Once I ran out of daylight on Monday, I put the date work to one side to cool. Usually I go through and choose 5 of the anniversaries for my own use. But this time I’d done that as I went along and ended up with 9!
Three of these may turn up as short stories. The rest all relate to existing ideas for novels or novellas, giving me a target date to have some of those novellas finished by. So I didn’t have to do that this time.
First job I did do on Tuesday was choose 30 of these other ideas to produce a ’30 ideas to write for April’ piece for here and on Medium. I don’t think I’ll be doing a ‘take one idea’ post this time. I can link to the last one and they all pretty much say the same. Once it’s written, I’ll add it to the Scrivener file for Writers’ Ideas: Where to Find Them.
Next job on Tuesday was a 5-minute declutter on Facebook. I’d done the same on Monday too but forgot to mention it. This currently consists of me going through ‘memories’ and ‘birthdays’ and gradually removing any I don’t want to keep.
On the ‘birthdays’, I check ‘see friendship’ (available on desktop, not on mobile, but might be on the app) and delete historic birthday greetings or other posts, just keeping the last year’s worth. On the ‘memories’, I delete all non-photographic memories for the day I’m currently on.
It’s taking a long time to get rid of all this old guff online. I’ve cleared Twitter, changed my bio to include a link to my link tree (so non-connections can still see it), and pinned a post to the top of the thread (for existing connections) also with a link to my link tree. I got rid of Substack a while ago, and I just got rid of Vocal.
I don’t want this online presence left behind when I’m gone, but I also don’t want too much of it there while I’m still here. But, oh, it’s taking a long time. What a load of waffling I did back in the day!
The next job I did on Tuesday was update my word-count spreadsheet so I didn’t have it all to do at the start of next month. I really should remember to do this every day, as I go along.
Then I checked my website. A while ago I set up anti-scraping all over the site and subscribers to the blog (not the newsletter) received an excerpt of the post and a link to the rest of the post. Suddenly, last week, that excerpt became full text and I hunted all over to find out what had changed.
On Monday I gave up looking when I saw that my WP admin settings did actually have ‘excerpt’ checked and not ‘full text’, and I logged a fault with the help forum. They came back Monday evening telling me it was a plugin and not them. I’d already closed down for the day and told them I’d have another look on Tuesday, and I thanked them for responding.
Yesterday, I had another look and, lo!, it was Jetpack again. (Hands up every who’s surprised!) There was a Jetpack update last week, and every time they release an update, the update undos something I’ve specifically asked it to do. This will be a real PITA if I have to check everything every time.
Anyway, it’s fixed again now, I hope, so subscribers to the blog should start seeing excerpts again rather than the full text.
I had a cup of tea and 2 slices of tea bread with butter on. The tea bread was so nice I had to go back and get another 2 slices. I am so greedy! I didn’t feel like anything for dinner, and worked on Catch the Rainbow for an hour. Then I was going to force myself to eat a sandwich, or I wouldn’t have felt like eating tea at teatime and it was one of my favourites. (Naked prawn linguine.) (Naked meaning no sauce on the prawns.) (I’m not a huge fan of sauces.) But I had a pickled egg instead and still felt full.
A squirrel came into the garden and started to gnaw at one of the feeders, so I went to the patio door in the dining room and opened it to have a word with him. He paid me no heed until I stepped out onto the patio, and off he ran. But when I went to close the sliding door again, there it was stuck. The door, not the squirrel.
I had a bit of a play with the door, but decided I might do more harm than good and called the poet. Did he want to have a look at it or should I arrange an emergency (security risk) repair. He said he’d have a look at it, so the door was left wide open. It didn’t put any of the birds off visiting the feeders.
I spent 2 Pomodoros on last year’s tax return. I’ve finished all of my expenses and I started my income, plus I created the summary sheets and the profit & loss page. The poet got home, did a temporary fix on the patio door (i.e. got it to close), and I started the process for having it repaired or replaced.
For my last hurrah of the day, or one of them, I updated the word-count widgets in the sidebar (at the bottom on mobile devices in portrait), and I had one more Pomodoro on Catch the Rainbow.
Jetpack is nothing but trouble. I de-activated mine.
I will try to find that Throat Coat bag and photograph it for you today. Yesterday got away from me!
I’m going to deactivate mine once I know what it will stop doing when I’ve done it!
When I passed your message along, Ian did a Google search last night and found it! I think he’s thinking about it – the slippery elm bit put him off a bit – but he ordered some lozenges (different brand, but same job), which I think have arrived today. He already uses a throat spray that helps. He’s also making himself a hot drink made with lemon juice, pure honey, cider vinegar, which I mentioned the other day, but he’s added ginger to it!