How I spend my waking hours

New set of colourful serving bowls with lidswindscreen at end of balcony

I’m more of a night owl (or maybe an afternoon hummingbird?) than the proverbial early morning robin in search of the worm. My best inspirations seem to strike somewhere between 4 and 6 pm, after I’ve dithered away the morning (which generally doesn’t start before 9 am or later), had a leisurely lunch, and then been distracted by a book, some dishes that need washing now, a walk or a bike ride when the sun is shining, or other, more pressing, occupations than writing.

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Mr. Fluffster (also a writer), on the other hand, is a Morning Person (and, not being a vegetarian, is welcome to those worms). He’s generally put in several productive hours before I even wake up. Of course, he writes about Serious Subjects and gets properly published (see What Are Novels Good For? Pulling the Plug on Dream Interpretation, and The Value of Studying Philosophy). Me, I’m just a dilettante, generating self-published fluff. I’m good with that. We balance each other nicely.

Today, I was delayed getting my day off to a start because there was a very loud Steller’s Jay squawking somewhere very close by. When I went to investigate, I discovered it trapped behind the windscreen on the outside of our balcony (above right). When it saw me, it panicked and re-doubled its efforts to fly through glass (and got louder), so I stood very still, hoping it would calm down and figure it out. It did, eventually, and flew off with one last loud squawk. Then I spent some time regretting that I hadn’t taken a photo of it and took one of just the windscreen instead. Then I got distracted by something else, and it was time for lunch.

Looking back, it’s amazing how quickly the days have passed since retirement. While I admittedly do waste time (gaze out the window, wonder how to rescue birds, watch bad TV, bake failed bread), I still manage to cram lots of productive activities into every day. For example, last week, I finally got those replacement bowls I was after (above left; spent half a day driving across the city to find them!) And the best part is that they were made in the country of my birth (definitely a first; I don’t think I’ve ever seen “Made in Holland” on anything before).

In fact, I’m so busy, I haven’t even tackled half of the tasks on that to-do list I created in mid-August. Just can’t seem to find the time.

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