Good morning! Hello! How are you this fine Friday? Excited for the weekend? I am! Let’s do it!
A friend of mine earlier this week asked for me to publish my routine, because I get so much done. Actually maybe she didn’t say that part, but it felt implied, Which is funny, because I don’t feel that productive these days, but, then, part of that is because in my head parenting and my job “don’t count” toward getting things done, so, you know, I only “get things done” on top of those things but, surprise surprise, parenting and having a job tend to take up a good bit of time.
I am such a huge believer in daily routines, though. And doing some little thing every day, and over time having it add up. It’s a huge part of my psyche, I gotta admit. In truth this schedule, below, is far more micromanaged, down to the minute. I get antsy when things are off by a minute or two, much to the chagrin of my wife. I’ve convinced myself that a routine is good for my daughter, though who knows, maybe I am tyranizing her with one. Best not to think about it.
Oh also, before I start, if anyone has seen a good MMT-driven analysis of Paul Volcker’s 1979 “Volcker Shock” and any non-recession-causing alternatives, I should very much love to read it. Thanks.
Anyway, without further ado:
My current daily routine
7:00 - Alarm goes off. Turn it off, take off my dumb mask, do my Wordle in bed to wake up my brain. If all goes well, I get it quickly. If it’s a hard one, my bladder calls and I go pee and start doing my morning routine. Usually some brainstorm occurs to me and I finish my Wordle during this time. If that fails, well, the whole day is shot.
7:00 - 7:20 - Teeth, pills, face, deodorant, clothes, allergy drops. I have this little wall-mounted timer that when you press a button it blinks for 3 minutes so that I keep my sublingual drops under my tongue for long enough. It is very useful. Really a great purchase.
If I am done before 7:20, Janet is still in the basement using my treadmill (long story), so I sit in the living room chair and start checking my email until shes done. This is rare. It’s usually about 7:220
7:20 - 9 AM - alone office time
Grab a Diet Mt Dew from the fridge. Open my phone and manually start the dropbox sync of photos from the previous day cuz I am weird. Change into my near-sited glasses. Put some music on.
(of late) Check via remote desktop my old computer which is sitting somewhere on a VPN downloading shit. File away anything it happened to grab, which is usually nothing because it’s all obscure.
Check email, mostly get rid of spam, open a few tabs from it, skip the friends and newsletters
Check Slack
Write GMHHAY. I am super happy if I’m done by 8:20. It’s usually about 8:30. Especially if I don’t have a playlist ready.
Paste GMHHAY into
Hit “refresh” on Quicken
Go to email, copy GMHHAY out of email and paste it into a big Scrivenor file that turns GMHHAYs into a book.
Update my Quicken transactions, tagging them and making sure nothing weird happened with the money.
Do my browser tabs:
My QNAP, make sure no apps need updating, no firmware update, and that both of my automated backups to Backblaze completed during the night. I could probably stop checking this, it’s been a year.
Plex, check a bunch of friends’ Plex to see if any cool new movies arrived.
Netflix physical DVD queue. It’s so slow now compared to the heyday but it is still nice to get mail
Emma’s Google Photos to grab any new photos of Jane she has and archive them in my archiving system.
Discogs new items for sale from my wantlist page. Hope and pray nothing amazing and expensive shows up.
My Youtube channel stats page
My finances at various places, check Eth price, stocks n shit like that.
For the last several months I’ve had 528’s Congressional redistricting page open. I could probably close that now.
Do my country flashcard games: Europe, Africa, Asia, Central America, Caribbean, South America
Of late I’ve been checking 528’s Senate Polls page.
Do my 750 words.
First thing I do in 750 words is a bunch of stats:
Hopefully I have five or so minutes left, and if I do I log into No Man’s Sky real quick and reset my freighter missions, check in on my settlement, and stop by a curious deposit to get some fungal mould to refine into nanites. Don’t ask. I have to stop this.
9AM - 10:30AM - Jane morning
Get Jane out of bed, listen to her tell me she rather have mommy.
Get lights turned on, go to the window, open it, look out the window and discuss what we see. If we are lucky, Grammy is waving from her window.
Sit in the chair, dolls sit on jane’s lap, she sits on mine, we hug. I ask her in a doll voice if she has a feeling. She takes the dolly to go pee, then she picks out her outfit and hands it to me and I lay it on the floor and she changes.
I officially start work at 9 AM in this time but it’s mostly Slack chats if anything. My most-communicative direct report is west coast, so he’s usually not working yet. So far almost never has anything really major or bad interrupted this but it’s always a risk and it stresses me out.
We go downstairs and do breakfast which has a highly ritualized routine that has gotten longer since she has started “helping”
Hopefully we’re done by 10 but lately it’s been going long. If it goes past 10:15, I give up and just stay upstairs till Emma comes at 10:30.
