Back when I was a working man—that is, working for a company—making to-do lists was both a blessing and a curse. The tendency for me was to make a comprehensive list of daily tasks, around 10 to 20 items. These often became a distraction. Which should I do next out of the twenty on the list? Most of the time I would tackle the easier, less important item just to cross something off the list, rather than the harder but most important task.
At some point I learned a trick from some efficiency expert. Your daily to-do list should have only four items on it. They should be the most important ones. Do them, cross them off your list, and then, if you have time, move on to other things. I adopted this practice with one modification: I put the four most important tasks above a line and four other tasks below the line. This gave me more of a plan to make the day really full of accomplishment.
I’ve never adopted that practice for the many things I have to get done in retirement. But since my health problems of last year, with the Dec. 22 seizure being the concluding event, severely interrupted my work, I’ve had trouble getting back to it. As I posted before, I began writing again not so long ago. I’m still working on decumulation. And our stock trading partnership taxes are due March 17. It was all becoming overwhelming. When I made a to do list, it didn’t help.
Then I remembered the four-task rule. About three weeks ago I started to begin each day making a four-task to-do list. The things I thought most important to that day went on the list. While I had big, on-going tasks, each day’s four were different. Partnership taxes were on it every day after about 3 March. But on 1 March, the first item was “Call Ezra”, #2 grandson on his birthday. I put one writing/publishing task on the list each day, and one decumulation task.
Yesterday’s four were:
finish partnership taxes
AWTHW V2 cover
transcribe journal sheets
storeroom organization
Alas, due to most of the morning being taken up with five errands, I didn’t have the full day to complete them all, and I did only 1 and 3.
Today, my four tasks are:
AWTHW V2 cover
mail partnership taxes
mark boxes in storeroom
Cheney fam photos
We’ll see how it goes. Meanwhile, I have found a use for all these pads that accumulate from unsolicited give aways. The one I’m currently using, with enough space for six days on a sheet, was given to us by the realtor who sold us our house before this one in 1991. I found it in the desk in The Dungeon a couple of months ago, and decided it was high time to use it. From the size of the pad still left, it will probably last for 3 or 4 months.
Tonight is the alignment/parade of the planets. Just after sunset, we are supposed to be able to see seven planets, a highly unusual event. Except, if you read the fine print, Saturn will be so close to the setting sun you really won’t be able to see it. The one further out from Saturn (Neptune or Uranus, I forget which), will only be visible by telescope. You need to have a cloudless sky to see it, and a rural area not beset by light pollution will help quite a bit.
I don’t know what our cloud cover will be tonight, but all the other conditions are right for viewing in my area. The light pollution is to the east of us, and the viewing will be in the western sky. But we have one pesky problem: trees. We live in a forest. Mercury and Saturn will likely be below the tree line. I’m not sure about Venus, Mercury, and Saturn. So for us to see the planetary parade, we need to go somewhere that gives us a vista to see the four, or maybe five, planets.
But the bigger problem for me is the busyness and tiredness of the last few day, which will continue today. By the time sunset arrives, I will certainly be too tired to drive the three miles to the best venue close to me.
What’s making me so busy. In a word, decumulation. In another word, decluttering. In a third word, cleaning and organization. The last three days I’ve been working hot and heavy at these three thing, and will continue today. I’ve been purging business records, and stacking the paper for shredding. Other papers go straight into the recycling pile. I’ve also been transcribing old handwritten journal sheets into my electronic journal, and checking the odd genealogy paper against my electronic files.
I could write pages and pages about this, but I need to get to decumulation and decluttering work. I’ll let these few words speak for themselves.
Oh, by the way, yesterday I got back to writing. Editing old stuff instead of writing new stuff, but it’s part of the writing process—the first I’ve done in over a month.
Yes, between decumulation and getting ready for a trip and dealing with health issues, finding time to write a meaningful blog post just isn’t there. I thought of it Thursday night, but was dealing with purposeful sleep deprivation for an EEG on Wednesday that effectively took three days out of my week. Friday found me too busy trying to wrap up several decumulation tasks. Last night I sorted through two 3-ring binders, and got rid of one and all the papers it held.
Work continues on that decumulation, but I see lots of progress. I’m hoping that this week we will take a load of miscellaneous things to the new Goodwill donation center that opened just a mile from our house. I’m hoping also this week to begin going through old family photos of Lynda’s paternal family, take electronic pictures of those we want copies of, and send the rest on to relatives. That depends, however, on Lynda being well enough to look at them.
Today I will do two main tasks. First, create electronic forms for 2025. I didn’t do this in January because I didn’t get December’s finished. So to do his, it means first finishing December, copying the files to 2025 files, making the few alterations for the new year, and entering January’s data. I’m talking about family budget, book sales, and stock trading records. This will take about two hours, I think. Second will be filing a mass of papers that have accumulated on my worktable in The Dungeon. A lot of these are health papers, and I hope they go into place fairly easily. Still, this is probably an all-day task.
