Still Slacking

I'm not it just looks like that :)

I've been out loads and took photographs, videos and noted what I've seen. What I've been very poor at is documenting that process and that's why I started the blog in the first place so something has to change and I'm not sure quite what at the moment.

Part of the issue is timekeeping. The ADHD portion of my brain gets all fuzzy when it comes to actually doing stuff because the Autistic side of my brain thinks the issue is already 'solved'. I know what I saw. Recording it, the actual thing I need to do to make the observation relevant and useful in the long term feels like a chore. It's one of those things that makes us all human and individual. Everybody has these issues it's just my personal set of neurotypes makes me desire the order just not actually make that order useful in any meaningful way :(

It's not the end of the world or this blog. I will change things up to make it easier to keep up to date.

Fixing things

Recording my sightings

First things first I need to make the recording of my sightings easier. At the moment the blog is created from Markdown files that have a YAML header that includes the metadata used for cataloging the post and any sightings of creatures or natural signs while I'm out and about. The issue is, while it's nicely formatted for machines, YAML is a little too verbose for me to want to do the editing. It could be worse, it could be JSON or XML, which are a lot more verbose but any verbosity is a barrier to creating the post. The obvious thing to do is create a tool that creates the YAML patch notes for me and makes it easier to do the grunt work in recording my sightings. This is something that is completely in my wheelhouse, I'm a software engineer after all, or I was, maybe, I dunno these days :)

Planning my days

Second is something that I know I need to do and I'll need to do it more going forward. I need to plan out my days so I have specific times for doing stuff like blogging and recording my field notes. I know I need to do this. I don't know why I've put it off but I need that kind of structure not to just mill around and appear to be doing nothing while actually being really, really busy in my head and wearing myself out. So I'm going to buy a simple desk diary to do this in.

Why a paper diary?

The reason I am going old school hardware on the diary and not using a software tool is personal. I ignore software prompts very easily when they pop up and the whole internet is there to put me off on the same screen. An A5 diary on my desk, even when shit is piled on top of it, just works so much more for me. I'm going for a diary rather than using a notebook for several reasons. I love notebooks but I struggle with putting the first marks into a new book. Diaries are different. They have an expiry date, you use them or they are wasted and that puts a different perspective on using them. For this purpose a paper diary is ideal for my personal neurotype. Vive la difference.

Moving forward

Another reason for needing to diarise my day is because as well as going out and seeing things I'm going to start documenting them on video as well as with words and images. I start that month long course on Social Media content creation next week and that's why I started the YouTube channel earlier than expected and also a TikTok channel (although I'm not sure my slow content works on TikTok some of the trends interest me) and to build a channel I need regular content and I'm slacking so much on writing and recording voice overs some of which will be on the same topics as the articles I plan on posting here and neither are getting done. The ideas are washing around but they aren't hitting the site, they aren't being recorded and eventually they will he forgotten. I need to get this stuff out there for many reasons and it churning around inside me isn't doing me any good and certainly won't help anyone else :)

So things are happening because things have happened and I haven't shared them and that's not what the plan was.