Triumphant Return?

Let's Try This Again

I am not going to waste time with justifications or explanations. The reality is I keep trying to make hammering out newsletter posts a priority, and it gets sucked up into the vortex of the 83 or so things I plan to do every day before ultimately falling short. Yet repeated failure is no reason I can’t make yet another attempt to get back on that horse.

While the writing output remains paltry (it appears I have published a grand total of seven items since the start of July) I can assure you there is lots of things rattling around in my head that I want to share. And readership aside, that’s really what this is for. I was doing some minor soul searching recently, and interrogating why I feel the need to subject others to my rambling and rarely insightful or amusing thoughts. I will not get into all the things I considered, but the main thing I came back to was that I feel better when I write, and also have the satisfaction of some type of audience reaction. One of the downsides of being a stay-at-home parent is it’s not uncommon for me to go substantial stretches with limited human interaction. Kind people reading and liking/responding to my writing isn’t a replacement for speaking with people, but it’s not nothing. Ironically, i’m also terrible at speaking to people in real life, so instead I subject the masses to my foolishness.

There are no promises I will manage to stick with these posts with greater consistency than I have in the past, but I started this week with some focused goals regarding personal fitness, and I figured why not throw my writing goals right on top of those? Why not indeed. I made it to the gym for the first time in several years today, maybe that is the boost I need to give me typing fingers a consistent workout also. And I think I’ve now stretched that comparison and metaphor as far as it can stretch. Hopefully it will be more successful than my so-far futile attempts to reach my daily protein goals whilst remaining under my calorie intake guidelines. But a guy can dream.

I do not know if I will stick with publishing something every day — maintaining that arbitrary goal seems to be the only thing that bolstered my consistency — but I will kickoff this new week and renewed spirit with the intention of returning to a daily posting schedule. Of course, daily posting means anyone reading this newsletter will be subjected to a fair amount of (hopefully amusing) nonsense along with some occasional sincerity and pathos. I don’t have the time or energy to open up a vein every day — sometimes it’s necessary to open up a trash can.

With that in mind, what better way to relaunch my attempt at consistent writing than with a foolish game.

My frustration with laundry is a fairly well-trod topic in this newsletter. After spending most of the summer feeling as though I was drowning in dirty clothes (an unpleasant manner in which to drown) the return of the school year has me back to a far more consistent schedule. I recently described to someone that I internally classify the various tasks around the house into three categories: things I need to do; things I want to do; things I would love to do. For most of the summer, I was barely keeping up with the things in category one (laundry, dishes, feeding children & pets, etc.), which made it impossible to tackle anything in the other two. I have now managed to reach equilibrium with category one items, which means I can do things like go to the gym, actually play the occasional round of golf, and even bore readers with my weird housekeeping categories.

In an effort to maintain the aforementioned equilibrium, I am toying with the notion of doing one load of laundry per day so that it doesn’t become such a herculean effort to catch up. I have not gone that far yet, but I am at least on an every-other-day schedule. Until the weekend hits, when I inevitably fall behind, which then turns Sunday night and much of Monday into a laundry catch up marathon. Which is what prompted my idea for today’s foolish contest.

These are images (from two different angles) of the pile of clean clothes that were the result of four loads of laundry. Part of my equilibrium efforts involve becoming more familiar with how long it actually takes me to complete various tasks. Previously I covered how long it takes me to walk in different directions around my car (you know, the really important stuff) and now I’ve turned my attention to more frequent household tasks.

Today, I started a stop watch to determine exactly how long it took me to fold, and then put away this pile of laundry. I later timed how long it took me to fully empty the dishwasher. Things are clearly going great here! Anyway, with that data in hand, I turn the question to you, dear readers. How long do you think it took me to fold and completely put away all that laundry? Feel free to comment on the post, reply on social media, email, text, smoke signal, etc., and the person with the closest guess will win a to-be-determined prize. If I’m going to write this many words without saying anything at all, the least I can do to reward the people who actually read is to provide a tangible benefit. So let’s have some fun and guess away. The only two rules: one guess per person, and this is NOT Price is Right style so you can go over and still win.

I’m excited to try and restart my fledgling writing goals and I hope you will come along for the ride with me.