Whether I get to do a little writing or not is up in the air. It would be nice to find an hour to write, but I make no promises.
Friday snuck up on me. I have no blog post ready. It’s been a busy week, as I’ve been overwhelmed with things to do. I had medical appointments every day. Been working on decumulation tasks every day. One day I was able to sneak in a little writing.
I’ll try to be back with a real post on Monday. And maybe later today I’ll drop back in and add a little to this post.
The legacy books on the built-in shelves in the living room.
No, not sick of reading. I’m in the midst of reading two different books, one print book and one e-books. Actually, it’s 3 books. There’s one other one out in the sunroom that I’ve almost given up on. Maybe I’ll read a little more in that. And, when I’m done with these two, or three, I’ll transition into two more. Wait, it’s four. There’s also the book I read in the mornings for devotions.
The books on the left are waiting for the buyer to pick them up. The books on the right are waiting for reshelving.
No, not sick of writing books. This last week I finished the first chapter in my next Bible study. I enjoyed doing it, though after almost two months of writing nothing due to my health problems. And the two months before that I was writing at reduced capacity due to the two freak injuries I had in mid-July. So I’m having to get re-used to taking a portion of my day for writing. And working through my fine motor skills for typing. Yes, re-learning the elements of being an author.
Keepers to go back on a shelf, or possibly to be revaluated, but right now adding to the decor in the dining room.
No, what I’m sick of about books is selling them. You see, in the interest of a future downsizing, which after this year of health problems is much closer than we though, we decided to make a big dent in the 2 or 3 thousand books in our house.
That includes what I’ve been calling my legacy books, or more properly termed heirloom books. These include a large number of books published in the 1800s. This has been a lot of work. Looking up the books at on-line sales sites, deciding on a price, placing an ad on Facebook Marketplace, fielding queries, scheduling buyers in, dealing with no-shows, etc. It’s a lot of work.
Books on the dining room table.
I could also say gathering books from various places in the house. We had many boxes of books on shelves in the basement storeroom. Lynda was the one to identify the boxes and carry them upstairs (since I wasn’t allowed to go on stairs after my operation). Our daughter, Sara, also helped carry books upstairs while she was here. The basement is now much cleared of books. Yet, the bookshelves in the basement living room still have lots of books. We have no shortage of building material.
Books on the garage worktable.
The garage worktable is covered by boxes of Christian novels, mainly for women. The dining room table is covered with boxes of misc. books, a cross between legacy and modern books. All those are for sale. Then we have boxes of books in the living room and dining room that Lynda hasn’t yet made the keep/get rid of decision. We also have a pile of books on the hearth, waiting for the buyer to pick up, and another, smaller pile near of books we have decided to keep but haven’t yet looked where to reshelve them.
Why not just give the books away, you ask? It may come to that, especially with the modern ones. But for the legacy books, it seems a shame to not first try to get something for them. Some of them have been in the family for 130 years—first on bookshelves of some kind in the houses David Sexton rented, later in boxes in the boxes in the basement of the house I grew up in in Cranston, Rhode Island, then finally on the bookshelves or in boxes in our house. All that storage and transporting deserves compensation, don’t you think?
At some point, the inventory will be small enough that donation will be more likely. Or the few that are left will be manageable to keep. We’ve already done that with children’s books, 400 of them donated to our church for a special event.
But at some point, I’ll be glad for the dining room table to be clear, the living room clear, and the garage clear of book boxes and loose books to be gone, either sold, donated, or re-shelved.
The view from my woodland reading chair. Our house is to the left. Well in the distance is where the sound of the limb falling came from.
A few years back, we bought the unbuilt lot next to us, on the uphill side of our house. We got it for a good price and, based on current prices for lots in Bella Vista, it’s perhaps the most profitable investment we’ve ever made.
I’ve done some improvements on this lot, cutting down dead trees, cutting underbrush, clearing leaves from the edges to allow some grass to get a start. We have our compost pile on the lot (actually had it there before we bought it) and a well-worn path from the garage to the pile.
The woods directly in front of me. I’m keeping this are free of new trees and brush, though there are enough mature trees around it that the shade canopy is complete.
Along that path is my reading place. I don’t go out there to read often. Usually, I take my noon reading break in our sunroom. But it isn’t airconditioned, and this time of year it’s really too hot to read in. So on these days, I either read in the basement or out in the woods. I think I’ve gone to the woods most days this week (see the dateline), usually right around noon.
