The Last Days of Boredom

Places, everyone.

Yeet!

I don’t know what that means but it feels useful in the context of this week. So much drama, none of it mine. I was drama-adjacent.

For once.

This week started with a quiet afternoon funeral and also contained a curated reading series, a lovely long visit from a relative, a D&D one-shot, a rock concert (The Earthlings) at Arlene’s Grocery, the sampling of a fantastic new restaurant in my neighborhood (Chambers, I highly recommend it for a light but gourmet veggie-forward dinner; prices are high but quality is higher), a wonderful work-event at a rooftop bar, and &JULIET on Broadway which stunned me: the show is a silly fluffy thing densely filled with rich cream puff stagecraft, glittery costume changes and truly superior belting, but spending two hours with the fact that one guy was responsible for writing the music and lyrics for all of those familiar pop tunes (not to mention many many more) was jaw-dropping and worth every penny.

Apart from these few interesting highlights, I was swamped with mundane tasks of epic importance and consequence like “figuring out a new email provider” and “testing payment portals” - Question: how did my wildly creative life end up so very very administrative?

Example of questionable use of AI to scour websites and send automatic flyers to everyone their programming deems part of a company whose bio holds a particular keyword. Yes, I really did get NINE identical postcards sent to the Pen Parentis address on a single day. All addressed to named members who may or may not have photos on our website, but none of whom actually WORK for Pen Parentis.

What I learned this week:

Lighting a candle can make a good transition between something you hate to do and something you love to do, but if you rely too much on the ritual, you can spend an awful lot of time looking for candles.

Photo by Pierre Pavlovic on Unsplash

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Writing News:

If you missed it, this Impact Interview with me in Audacious Magazine is super intense: Milda M De Voe of Pen Parentis On Leading An Audacious, Visionary, Impact-Focused Program.

This week is my last with LadyTeen before college so I’m on an emotional rollercoaster. Forgive me for writing less. I’ve been doing jigsaw puzzles.

Shh: I’m also editing the novel manuscript (→ Chapter 12).

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Random Final Thought:

The gravelly sounds of digging through a full jigsaw puzzle box for a side piece and the soothing muted rattle while sifting through a pouch for a wooden Scrabble tile are each so pleasant in their own way, but even just imagining reaching into a bag of marbles makes me wince.

And yet the sharp click of a shooter hitting another glass marble is so satisfying, isn’t it?

These used to be everywhere. Where did they all go? What about jacks? They were once everywhere too. Where are they now? (Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash)