A quote that arose during my daily Evernote weeding routing, and relating directly to my previous post:

You can’t compete with someone who is having fun. Tiago Forte

Today’s email from Oliver Burkeman was on a topic that walloped me upside the head: How to choose sanity now. (Hope that link works!)

Here’s why: I am all caught up on my $DAYJOB work, one of those bliss states I’ve always imagined: no deadlines, no backlogs, time to work on projects of interest only to myself. And I’m totally at loose ends. I’m a tech writer (started as a reporter), so deadlines have long been a feature of my professional life. With that guardrail gone, I am feeling kind of freaked-out at the wide-open field of possible choices for spending my time, energy, and attention.

And as I’m 62 (nearing retirement age), I’m wondering: is this how I will feel when the $DAYJOB is gone?

In reading Burkeman’s work, and others’ as well, what I’m doing about this feeling is nothing. Just sitting with the feeling, detecting where it is in my body, and not trying to make myself “feel better.”

Instead of seeking short-term mood repair (the predominant cause of procrastination, according to the research), I will see what non-dayjob things need to be done. I live in a cohousing condo, so there’s always some task to be done. And after those tasks, maybe just…enjoy myself?

I’m one of those people who is baffled by the word “fun”, so enjoying myself feels like giving myself another task to stress about. But perhaps just giving myself permission (a technique I practice for others but not for myself) to feel both giddy and at loose ends is all that’s needed right now.

Burkeman is a recovering productivity geek who nevertheless still is looking for ways to live the good life without causing overmuch internal tension and strife. His fortnightly newsletter. The Imperfectionist, is the bee’s knees.

Rediscovered this article in Evernote during my daily notes-weeding practice. I’m sure I must have implemented it at one time, and did so again yesterday. It does make sorting my inbox much faster, though as usual, I find I overload myself with too many items to be done in one day.

It resembles Carl Pullein’s Time Sector System, which uses an algorithm of when will you do something, rather than prioritizing based on what you are doing.

The Only Five Email Folders Your Inbox Will Ever Need

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The Power of Five Minutes: The Condensed Version | Samurai Mind Online

Elephants Can Remember was cited in a study done in 2009 using computer science to compare Christie’s earlier works to her later ones. The sharp drops in size of vocabulary and the increases in repeated phrases and indefinite nouns suggested that Christie may have been suffering from some form of late-onset dementia, perhaps Alzheimer’s disease.[5] Source: Elephants Can Remember - Wikipedia

🎵 Current listening: ▶︎ Ver Sacrum | Bruno Sanfilippo

What Is It That Makes Used Bookstores So Wonderful? ‹ CrimeReads

Ostentatio genitalium (the display of the genitals) refers to disparate traditions in Renaissance visual culture of attributing formal, thematic, and theological significance to the penis of Jesus. That these images seem to have been created in good faith, with pious intentions, mystifies art historians, and many refuse to recognize the category as noteworthy or distinct from the nudity of angels and putti. Yet, as examples accrue, the conspicuous attention lent to Christ’s phallus cannot escape even the most disinterested gaze. “It is no exaggeration to say that this has probably been the most taboo topic in Christian thought for two thousand years”, writes Stephen Sapp. In contrast to classical sculptural conventions, which — with exceptions like certain herma and statues of satyrs — often showcase male genitalia in a state of flaccid modesty (akin to Michelangelo’s Risen Christ), these Renaissance images shock us because they are so frequently ithyphallic: Christ has risen, but not in the way we have come to expect.

Source: Ostentatio Genitalium in Renaissance Art – The Public Domain Review

A tip I picked up from an INTJ forum on Facebook:

Find 3 hobbies:

1. one to make some money

2. one to keep you in shape

3. one to be creative.