Isn’t it hot then, you ask? Yes, probably around 92°. But it’s shady. The oaks cover the path. I have a chair out at a level spot. A cut log set on end serves as a small table, leveled up with a wedge piece from a tree felling, to set my phone and cup of coffee on. By 1:00 p.m., the sun will have moved around further south and higher, and gaps in the canopy caused by the death of a couple of oaks due to a blight maybe three years ago. At that point I’ll have to move my chair or go inside.
Another view from my reading chair, looking more to the south and past our lot. Sunshine occasionally finds its way to the ground here.
Today I followed this procedure, but the temperature was a little cooler than recently due to rain yesterday evening. It was 92° with a nice breeze. In the shade of the oaks, I felt quite cool. I had a book and a magazine (an old one) with me. I decided to read the mag and try to get through it. Since it was from 2009, many of the articles were dated and not worth reading. Despite the distractions of woodland reading, I was able to read all I wanted in the hour and put it in the recycling bin afterwards.
What distractions, you ask? Just the sights and sounds of the woodland. And yes, even though our house is well within sight, when I’m sitting on our lot I’m in the woodlands. But most of the sounds are of human civilization. Take today. At first it seemed dead quiet, except for the sound the wind was making with the leaves. Then I heard a car door close, then another. Soon, I heard a lawnmower start and start to move. It sounded like it was coming from down the street at one of the two new houses. Then I could faintly hear a voice; probably one of the mowers.
Before the mower sound came, I watched a small lizard play near the edge of the driveway. A butterfly came by but didn’t stay. A fly somehow got in my coffee, but I fished it out and went right on drinking. I heard a mosquito near ear and swept it away. A vehicle made its way up the steep road across the hollow, somewhat faintly, around a thousand feet away or a little more. In winter, when the oaks are devoid of leaves, we can hear vehicle much clearer.
As the mowing continued, a vehicle came up the hill and passed by me, most likely without seeing me in the shadows. The view from the road into the woods is partly obscured by the first row of trees, some underbrush, and my blackberry vines. I looked back down the hill, into the woods. A bird flew silently across the lot thirty feet away from me.
Then I heard a crashing sound. Shifting my gaze to the north, I saw leaves and branches moving in the direction of the crash. It seems a branch fell from a tree behind our backyard. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go down there and see if I have new deadfall just off the property.
I continued reading in this distracted state. The magazine, the monthly publication of our Rural Electrical Cooperative, had a good article on one woman’s historic preservation work in Arkansas. That was quite interesting. Another article covered things that the State Legislature would be dealing with in the session about to start. But I kept looking up from the mag to see what was going on around me. I heard the sound of a squirrel but didn’t see it.
I looked around for WTBD—work to be done. Some underbrush needed more cutting. Leaves need to be pushed back a few feet more from the house, to widen the grass strip that’s coming up naturally there. Three trees, 6 to 8 inches diameter, fell near the south border of the lot. Someday, perhaps, I’ll saw them up and put them on one of my brush piles.
The sun was moving around to the point where I would soon lose my shade, then thin clouds partly obscured the sun. I decided I’d read all in the mag that was important, laid it on my log table, and took up my coffee. Perhaps you think it strange to take hot coffee out to woods to drink on a hot day, but I like the taste, and in the woods it’s not too hot to drink.
But my time was soon up. I:00 p.m. neared, and lunch beckoned me. The sights and sounds of the woods faded as I traversed the rocky path the 50 feet to the garage. Possibly I’ll return to my reading spot tomorrow for another hour with another mag or a book, and once again read distractedly but enjoyably. Cooler weather and the sunroom are not far away. Any place to read is a good place.
Every now and then I’ll find another meme on Facebook that I think is worth adding to my series. If you read any of the prior posts in this series, you’ll see I’m critical of the memes. This one is, perhaps, a little different.
I saw this on Tuesday. It’s in the picture. In case the picture doesn’t come through, here’s the meme:
I forgave people I should’ve beat up.
Ignoring the grammar, this is obviously a horrible meme. No matter how badly you think of people, no one should be subject to your desire to inflict physical violence. No, this is not an acceptable behavior.
Except, this is obviously not meant to be a serious statement. Someone’s just trying have some fun, to demonstrate absurdity by being absurd. The person posting this meme is venting frustration at the behavior of people she (or he) encounters. The statement is harsh, but it not meant to be taken seriously.
Forgiveness is a good thing, a virtue. Multiple times for the same or different offense. Physical violence is never an acceptable solution.
So I give this meme a grudging pass. I wouldn’t post it, but the absurdity of it makes obviously sarcasm, not a true statement of intended behavior.
Is this an appropriate meme to be sharing? Somehow I think not. It certainly doesn’t comply with the law of love that Jesus spoke about on several occasions.
