Done Since 2018-08-26

[mdlbear]

I guess it's been a pretty decent week in many respects. I started learning a new programming language (Go, AKA Golang), met dialecticdreamer, did some singing, put in three job applications (one of which I don't expect to go anywhere; the form didn't have a place for a cover letter), and acquired a new domain (computer-curmudgeon.com -- the site is still under construction). Also, Colleen came home from rehab on Wednesday, and progress has been made on re-organizing various parts of the house.

So why do I feel like an utter failure who can't get anything done?

To answer my own question... it's clearly because there's so much I haven't done. The yard is a mess, there are boxes sitting around from when we moved in a year and a half ago (and some of those haven't been opened since we moved from the Starport in 2012), there's mail stacked up on five different surfaces, I have three different medical referrals I need to follow up on, and so on. So, ... yeah. That.

Part of that, I suspect, is due to the fact that I've never been able to deal well with uncertainty, and so many of my decisions in the past have gone disastrously wrong. Never mind that some of those seemed like the right thing to do at the time; that doesn't help get me out of the trainwreck I'm in now. In many cases, as N puts it, I was making decisions based on who I wanted to be rather than who I am. That's probably worth a post or ten by itself.

Notes & links:

0826Su 
  * up 4:40ish; W=198.8, S=4:53;
  * Spent about ~1.5h on A Tour of Go
    ... to see if I would feel comfortable applying to a job that would require it.
    -> yeah; doable.  I'll want to finish the tour, which will take another couple of
       hours for the exercises, but it's straightforward.  Nice language.  I'll use it.
  # the above was an experiment to see whether it works to put some work before my usual
    morning reading.  -> it does, at least if I get up early enough.
    -> I don't think a 25m pomodoro sprint would be enough time to get into flow.
  * another session moving stuff from N's closet to the guest room.  Shoes ought to go
    into boxes; papers, etc. will have to go to the garage.  Found some keyboards, power
    strips, etc. that can usefully stay out.
  : Gmail has a new UI.  Gets more on the page, I think, but it's horribly slow to load
    (at least the first time, in Firefox.  Haven't tried anything else.)
  * the signs in the neighborhood reminded me, so I went to the two nearby places on the
    studio tour.  I probably won't get to any others, since it ends at 5
  * up to Coupeville to visit with C
    she went walking with PT, then wanted to go back to bed.  I left ~3:15
  @ Google and Facebook Didn't End Data Privacy - The Atlantic (thnidu)
  * continuing working on Go.  Down to the last two exercises, in concurrency.  Switched
    over to reading the blog because there was some interesting stuff in it.
  % 9:15ish headache, eye-strain.

0827Mo
  * Up 7am; W=197.8, S=7:52;
  * 8:45ish head down to Rest Stop
  & demo Linux to (guest)S (dialecticdreamer)
  * Singing, mostly with m.  We had some trouble with a broken string and the lack of a
    capo.  Bigger on the Inside, the Travelers, the Bears, October Country,  QV
  & down the rabbit hole of go's documentation

0828Tu
  * up 5:50; W=197.0, S=5:55;
  * Got computer-curmudgeon.com up on DH.
    required fixing a bug that gojekyll found and jekyll let pass -- using {%...%} instead
    of {{...}} to expand a variable.  Used git bisect to find it; I don't use it often,
    but when you need to find a bug that was introduced a long time ago, it WORKS.
  & Pinged T'; she won't be back until tomorrow.
    -> took out the garbage, changed the catboxes, and took the can up to the street
  * bought a weed puller.
  * 11:09 finished A Tour of Go
  * somewhere around midnight, finally got the cats herded into my room and me and my old
    CPAP outside it; went over to the apartment to try out the bed-box.  Couldn't find the
    other dreamwear mask, so used the wisp.  Didn't like it.
    % felt a little bad about leaving the cats locked up, but didn't want to cat-wrangle
      if I needed to come in in the middle of the night.

0829We
  * up 5:30ish; ;
    % back hurting a little; more from sitting in bed with laptop than from the mattress
    The bedbox is nice and cozy, but there are a few inconveniences.  One of the outlets
    doesn't have power -- I assume it just needs plugging in.  The pulldown table is too
    high for most purposes.  Hard to get around in -- going in some directions there is
    nothing to hold on to 
  @ Hiding from the Internet by Michael Bazzell 
    Workbook [pdf] (redsixwing
  @ siderea | [US, hist, p/a/s, med, Patreon] How We Remember and What
    the flu epidemic of 1918
  : Colleen is home!

0830Th
  * up 6: 15ish; S=7:42; shower
  @ Chase Johnsey Embraces Gender Fluidity In Ballet (ysabetwordsmith | Genderfluid Ballerinx)
  * 8:30ish T' coming
  * lunch at Mazatlan before appointment
  * 1:30  C UNW
  * V (who goes up to Careage every Thursday) brought back C's phone (had been left in the
    room, along with its charger) and tablet (found in the parking lot after having
    apparently been run over by a car, probably ours)

0931Fr
  * up 3:3054r; W=199.2, S=4:41;
    % I seem to have bitten my tongue sometime during the night
  * fixed a long-standing bug in sort-by-title.  Apparently I didn't test it
  @ Chase the Feeling — The Road Model Of Gender (archangelbeth)
  % hernia bothering me -- I'd better take it easy with lifting.
  & up to Coupeville for a plumbing replacement at MAC clinic
  & more problems with gojekyll -- it doesn't honor keep: or include: for directories
    kludge it in the Makefile.  Consider building locally and putting _site on a branch
  * SL: new potatoes, 6 baking potatoes, red enchillada sauce, 6" corn tortillas, red
    onion, bacon, green onions, green beans, chicken thighs, barley, frozen bread dough,
    good bread, juices, fruit, barbecue sauce, char sieu sauce, wipes
  * application at HashiCorp
  % went to bed around 10, after falling asleep at my desk; very sleepy

0901Sa
  * up 6:30ish; S=8;
  @ Find the Best Indie Books at Books2Read.com
    via Dirt Witch - THE MUD
  : My new thumb brace seems to be hiding.  I had it earlier this morning. -> on the bed!
  @ Recovering from a toxic job – It Figures S(L) not a very good match for my
    experience with burnout, but in that direction.
  @ Laziness Does Not Exist – E Price – Medium psychological barriers to getting
    things done.  Maybe?
  * job app: Rackspace.  Looked promising but their form didn't provide a place for a
    cover letter, so unlikely to go anywhere.
  * job app: fastly
  @ selfcare.tech - developer resources for self-care
  @ The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice | The On Being Project
  % How did it get to be 4:00?
  * made chili for dinner.
  : I know I ran across some Tylenol somewhere in the course of a cleanup, but I have no
    idea where it is.  C wanted some.  -> most likely my closet.

Comments

[mama_kestrel]

>>So why do I feel like an utter failure who can't get anything done?<<

Looking just at what you've mentioned, and judging by what I'm dealing with, the other part of it is that there are more things on the list of things that must get done than a single person can possibly do - but you (and I) still expect yourself to get them done. I'm a caregiver as well, for my mother (dementia) and my son (autism). My son can do things for himself, but needs prompting; he won't think of it for himself. My mother - well, that's it's own tale. This isn't about me; it's just to say that I know something of what you're trying to do.

What I found useful, when I was feeling like an utter failure, was to write out the list of everything that had to be done. I mean everything, anything that requires time, or brain, or both; laundry, dishes, cooking, emailing son's academic and disability advisers at university, checking the syllabus in each of his classes to make sure I know what his home work is, suggesting that he set aside time to do it, verifying that it's done, checking with his profs whether he's turned it in or not, hemming mom's pants, checking her bank statement to make sure no one's hacked it (it's separate so that I never have to argue with Medicaid about whether her funds were spent on us), unpacking her boxes in our dining room (they've been there for 2 years - sound familiar?), sorting through her documents for the past 20 years to see what can be shredded and what matters...etc, etc. ad infinitum.

I wrote it out longhand, fountain pen on paper. For me, that makes it sink in. Then I crossed off things as they got done.

Two things jumped out at me. One was that there were more things on the list than any human being could accomplish. The other was that none of the things on the list were for me. Not one. My crafting, gardening, music - had simply fallen off. I'm trying to fix that.

So try that. Write it all out. And if it's more than one person can accomplish, even if you're the only one there - stop beating up on yourself. There's still only one of you. The boxes have waited this long? So they'll wait awhile longer, with no harm done. You're clearly doing your best. Give yourself credit for that.

And then do whatever you do that feeds your soul. Write songs. Practice. Sing. Visit the part of the family that has to live in town this while. But take care of yourself, too. Starting by being gentle with yourself.

HUGS.

Hmm...

[mdlbear]

Heh. Probably good advice, except that I might have to go out and buy another bottle of ink.
Out of curiosity, I went over to my file server and took a look:

locate to.do| grep -v -e mirror -e CvsRoot -e backups -e rsteve -e home | wc
     19      19     644
for f in `locate to.do| grep -v -e mirror -e CvsRoot -e backups -e rsteve -e home`; do
> egrep '^ +o ' $f; done | wc -l
699

So, ... a total of 699 to-do items in 19 files. There may be a few hundred duplicates... Make that two bottles.

