The Mandelbear's Musings

... have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Or something like that.

One year ago today I posted the very first of my "done yesterday" posts, referring to the previous day's "Trying Not to Fail" by way of explanation. That, in turn, followed followed close on the heels of "totally made of fail".

The general idea was to have visible, public evidence of the fact that I was actually able to Get Things Done, even if it often didn't seem that way.

A couple of tiny steps.

1. I added a new tag to my to-do list. Along with "o" for "to do" and "*" for "done" (and "~" for abandoned), I've added "&" for "not a to-do item but added after completion". I'm going to try to use it for, um, tiny steps like this, in order to see whether I'm actually doing anything or just marking time.
2. I'm going to try to post the previous day's "done" items under the obvious tag, so you can either hold my feet to the fire, laugh over how little I've accomplished, or whack me with it the next time I post about not being able to do stuff. Or something.

...

Since then, my "to.do" file and the daily posts have become an essential part of my life. Thanks for listening.

It's also pretty close to the start of The River - a series of posts named after this song written for Valentine's Day in 2008. The actual launch post was - Landmarks, Roadmaps, and Rivers, posted on Feb. 22, but there are a few posts going back to that January that I tagged as being obviously parts of the series.

Last week I wrote a song called "The River". It was all about love, friendship, and flow.

That is what I want to work on. It's going to be a process, a journey down that river. It's going to pull in things from the Tao Te Ching, The Art of Loving, The Art of Computer Programming, and who knows what else.

If you choose to walk with me, I'll be glad of the company. I think I can promise you some interesting discussions and perhaps some interesting scenery, if nothing else.

Thanks again. I'll try to post a couple more meta posts over the next week or so, for the benefit of new friends and to remind myself what I'm doing here, and what I still have to do.

The Hartmann bag is a rather ugly tan cloth bag with leather trim, measuring 10x11x22 inches. The top has a zipper on three sides, for easy access, and has snaps in the two loose corners. There's an outside flap pocket with a snap on one long side, and a rectangle of fabric where a slash has been repaired on the other. It's the same fabric as the bag, so it must have been done a long time ago.

My parents bought it to take their excess purchases home from a trip to Japan, sometime in the early 1960s.

It's rugged enough to be checked through, (just barely) small enough to use as a carry-on, and folds down flat if it isn't needed on one leg of a trip.

It's been well-used and well-loved, by two generations of my family over nearly half a century.