So school has started, the girls have been back for a few days and it’s amazing how much I’ve been getting done with them away. No longer interrupted constantly with the clamor in the other rooms, fighting, or requests for food, I’m actually able to sit down for twenty-five minutes without interruption. It’s glorious. I’m actually getting things done that I need to, to the point where I’m getting to a point where I actually don’t know what to do with myself.
I’ve been working off of a pomodoro timer, twenty-five minutes at a time, with a couple five minute breaks between them, then a fifteen minute break after a few cycles. It works, focuses me to stop task switching in the middle of whatever I’m doing, when those little mental distractions pop up in the middle of work.
I’m spending a good deal of my day in Clickup, managing the upcoming release for the dao, as well as planning the next one some months off. I actually started doing their courses, just so I can be on top of everything they have to offer. One of the issues I have right now is that a lot of the development pipeline seems to be split between Notion, which has been built up by the creative team as a database of sorts, and Clickup, which seems to be the actual task management system for the devs. So while we have requirements documents and project planning in Notion, the actual work is getting done in Clickup. So I’m trying a new approach for our v0.3 release and doing all the work in Clickup. Their docs system seems as robust as Notion’s, and it also allows me to cut out Google Docs as well.
The little five minute breaks are important as well, I think, to manage my energy. I brought my guitar downstairs so that I can fill those moments with some picking exercises, or working on songs. I’m still practicing piano every day, working on All of Me right now, as well as the beat pad. I’ve been playing around with GarageBand, Live and other programs, just messing around and trying to figure out how to compose using these tools. It’s a lot different than when I would just write a song on the guitar and write lyrics for it. Working with the keyboard and various instruments requires a lot more work to be able to live loop or mix songs on the fly. We’ll see where it goes.
We ended our summer with a trip out to the lake. It was a bit too hot, so we spent some time swimming in the lake and fried some hot dogs on the grill along with some fresh zucchini and eggplant from the garden. I had taken our bikes with us, so I did a loop around the sweeping gravel driveway that looped around the lake. It was fun, so I took Younger on a ride. After a short, somewhat easy uphill climb, we were able to coast down a ways at a brisk pace. We got to the second run, which was steeper, and I encouraged Younger to go first but she wanted me to go, so I did. It was fast, and as I got to the bottom of the hill I looked back and saw that Younger had wiped out. I bailed and ran back up the hill. She was hurt bad.
I’m not sure how she dumped herself, but she had fallen on her side and knocked her forehead directly into the rocky gravel. She was wearing a helmet, fuck all that it did. She had a gash directly in her forehead, and a goose egg was already swelling. Panic. I picked her up, threw her bike off the road, and started carrying her back to the RV. It was a good quarter mile, maybe more, but I tried to soothe her and carried her the entire way.
Missus doctored her up, we had first aid kits and ice, but I had to walk back to where I had left both bikes and walk them back. I felt like such an asshole for letting her get messed up like that. I didn’t push her to do it by any means, but I should have known that she didn’t have the riding experience on such terrain like I did. There was a good half hour where I thought we were going to have to leave and take her to the doctor, but Missus was able to calm her down and she was able to spend the rest of the night laying around watching TV.
After that episode was over, we actually were able to relax. After the sun went down things cooled off, and we were able to see the stars like I hadn’t seen in years. Away from the light pollution of the city, I was able to see every star in the sky, including the Milky Way. I managed to get Elder out to look at them for a bit, as I was fairly certain she’d never been out in the dark woods to see a view like that before.
The next morning we packed up and came home, then Monday we sent them to school, Younger with a huge, bruised contusion on her forehead.