I nearly made the whole body of the email just “aaaargh” but I opted for not. But man, it was tempting. I just spent the best part of the evening taking turns with My Wife trying to get the daughter to sleep when she would much rather be up making cute and not-so-cute noises and yeah. Aaaargh.

I also started doing my morning todo list with my morning coffee — apparently when you’re trying to make a new habit, it’s best to tie the new one to something you do without fail, and I simply never don’t drink coffee. Tonight, after getting through about half of the todo list as is traditional, I am starting to think that the list is simply too long. I’ve read before that it’s better to keep a shorter todo list and get everything checked off than have a long one you can’t complete. But then where will I put the things I need to remember to do but can’t do today? And having all those undone ones looks so untidy; and writing out the same task again the following day is just a pain.

I have never once found a todo system that works for me. Bullet journaling is the closest thing to it but I find myself getting annoyed with that too. Every app has been a mixture of too much and too little, not to mention extortionate pricing. Hey, maybe this nifty little thing that got profiled in the New York Times might help…

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/ugmonk-analog-to-do-system-review

Wait, what? It’s $100? For a piece of wood with a slot in it? No. God no. This self-improvement space is so endlessly rife with these things; if it’s not an outright grift it’s just absurdly expensive. Maybe I’ll just make one myself; I’ll need some cardstock for the printer and some plywood. If you have access to tools want one I suggest going the same route; by the time you’re done you’ll have an organiser, saved yourself around $90, and you’ll have learned some woodworking!

Or you could just keep the cards on your desk. In a rubber band. They’re like ten cents. Also, I reread the article to check something just now and realised it contains the phrase “The Analog system speaks to my Gemini spirit,” which made me want to bite down on broken glass. Even more aaaargh.

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The things that got done today include getting the first batch of Print Club prints sent off (there is still space to join Print Club this October if anyone wants to get amongst it!) as well as the commission I finished yesterday. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, doing this took up nearly the entire morning. Seemingly simple things that develop unwieldy complications as you go are my least favourite kind of tasks. Anyway, here’s the Print Club, in case you missed it the first time around.

Print Club

Do check it out; I am often very wrong about what I want to be popular but I can’t help loving the idea of getting snail mail happening again.

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miscellaneous

A reader sent me this video which I’ve seen before but will watch again, which resonates with the magical combination of “inspirational” and “uncomfortably seen.”

So. How was your week? Feel free to ping me a reply. I appreciate you sticking around for this series, especially on a night like tonight when I imagine these even more frustrating to read than they are to write.

Still, I’m here, and it’s Day 21, and I haven’t missed a day yet. Even if all I manage to send is a mass of guff, I’m finally putting together the daily writing habit I’ve always wanted to have, and once this challenge is over I think it’ll serve me well.

Thanks, as always, for reading.