Re: Hmm...

[mama_kestrel]

Well, either you could see what you can come up with from memory (which I suspect will still be longer than you are tall), or you can take the point as made and stop calling yourself a failure because you weren’t born on the planet Krypton.

Re: Hmm...

[kyrielle]

This. So much this. I have an enormous to-do list. I have a much shorter to-do-soon list, and a still shorter must-do-this-week list.

I still look at the evidence of the need for the overall list and despair briefly, but I do try not to beat myself up for the things that are not on the -soon or -now lists.

Re: Hmm...

[anankastick]

Sorry to parachute in, but one thing I do with my lists that helps me feel less like I never accomplish anything (eerily similar scenarios--I have long lists that involve other people and things that must be done but almost nothing on the lists is For Me) is to make sure my lists include things that I've already done. It doesn't matter how seemingly small or insignificant. I'll write "brush teeth" or "eat breakfast" even if I'm shoveling breakfast in my mouth while I make the list. That way, I start off having done something.

But mama_kestrel is on to something there...maybe it IS unfair to consider oneself a failure for not doing more than a human can actually do...

I hope you can find a way to make peace with your expectations!

Re: Hmm...

[mdlbear]

Thanks! I used to put things like dishes and laundry on the list; maybe I should get back to that. But I put a lot of other things on the list.

In the notes, "*" indicates something that was on my to.do list before I did it (unfinished items are indicated by "o". "&" indicates something I did that wasn't on the list before I did it. (I should probably pin the meta post, or pin an index; it's mdlbear | How to.do it)

Re: Hmm...

[thnidu]

Plus one of whiskey, or cream soda, or whatever is your Goddammit-I-need-to-unwind potable.

Re: Hmm...

[mdlbear]

:) Thanks! It's usually gin, sometimes wine. Whiskey on special occasions.

Take THAT off the list

[jesse_the_k]

grep = geek ink

--

Just here for a +1 to mama_kestrel's wisdom.

Re: Take THAT off the list

[mdlbear]

I would think that "geek ink" would be emacs (or vim, for some people -- de gustibus etc.).

There doesn't seem to be a grep equivalent for paper, short of rummaging through the entire stack and reading everything.

[alatefeline]

*virtual hugs offered*

Being a human being is very difficult. In my book, you are doing well just by being here and still trying and still caring. <3 <3 <3

[mdlbear]

Thanks! ((hugs))

[jcfiala]

I'm glad Colleen is home.

[mdlbear]

Thanks!

[septemberlilac]

Don't know if you happened to see this, but I found the description all too applicable in my own case. https://www.indy100.com/article/depression-mental-health-awareness-viral-twitter-thread-8519306

[mdlbear]

Thanks -- I vaguely recall seeing that linked from someplace else, but the annotations are useful too.

Yeah; all too applicable. Especially the one that said "anything involving a phone call".

Boxes of still packed stuff

[markc1957]

Reflecting on Thoreau's statement; "Simplify, simplify, simplify."; it seems to me that you might just stop for a moment and ask yourself what is in those boxes that remain packed. Some of them, you say, haven't been opened since you moved from the Starport in 2012. If you haven't desperately needed anything in a box for 6 years, maybe consider getting rid of it? I'm probably drastically oversimplifying the situation based on the limited information I have available. It's a difficult process, for certain. Going through that as I'm getting rid of stuff I've had in the garage for over 10 years that I've had no real need for. Stuff that was acquired because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Re: Boxes of still packed stuff

[mdlbear]

A lot of it can go, yes. Problem is, it was mostly packed and in some cases re-packed in haste; I'm still looking for things that I know I had in the previous house, and know I packed. Some of those may have been stolen -- some of the muscle we hired was sketchy -- but at this point it's hard to tell.

And with parts of two households scattered about, it's hard to find any of the right people at a time when they have enough energy to help sort. You know things are pretty dire when the fittest person in the household is a 71-year-old with a bad back.

Oh, and more of it was already filtered out and sorted in previous moves, remodels, and the like. And some of the decisions we made we now regret. Can't be helped.

"I finally got it all together but I forget where I put it" is kind of the household slogan right now.

Re: Boxes of still packed stuff

[alatefeline]

Going back and reading through (some of) these to catch up with what's been going on with you... yeah, I really really feel you on boxes.