Random Musings This Week - The Indiepreneur

I set a goal when I got this blog up that I would post something every Thursday. It’s a habit I committed to while I was reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and so far I’ve managed to stick to it.

Not to say that it has always been easy. I mean, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and sometimes what I have to say seems fairly irrelevant compared to all of that.

This week layered on a murder and nationwide protests. Suddenly everything I have to say seems unimportant.

So rather than putting together something big and important, I’m going to do some stream of consciousness that I doubt anyone will actually read to keep the writing habit up.

Giving Myself a Break

I’m not really a Type A personality, but I take on a lot of stuff and feel guilty when there’s not enough time in the day to get it all done.

For example, right now I’m trying to get this website fully operational, which includes getting training videos, a book, and a decent amount of design. In addition to that, I still have a day job that currently is running in full gear and a college class I need to prep for a new semester. Layer on the painting and other home repairs I’m trying to do while keeping the house somewhat in order while children are running around trying to destroy it, and it all leads to getting very little done compared to what needs to be done.

I’ve told plenty of people that they need to give themselves a break, that they need to take things one step at a time. Which is advice I have a hard time taking myself.

But I’ve tried to do it this last week. I mean, I’m still getting work done. That’s a necessity. And I’m still keeping the kids from smashing too many holes in the wall.

The rest of the room is a mess of hole patches and filler putty, so it's not like this is out of the ordinary. — Yes, Rainbow Dash, I KNOW it’s a hole in the wall where Finley through his seizure monitoring camera. You don’t have to look so frickin’ happy about it!

But the other stuff I’ve let flow into the background. Here’s what I’ve done instead.

My Distractions

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: In college, one evening my wife was hanging out with friends and I was bored out of my mind. So I went to the nearby Borders (younger generation–that USED to be a Barnes & Noble competitor) to find something to read. A new book called Hunger Games had just come out, and the publisher was obviously expecting a big hit based on the number of copies on display. So I picked it up. And finished it sometime early the next morning.

The prequel isn’t as good, and it was obviously going to have a depressing ending. But it was still a captivating read.

Arcane Casebook: Time for the Indie Book plug. I picked up In Plain Sight on a whim a year or so ago. I while ago I tried to read and review exclusively self published books, but I came across one so bad that it put me off of it for a while.

Then I picked up this series.

While it has some text errors, it is absolutely fantastic. Sure, it’s not like a deeply profound book, but it’s a series that has been hard to put down. I preordered this latest book as soon as I could. Even better, since it’s self pubbed, they’re published much quicker than traditionally published books.

The latest book just came out, and so far I’m really enjoying it.

Mythic Quest: My wife got a new iPad, which came with an Apple TV+ subscription. It’s generally a terrible service with not enough content and too hard a push for purchased movies. Apple has enough money that I predict they’ll pull it along for a few years before quietly killing it like Google does with nearly everything.

That being said, Mythic Quest is an absolute gem. The Doc & Bean episode is some of the best television I’ve ever watched. And the quarantine episode was both really good and heartbreaking.

Space Force: Despite the generally negative reviews, I’ve enjoyed Steve Carell’s latest. The hardest I laughed was when the mom (who is in prison) tells the daughter to watch her language when she drops an f-bomb. “What the shit!”, the daughter amends.

“Don’t say that. Nobody says that.”

My son has autism. One of the effects is that he has difficulty watching his language (which is fairly common). For well over a year, his favorite saying was “What the shit!”

And we’d always say, “Nobody says that, Finley. If you’re going to cuss, at least do it right!”