents itself, I do it. 

And don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with this! I love it. It’s a dream. 

Maybe it’s because there’s more light now or because it’s spring, but I definitely crave more focus and structure.  

I’ve also been procrastinating—dragging my feet on projects I really want to do, but because they’re hard, I don’t.

I need to just put my head down and iterate.

So, I’ve gone back to time-block planning. 

This technique assigns a job to every hour of the day. I learned it from Cal Newport. And here’s what freaks me out every time I do it: I see exactly where my time goes—in graphical time blocks of reality, drawn on paper. 

How many times have you said: Where did the day go?

When you time-block plan, you know. 

And it’s scary.

Watching

My friend Nikki’s Dunkin’ Donut shop got featured in an ad during the Oscars:

This was so exciting for the whole town. The film crews were here for days in the fall, filming. I hope they make more ads from other stuff they shot.

Eating and Drinking

Jocko Molk: 30 grams of protein, baby. It makes me feel good when I drink it.

Brez, I like it, but I don’t feel anything. Or if I do, it’s very subtle, which is fine. I’m not drinking alcohol these days, so this gives me a social beverage with no side effects.

Reading

Timing. So many books lately are just not landing for me.  An Immense World, while a work of incredible scholarship and wonderful writing, was too much. I skipped around a lot. The timing was all wrong.

This month’s pick, Yellowface is contrived and predictable, but it’s fluffy and fast to read, so there’s that. 

That was some of March.

Onward into April.

Thanks for reading.

Carry on,

Kath