If we’re done on time, hopefully we go downstairs and she goes and plays without me and I can start work but if not, I hang with her till Emma comes.
On Wednesdays I have a 10 AM All Hands at work and Jane is really into it and she sits on my lap through most of it and says hi to my coworkers at the beginning. Almost every time I have to speak in it, she interrupts. If it’s an All Hands I have to run, Emma might wake up early and help out.
10:30 - Noon
If I didn’t finish 750 or some other thing, finish it now.
I have this time blocked out at work and it generally works and it is in this time I usually get any work product I need to get done, done. Any major work pieces of writing, reading contracts, anything like that.
Read the rest of the news: NYT, FT, Politico, Wapo, Bloomberg, Twitter.
I hop on the treadmill and read all my newsletters. Takes about thirty minutes.
This stuff usually takes up the full hour.
On Friday this is varied in that Jane is at Janet’s and I do the morning errands at Walmart and recycling and shit but then I still do all the computer stuff and if all works out perfectly it’s all done at roughly the same time. It usually is because I am neurotic about schedules.
Noon to 1 - Lunch
Whole family has lunch together, Jane has various games and rules.
I am still making some variation of my 21 gun asian stir fry for lunch most days.
We all share a cookie together at the end of lunch.
I kiss them both and say “here’s some love” to Jane and mime taking some love out of my heart and giving it to her. “Thank you,” she says and puts it in her heart. If she’s not throwing a tantrum. Which, you know.
1PM - 5PM.
Work. Meetings. It is in these hours I do all my company meetings. Sales, Account, Management, Leadership, one on ones, AWS costs, shit like that. Anything else that comes up.
This is Emma’s Jane time. They sometimes go to the park. Or play outside on the playset. Mostly Jane plays with dolls.
5PM
Dinner.
5:30 PM - 6PM
We go on a walk if it is not raining. Pretty much year round. Our neighborhood is one street, a half-mile long. We live at the beginning of it. We walk to the end, to the cul-de-sac, turn around and walk home. We stop and talk to neighbors. We wave to cars. Jane sits in the stroller, or walks, or rides piggy back on Emma’s shoulders.
6PM - 8:30 PM
Every other day: Daddy bedtime. Watch Jane. Play with her. Read book. Catch up on YouTube subscriptions.
At 8:20 we begin bedtime, move all animals and her water to the bed, turn off lights, do a pratfall, sing a lullabye, do one-kiss-two-kiss, tuck in covers. Stay a few minutes if she wants me to stay.
The other days: Alone time! No obligations! Watch Youtube. Maybe watch a movie. Text with friends. Brain dead. Wonderful.
8:30 - 10ish.
Time with wife. Usually TV. Usually a chat of some pressing issue or day’s events. Especially talking if, whenever we tried to talk during lunch, dinner or walk, Jane wouldn’t have it and interrupts and wants us to talk to her instead, which is, of course, fine, but sometimes you gotta talk to your spouse about adult stuff.
10ish
Get ready for bed. Emma comes along usually and chats some more through teeth and whatnot. Says goodnight.
I sit in bed and read my book.
Lights out at 11:30.
Monday: Trash day
Tuesday: Groceries are delivered between 10 and 11. Put ‘em away. Emma and Jane take Grammy’s groceries next door to Grammy’s
Weekends: I sleep in a bit. Set my alarm for 7:50. Almost never sleep that long. No computer stuff, no GMHHAY. In the morning I try and do some gardening but sometimes just laze around. Still do Jane at 9, and breakfast. 10-Noon is chores with Jane: usually gardening, sometimes carboard shredding, hardware store runs, etc. Lunch is the same. Post-Lunch Emma has Jane, I do more puttering, chores, this is when I do all my gardening, my podcast, my Plex archiving, etc.
There are things I cannot do these days. It is very hard to carve out time to write a book, on top of parenting and job. Theoretically maybe on the weekends, but I like gardening too much. Maybe on the weekends, in the winter. We will see. Aside from GMHHAY books, I’m not really trying right now, which is sad.
The treadmill in the morning and the walk are not really enough exercise but at least they maintain.
All right, a mellow ambient mix for the end of the day. My friend Jenna was very excited about the mellow classical mix, and yesterday’s mix was very aggro, so well swing way back on the pendulum again today and go real ambient. Except for the Balladeste song at the end, man that one is rockin. Well, compared to the rest of the mix. I was tempted to throw an oldie or two on here, but there’s a lot of activity going on in the ambient realm these days, so let’s just keep it all new(ish).
All right. Have a lovely weekend! See you Monday where I will regale you with thrilling tales of gardening and recycling centers.
“my old computer which is sitting somewhere on a VPN downloading shit. File away anything it happened to grab..." I'd love a deeper dive on how your QNAP and Plex factor in here. If only to look for ways to improve my own setup.