Daynote - Thu 10 Jul
A sleepy start to the day.
Well, this morning wasn't a benchmark day, in the least. Slept through my alarm and woke up very fuzzy-headed indeed. Usually the cats would wake me up, but with the very light nights in Scotland (it currently gets light about 4am) they've taken to trying to get me to feed them as soon as there's light in the sky, so when I wedge the door shut to get another couple of hours sleep they can't function as furry alarm clocks.
These days happen. I use them to take care of a bit of admin.
Last night I had a very fun call with the UK Crime Book Club and fellow Bloody Scotland Debut Prize shortlister Foday Mannah. Unfortunately I got my times mixed up (in my defence we've been doing a lot of these recently and there's been a lot of emails) and showed up twenty five minutes in, realised I was late and got a bit flustered.
Luckily the host, Caz, did a wonderful job of smoothly integrating me into the conversation. I had a brilliant time and hopefully I'll get a chance to pop by and speak to the viewers again. This was my first livestream and it's very different to recording a podcast or video interview. But I really enjoyed it.
ON DECK: It's a zero today friends. These days happen. They always seem to happen right after I've gone on a podcast and talked about how rigid my routine is, haha. Maybe my inner 12 year old who hated doing his homework is rebelling.
LISTENING: The excellent Bloody Scotland series at the Off The Shelf podcast continues today with Natalie Jayne Clark. Another brilliant episode and Phoebe of Pause Books has done such a good job with this series of interviews.
WATCHING: We didn't watch anything last night, on account of the interview. Probably a bit of BOB'S BURGERS tonight though.
READING: A very tiny sip of THE POWER OF THE DOG before I conked out last night. It lends itself well to that kind of reading, because each chapter is composed of dozens of short scenes and you can read in short bursts without getting lost or having to stop halfway through a longer scene.
LINK: As someone who has fiddled around with productivity and notetaking systems and things of that nature for literal decades at this point, I found this article called 'I Deleted My Second Brain' to be the cognitive equivalent of a punch to the face. But the kind of punch that snaps you out of a particular mode of thinking you kind of thought was the only mode available?
I'll write more on this topic I think, because it spoke quite deeply to a lot of quiet misgivings I've had over the years about the over-organisation of my life, but a heading in a daynote is not where I want to do it. I'll start brewing a blog post.
UP NEXT: It's not how often you fall off the horse, or how hard, but how quickly you get back on. So I'll be back on the routine tomorrow and hoping for a benchmark day. Then a busy weekend, then (omg) it's Harrogate week! Two days at the day job, an event with Arcadia on Wednesday then off to Harrogate on Thursday morning. I cannot wait.
Onward!