Yesterday was productive in a rote way: I milled lots of cherry for a project I’m working on. Today was productive in a thoughtful way: I put together a complicated railing with my father-in-law. I had to think about it the whole time. Nothing was obvious, nothing let me turn my brain off. I had to turn my brain on, and keep the wood fire burning. There were some adjustments and mistakes and some things that came out pretty different than I might’ve liked them to, but it works, and you won’t go falling off the steps now, which I appreciate. More than that I appreciate that the two year old living there won’t fall off the stairs. Well, that’s not true, the railing’s done but the balusters aren’t, those’ll get done tomorrow along with some more tread, a platform, and some risers.

Tomorrow will, for the most part,  be productive in a rote way. I know what I’ve got to do, and mostly it’s sanding and moving things from the shop into the apartment after I’ve sanded them, then screwing them in place in a fairly precise way. It might be a bit more complicated with the balusters since I have to cut them at specific angles and what not.

I listened to about 5 hours of my current audiobook on the last rote day. Tomorrow won’t be quite as brainless, so I estimate...three hours of audiobook, maybe more if I work for a good long time. 

These past few days I’ve not been attentive to my digital life at all. The emails are piling up. It feels good and bad. Good, because I kind of hate my digital life and I’d be happy for most of it to up and disappear. But bad because I know that I also love it, and I’m not going to let it disappear, so I’ll have to deal with that backlog, and soon. Thursday.

That’s the day after tomorrow.