It’s been more than six years since I started a post with “I’m not sure if I’ll do this again, or if so, how often,” but here I finally am again. Consider this another “take out the trash” from my mind post.
Now, it’s not really trash, of course. It’s just that when I sat down to draft this post, I had too many competing ideas. It felt better to write a little bit about a few of them than to try to compete with the chaos and work on just one.
That said, perhaps a larger post could come from any one of these, but for now, this will have to do.
Consuming Media
As mentioned on Episode 78 of The Palmer Files (yes, self-promotion happens from time to time), my partner and I are having trouble with the amount of content we want to watch versus the time we have to consume it.
This is compounded by the fact that we watch YouTube creators and many sports, and those things take up time in addition to the myriad of shows that are being released on Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, and any other platform you can think of.
But know that we are not alone. On the aforementioned Episode 78, my guest Sara also is behind on her viewing. I think we all are. I also think we all need to give ourselves a break. It’s OK to not be up on everything. In fact, you may enjoy it all more if you don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. It’s ok. You’ll get to it when you get to it.
Baltimore Baseball
I recently made my first trip back to Oriole Park at Camden Yards. This was my partner’s first taste of a major league ballpark – the one that changed baseball and ballparks forever 30 years ago, no less – and her first taste of something much larger than the Triple-A affiliate we usually frequent during the summer.
We went for a three-game set against the Toronto Blue Jays and the first game was a win. The second game was a come-from-behind win with a rain delay, and on the third day we got rained out.
When not at the park we walked around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor as tourists, just enjoying the fact that, until first pitch, we had nowhere we had to be and nothing we had to do. Besides that, we did hit up the Maryland Science Center and the planetarium, as that is what we did back on our very first date, and it seems like we’ll always go to a planetarium nearby when we are near one.
Phone Tag
I’m sure there are people out there who won’t understand this. But I enjoy talking on the phone with my friends. Perhaps it’s a callback to my youth, perhaps it’s just my thing, but to me it’s a much better alternative to texting, which will do in a pinch.
That said, Chris, Dan, Alan, Grant… Tag you’re it. Yeah, we all kinda know the game. And somehow we just can’t connect. Still, the game of Phone Tag continues as, clearly, both sides of this game still want to talk at some point. It doesn’t make the game any more fun, but it’s much better than it being one-sided.
Sometimes it rains
When I Grow Up
I still do not know what I want to be when I grow up, which may also be contingent upon if I grow up. So, it’s odd that while working through what’s next for me, I’m very busy on a myriad of things that are happening now. I’m helping produce a documentary movie. I’m editing a book of poetry. I’m writing this blog and still producing my own podcast. I’m also editing and producing a different podcast.
All of that is to say, I never thought I’d be this busy all while not knowing what to do. It all seems a bit odd and yet very comfortable. I should probably look into that a bit more.
Clean Desk
I’ve been trying to get rid of things for a long time now. Years in fact. Perhaps getting rid of things isn’t quite what I’m doing. I’m trying to get organized, and I realize that having less stuff makes that easier.
For the household, that is one thing, but for my desk… Keeping it clean has never been easy for me. But lately, I’ve made it a point to clean it weekly. As I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of things going on, and if I didn’t take the time to clean up my workspace, I would have a hard time locating my mouse and keyboard from one day to the next.
But I have to tell you. It’s kind of amazing to work on a project with space to work with and to know that if I have pages of notes, I can put them out on my desk and not lose them. A clean desk has truly been a revelation. I mean, I always knew it would lead to a more productive workflow, but this feels next level. Although that could just be because I’d been working with a messy desk for, well, decades.
All Better?
It really does feel better to get those things out of my head.
Is my head less cluttered? A little bit, but I do have a lot going on. And I have to be honest. When I wrote that first one, I had anticipated doing it again… I didn’t think it would take me six years to revisit the concept.
Perhaps the next one may not be years away. Then again, it just might.