It’s a day late but I’ve got my plan together despite some challenges. Let’s start with the challenges:
Yesterday I went to lube my chain which was in dire need after my last ride only to hear a distressing clicking sound from my bottom bracket. Last summer it froze and they took out the bearings and reseated them but I think it’s time to replace the whole thing. It’s a good time for me to get the spring tune-up and finally get a second chainring as hills with this bike are a chore that tire me out for the whole ride. So instead of riding today I’m doing some other chores and taking the bike in for tune-ups, repairs, and upgrades tomorrow.
But the good thing is that I have lots of extra work to do this holiday weekend to stay on top of my schedule at work. As a result, I’ll make up some of the money I’ll end up spending on bike repairs so in the end it’s all good.
Meanwhile, I did take my own advice and made some plans for a couple of rides and put them in the calendar. They’re not super long so I can do them on either bike so even if my one bike isn’t repaired, the other will do. I also made an effort to eliminate dithering like I did during the pandemic. During that time I noticed my tendency to spend literally hours looking for the perfect route. More than once I finished the exercise only to realize that it was too late to go. The solution was to have a “default loop”. If I couldn’t find the perfect route in 20 minutes then that was where I’d go. I always enjoyed the ride and so the routing was just a time sink and distraction. So now with longer rides I’ve done the same thing. I now have default rides of 36 km, 50 km, 67 km, 97.5 km and 120 km. Everything from the small “after work” ride up to Unionville all the way up to a coffee in Uxbridge. I’ll look at making some longer default rides if that becomes a problem but usually with 150+ km rides I have some sort of a plan be it to go out to the Kissing Bridge outside of Guelph or, like I did last summer, to see if I can see two Great Lakes (Ontario and Erie) by bike in the same day. The answer, by the way, is 100%. Now I’m wondering if I can see three.
Yesterday after learning my bike was temporarily borked, I went to do some other tasks that had been hanging over my head. After our move last summer, where we got rid of all our furniture (too many pests in the previous apartment drove us from there but also made us think it best to bring as little with us to try to minimize the opportunity for stowaways – it worked, by the way). So everything that was in my desk drawers ended up in a big slush pile in a bin. Bike parts, old tax returns, office supplies, cables. It was the junkiest of junk drawers and it had been hanging over my head since August. Recently we got a couple of office drawer units from Ikea but then I had to put them together and after that to sort through the horrific slush pile that was my desk.
Recently the work of Christine Wrutzen has found its way into our TikTok feed. This woman does something I used to do for just regular tasks: Timing them to see just how awful they were compared to one’s mind. I used to do this for routine tasks like cleaning the kitchen or making dinner but she does it for things that she’s been putting off for a long time. So I decided to see just how long it would take to take this bin full of chaos and tame it. I figured it would be hours. I started the timer and was surprised to see that lots of what I had was no longer even needed. I could toss it. What was left was easy to file.
It took me 20 minutes.
It took me 20 minutes and I had put it off for eight months.
Now I don’t think my brain is my enemy at all. In fact, I think on some level it’s trying to look out for me and make sure my life is as good as can be by supplying me with the best and most interesting bike routes and helping me avoid spending an entire day going through the contents of my desk. But I need to stop treating those impulses like they come from someone really good at what they do. At least until that part of my psyche gets a better handle on how to do its job.
Meanwhile, there are still good things happening in the world. Here are a few:
Finland has lowered its homelessness rate by 75%. Their “Housing First” method is now being looked at by Quebec City. At its heart is a really simple and obvious idea: It’s much easier for someone to pull themselves out of poverty and get back on track with a job if they have a safe place to sleep every night.
Cleveland is also doing well with their own “Home for Every Neighbour” initiative. They originally thought that it would take 18 months to reach their goal of housing 150 people. However, it was completed months ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, a new social movement has started: free alcohol free dance parties that happen in a different place every month. I am really happy to see alcohol use going down around the world.
Even here we now have a “coffee party” scene. While the vibe isn’t really what I like, I do love the idea of decoupling loud music and dancing from late nights and alcohol. Coffee, pastries and music? If I were an extrovert I’d totally be there.
I hope in the future we’ll see more stereotypical night-time alcohol-fueled events like stand-up, bowling and improv move to mid-day coffee-centred events.
So that’s it in a nutshell. I’ve got a bit of work to do but watch for more shorter entries with good news. I finally went back to the world of RSS and added a bunch of good news sources to Inoreader and my queue of good news stories right now is over 100. I can’t be hoarding all this. It isn’t right!
Also Inoreader has been great for getting me back into keeping up with blogs (a few of you may have noticed my coming around). For a while I tried WordPress’ reader which was OK but was heavy and bulky without the ability to easily add content from outside WordPress. Going back to an RSS reader means I can have all my sources laid out with minimal ads and then with the press of a button send an article either to Raindrop.io where I store all of my good news stories waiting for sharing or to Instapaper, which I use for reading web content offline on my iPad.
What’s new in your world? What good things are you hearing about?
