Last night, Mark and Wendy came over for Mexican stew, and we had a great evening just catching up and talking. Today was another day with an aggressive focus on tackling lingering tasks. I managed, again, to avoid the time suck of multitasking and instead just put my focus 100 % into whatever I was doing. I cleared a good chunk of clutter in the garage by putting it away or setting it aside to donate. A few things went up on the Facebook marketplace. I tend to use Craigslist more, but I wanted to try. Selling stuff can be a pain coordinating and communicating, but I consider some things worth a few bucks. A desk. A 42" TV. A car bike rack. The garage is now at least 50% cheer again, and with the momentum, I hope to stay on clearing more in small bursts. After getting Francisco's help yesterday with the wiring, I tackled the drip system. Now, it is all fine-tuned for the summer. More effort went into testing the vent in Tommy's room, and the shaded awning is on its way, too. The coup-de-gras was the massive backlog of laundry, all of ours, getting sorted, folded, and put away. That was when I "allowed" myself to multitask by listening to more of the Anne Patchet audiobook. That's another case, audiobooks, where the concept of doing two things simultaneously backfires. I get much more out of reading than trying to listen while doing anything besides the most mundane secondary tasks. Tasks like walking or time on the elliptical or pulling weeds, maybe. The moment I'm distracted by needing to determine if the pot I'm scrubbing is completely clean, or identify a pair of socks as mine his or hers, whatever I'm listening to gets diluted or I get lost. It reminds me of how, as a child living in Pennsylvania at age 10, while reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," well before the movie came out, I somehow got distracted and unwittingly jumped over a few chapters. Out of nowhere, these orange midgets come into the story to attend to Veruca Salt while singing songs, and I'm trying to make sense of it with no prior introduction. Plus, where was Agustus? Stopping and going back a few chapters to get back on track was a moment I have always remembered when placing a bookmark between physical pages. Audio content has its place and time, and perhaps so do I. It came up in conversation with Mark and Jon last week how the days of music with lyrics while working are behind us. What changed? I once authored complex Excel workbooks while my ears bled to the sound of American Idiot at full volume, yet now, it's calm instrumental study music or nothing at all.
