Volkditty

Have you tried not being sad?

Every year we have a big family group chat to decide who will bring what to Thanksgiving even though everyone ends up bringing the same thing every year. I always bring pies.

This year, my young, recently-married cousin said his wife was going to bake a pumpkin pie. He got that message out just moments before I hit send on my annual "I'll bring pies" text. A few minutes later I got a text from my dad saying, "Your grandma wanted to make sure you didn't buy a pumpkin pie since Allie is going to make one." I said I did see it and I promised not to upstage the newest member of the family. Apple and cherry were still mine to cover.

Three days later grandma died in her sleep, and I take that as a sign to never buy pumpkin pie again.

Pivot tables are what separate us from the ape.

I am not a socialist, trade unionist, or a Jew, so I don't see any problems here.

Coronation Street. I spend $10 a month for a BritBox subscription to watch just that.

I get that it's cool to shit on superhero movies these days, but man I hope this is good. I am a DC fan and the Snyder movies never did it for me.

Oh cool, congrats Disney.

Speaking from experience, yes. This is the level of military humor.

Nice pair of sunglasses. Wanted them, didn't need them, bought them anyway. My wife thinks they look nice on me. Win win.

What has worked (a little bit) for me...

Make notes and reminders everywhere. Everywhere. I have time blocked off on my work calendar, do this specific task at this time, do this specific task at this time, 15 minutes of fucking around time in between. I will literally make a calendar appointment for taking breaks from work. I have a Kanban board of personal tasks to work on. I have alarms on my phone and watch reminding me to take a break for lunch or when to clean the litter boxes, etc.

One benefit of having reminders everywhere is that even when I'm consciously avoiding "The Thing I am Supposed to be Doing," there's a higher probability that I will land on something else productive to do instead of zoning completely out. I know I need to write this report by the end of the day, but I just saw a reminder that I need to reschedule my dental appt. Great, I still did something productive. Now I'm one step closer to actually writing that report.

It's also important to give yourself grace and acknowledge that you'll never be perfectly productive. Sometimes my 15 minute fuck-around break last 30 minutes. That's OK. Breathe and get through it. Find the next post-it note or block of time on the calendar that tells me what I should be doing and make an honest attempt to do that. It's not 100% effective, but it does help set the guardrails so I don't get too far off track.

Not for the music video so much, but the song "5 out of 6" by Dessa. Such a great hype song. Cannot walk normal when this is in the earbuds, have to strut.

Not as bad as when you think, "That first time was probably a fluke...I'll try drinking again."