Here’s one more in my series of social media posts. This one is a little longer than the other ones. I’ve seen it worded two or three ways. It’s based on the premise that people act stupidly. Now, I know that the word “stupid” is out of favor at present. You ought not call anyone stupid, which is usually meant to demean their intelligence.
The meme I see fairly regularly on Facebook, and I suspect it would also be on other social media platforms, is something like this.
I have got to stop saying “How stupid can you be?” I’m beginning to think people are taking it as a challenge.
In other words, people in general are really, really stupid. And just when you think they can’t be any stupider than they have been so far, they go and do something even more stupid.
This grates on me. Behind this meme is the thought by the one posting it that everyone he/she knows is stupider than he/she. The person has an expectation that everyone he encounters in life is below him on the intelligence scale. Or on the behavioral scale.
I look at Jesus’s command to love one another, love your neighbor, and love God. Somehow this meme doesn’t fit that command. You might say, “I’m just telling it like it is.” You might think so. You might even be way high on the behavioral and intelligence scales. But saying this meme is not loving others.
It’s your choice. Post the meme if you want to appear arrogant. I’m going to do my best to live out the law of love.
I find truth in this saying, but when do you get to the place where you give rather than get?
Continuing with my mini-series of mini-posts about advice found on Facebook, here is the third one. On Facebook, you have heard it said:
If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
Said another way:
Surround yourself with people who are better than you are.
Admirable sentiments, don’t you think? How can anybody object to that? In order to improve yourself, choose your friends wisely; make sure they are smarter than you, better than you. Let their wisdom, experience, and common sense rub off on you. You will soon find yourself a better person.
But…but…if you really, rigorously do that, you might help yourself, but can you ever help someone else to be better? You can’t. You will always be taking, never giving.
So it seems like this is the height of selfishness. Yes, sometimes surround yourself with good, smart, better people, and grow from your association with them. But at other times, be the smartest, most experienced person in the room and help others to grow.
I remember back to college. I think it was fall semester sophomore year. Several of us in the engineering program were in the same calculus class. This was level three calculus. We’d already been through calculus both semesters freshman year. Third level was what was supposed to weed out those who would make it or not as an engineer. I was working a lot of hours at the Burger Chef that semester, riding my 5-speed bicycle the 5 miles each way, along with 18 credit hours, leaving little time for study. Leading up to a critical test, I thought I knew the material fairly well but still wanted to study more.
But two other guys in the same class with me were struggling big time. They asked me for help. So between classes and work, rather than study on my own to improve my knowledge, I met with them and went over the material. The test came without me doing my normal intensive study for a math test. I felt fairly good, but thought I could have done better if I had found the time to study.
The day the grades were supposed to be posted, I went to the professor’s office. He walked in about the time I got there. He said the tests were graded but not yet entered in his book. Would I help him do that? I took the pile of tests and read off the names and grades while he entered them in his book. Yes, this was a primitive time, long before computer databases and grading systems. Page by page I read, over 60 students in his three classes of this course. Finally I came to my test. I got a 100. My best grade of the year. It paid to help my friends study what they needed to know, perhaps more than studying on my own.
I want to be careful here. Making sure others in the room are smarter than you may be a form of selfishness, but making sure you’re the smartest in the room could easily lead to arrogance. Some balance is required.
But I think it’s easy to reject this Facebook advice. Be in the position with others that makes sense for you. Look for smart people when you need help and needy people when you need to minister.
You all have probably seen something like this on social media.
Yes, Facebook, like all social media, is full of advice. Is any of it worth listening to? Or actually modifying your behavior to emulate it? I’m thinking of doing a series of short posts—not necessarily consecutively—discussing some of them. Or, perhaps I’ll do one or two and find it a waste of time. But here’s the first.
If you treat me right, I’ll treat you right. But if you cross me, I’ll hurt you right back.
I have seen this over and over on Facebook. It’s probably on other social media platforms as well. I’ve seen it said by men and women, though more often by men. The people who say this seem to span many ages, though I think they come more often from those considered middle aged.
Is this good advice, something worth making one of you life behaviors? When I think of wise maxims people have grown to accept as useful guides to behavior, I think of the Golden Rule.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
But that’s just the opposite of the Facebook advice, which can be rephrased as
Do to others as they have done to you.
That’s just the opposite of the Golden Rule. Let your behavior be governed by others—not just by others, but by behavior that you dislike or even find reprehensible. You wind up behaving just like them.
I also see in this Facebook phrase a touch of passive aggressiveness. That may not be the right use of that psychology phrase, which I’m not sure I ever fully understood. But you are saying something aggressive that you will enact in a passive way—your behavior totally depending on how others behave toward you.
How much better to treat others, not how they have treated you, but in love. To return insult with blessing; evil with good; hate with love.
So, when you see this advice on Facebook or other social media, counter it with the Golden Rule. Don’t let your behavior be dictated by that of others.
