So, here’s a bit of a personal post from the Bog Monster.
The move is done. The settling in part goes slowly due to time constraints. Everything that depends on being settled first is temporarily on the back burner. Time is another factor in upcoming changes.
Work has changed significantly for the better. Sometimes work projects cut into free time, which makes it difficult to do much of anything on a routine basis. I need to have a far simpler plan than what I was muddling through before. That doesn’t mean I’ll be doing fewer things. I’ll just being doing them in a different order and differently because my priorities have shifted significantly. Mostly in order:
Work
Home/Settling in/Routine maintenance/improvements. Work permitting, this means getting home and settled, short break (which I need to get stricter with myself about) and whatever puttering about the house needs doing.
The occasional social engagement. The Bog Monster had become a bit of a recluse. It’s good to be among people sometimes. So I picked up a role or five in a local production of Spoon River Anthology. The five parts are different characters with short monologues. Practice and rehearsals take time.
Right there I’ve already got my first balancing act. Fortunately, I’ve not yet had so much work that I couldn’t also squeeze in something like an after-hours commitment. When I do have evening work, it’s often of a take-home variety that I can do whenever/however, just so long as it gets done. Everything else is necessarily secondary. If I had to choose work because of the urgency of some very important thing going on over another commitment, I’d do it in a heartbeat at this point. I haven’t felt that level of commitment to something in a long time. It’s a good feeling. Even so, I’m glad it’s not a choice I have to make at the moment.
Time keeps coming up because it’s one thing I’ve always had a hard time with. Suddenly it’s really beginning to matter if I want to do all the things well enough to make them worth doing. Provided I’m talking about an average night, All the above is stuff I’d like to have done by about 7:30 at the latest. That seems reasonable enough, except when there’s pressing work demands. On those nights, pretty much everything but dinner and the last hour of winding down takes a back seat.
Music – I need to stop dropping this part when everything thing else gets tight. What falls under leisure should be the sacrifice. Music is more than that. Maybe I’ll surprise myself and take up bass for a bit and switch back to guitar later. Whatever I pick up, this needs to be a good half hour every day to count for anything. If nothing else were to happen after this, that’s still a good night. Those kinds of nights mean I did something up until dinner, took a break for music and dinner, then got back to it before just winding down with something like Netflix and some reading before finally calling it good for the day.
Nights that aren’t dominated by bigger priorities are the ones when I get to spread my wings even more. Practicing music from 7:30 to 8 puts me at a good break time for dinner and a show. After that, a self-study education is still my next big priority. Law has to take priority over the rest. It’s a work thing. I still need to organize a better plan for everything else. Whatever I come up with needs to be simple and practical. I was trying to do too many things in parallel before. Most likely I’ll study law from 9 to 10, and alternate 10-11 between a science and a not-science from one day to the next, the science MWF, the not-science TTh. It’ll be like taking courses for a part-time semester, which should be entirely manageable on top of everything else.
At that point, I’ll have a decision to make depending on the Muse and my energy level. There some nights where I’d do best to just sit and write or read or craft then hit the hay. There’s other nights I just know I’ve got a late-nighter in me. Those nights I stay up until 2:30 so I can get a solid four hours of sleep. More or less than that, and I’m toast for the next day. 4? Somehow it’s just about perfect. When the Muse is kind, I can pull that schedule for several days in a row before I need to reset with a normal night’s sleep. Healthy? Doubtful. But as far as I know, I’m only going to live once, and I’d just as soon squeeze it all in while I can. I’m not sure time is something that can be saved for a rainy day.
Post-settling in, those nights are the ones when I get something creative done, whatever it is. Until I’m fully settled in and the craft space is organized and functional again, I won’t be doing any large-scale anything or tinkering at some new jig or tool or complicated process like mold-making. But I can get back to my world-building. I might even pick up the paintbrush and get back to learning how to paint minis or pick up the pencil and get back to sketching. I don’t need a ton of organized space for those things.
And once the settling in is done, weekends are going to be awesome. I enjoy doing yard work, and there’s plenty of that to be done here. Other than that and chores best left for the weekend, like laundry and shopping, my time is mostly my own. And one of the big weekend plans is to finally get my workshop set up. It won’t be perfect at first by a long shot, but it’ll be a start, and I can finally start doing some things they way I’ve been wanting to.
For instance, I’ll finally be able to start making high-density fiberboard bases for my tiles. I was able to make them on a limited scale before, but with my limited space I just wasn’t getting the results I wanted. If I can process a whole sheet down into perfectly regular tiles in short order with a table saw, that’s more like it. One sheet cut down would give me a stockpile of nearly 500 2.5″ square tiles to work with.
Other than that, I’ve got a ton of small yard projects to learn to make, ranging from simple raised planters to some patio furniture and birdhouses for starters. And there’s home improvement projects best tackled on the weekend, like painting a couple of the rooms. Time not spent doing those things can be divided up between more study time, other wood crafts that I want to get good at, like routing images and woodburning, and crafting for Iaon and gaming.
So. That’s probably more update than you wanted or planned on, but that’s kind of where things are right now. Until I’m settled in, I can only speculate about how things ought to turn out plan-wise. For now, at least the Muse has been kind in regards to Iaon of late.
And with that, Skairus needs my attention.
Rocky Mountain Bog Monster 