Daynote - Thu 23 Oct

A slow start to the morning today - got to bed a bit late, so I took the extra hour of sleep rather than heading out for a walk. I also had some admin to do that took a bite out of my writing time. A bit annoying, but hey-ho.

ON DECK: A svelte 318 words this morning. I started a new scene and wasn't firing on all cylinders, plus I was working with a smaller unit of time. But a bit of progress is a bit of progress.

TOOLS AND PROCESS: I have, for the umpteenth time, been mulling task management again. If you search this site you'll see a distinct cycle at play, where I go back and forth between different todo list apps and paper notebooks and back again. This most recent round of maundering was brought about by bumping up against some of the current limits of Things 3, which I've used for years, briefly flirting with the idea of trying Griply, getting overwhelmed at the idea of moving tasks or setting up a new system and then, as part of a broader 'spend less time on my phone' vibe, deciding that I'm going to try paper again.

I have bullet journaled on and off for years, but I'm also a daily long-form journaler, so I found keeping a separate bullet journal and longer journal didn't really work, and neither did writing big long journal entries in a bullet journal.

What I'm trying now is a simplified, pocket notebook version of bullet journaling for actual one-off tasks, notes and planning, the excellent Due app for repeating reminders (like putting the recycling out on a given day) so they won't clutter up the notebook and my calendar for deadlines and things in the future. I'm not going to use future logs or monthly spreads in the notebook, just daily logging and notes.

The thing I want to avoid is duplication. So if it's a date I need to remember it goes in the calendar, if it's a thing I need to do it goes in the notebook and if it's a repeating thing, it goes in Due. Then I'm not manually updating a monthly spread and putting things in both future logs and calendars and writing down that I need to take the recyling out every week in my notebook. Is this purist 'everything on paper' bullet journaling? No. But I'm hoping it will prevent the slow tidal wave of un-done stuff piling up in Things that prompted this whole reassessment.

LISTENING: I really enjoyed this great episode of Quick Book Reviews, featuring interviews with fantasy authors Marie Lu, Olivie Blake and Alix E Harrow.

WATCHING: A bit of SLOW HORSES last night and an excellent switcheroo/hoodwinking that played out in brutal slow motion (but was very well disguised). It's an interesting divergence from the book this season is based on, so I wasn't wise to it until the end and thought it was really well done.

READING: More of QUANTUM OF MENACE last night, which is out today in the UK! If you're a Bond fan, or a cosy mystery fan (or both!) then it's well worth your time.

LINK: I think this is a really fascinating post from Naomi Alderman, although it is not an approach to life or art that I actually take myself. I do agree with her that it's exceedingly difficult to make a living in the arts and only a tiny fraction of people are able to make any living at all, never mind a comfortable one. For me, though, working in the field but not at the specific job I want to do is something I decided, quite early on, that I didn't want to do.

Instead, I've deliberately sought out work that uses a completely different part of my brain and offers me a balance of pay, working hours, flexibility and stability that directly supports and enables my creative work. It's tough to find work in any field and it's taken me a long, long time to find this balance myself. But I've definitely found myself far happier once my day job wasn't an active drain on my energy and creativity. And the trap I think you can fall into by working in and around creative industries in a 'regular job' (like an accountant for a film production company) is that you get lower pay, longer hours and brutal peaks in workload (so all the downsides of creative work), but you're still doing the 'boring' office job, ultimately, even if you do it in a building next to a film set.

UP NEXT: One more day of writing this week - I've hit my rough pace for the week already (mostly thanks to yesterday's solid session) so any additional words are gravy at this point, but I'd like to finish the week on a decent session tomorrow. We'll see how I go. Then, it's the weekend and some fun stuff next week, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Onward!