Sometimes, I suppose, we learn unexpected things about ourselves.

Strike that.

Much of the time, the best lessons are the unexpected ones.

As many who follow these pages already know, I am self-employed, and have been for many years. As such, you'd think that a "shelter in place" order wouldn't really cause a huge amount of disruption to my daily routine.

Here's a pretty flower, as a distraction...

If you look at it purely from the cold hard facts angle, "available time" is pretty much the same. If anything, I have a little more time available, because I have fewer occasions to leave the house to run errands.

The "unexpected" part of this equation has been my decreasing ability to focus.

I have all this time on my hands to get caught up with all these projects I have been meaning to get around to, and I am just having a hard time concentrating.

This pile here — gracing my desk — is actually an awful data entry job waiting to be done, so I can complete our 2019 taxes.

paper, paper everywhere....

Maybe it doesn't look like much, but there's close to three inches of paper there...

Frankly, I think Shadow (aka @curatorcat) has a better idea. He's been napping in his box, which sits on top of my filing drawer, pretty much all day.

Great use of office resources, yes?

I find myself envying the cat's ability to just sleep through everything, perfectly content with his little cat life! The highlight of his world was catching a mouse in our basement, a couple of days ago...

I think Shadow has the right idea...

Meanwhile, it was raining raining all day yesterday, so I haven't been able to "distract myself" with the ongoing yardwork project of tripling our "grow area" for vegetables, this year. It has been damp, cold and pretty miserable out there.

Which left me with no option but to tackle the paperwork pile!

Onward!

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One of the things that has always driven me slightly nuts is the fact that choosing the "patchwork economic" path of self-employment means (currently) eight separate microbusinesses to keep books for.

Which typically amounts to over an hour a day of just keeping records. All for pretty much making... not very much.

So why bother? Well, if we don't bother, there are a whole lot of business deductions we wouldn't be able to claim... so we'd actually owe more taxes.

So the pile gets not really smaller, but slightly more organized. And I add my deceased auntie's ceramic pencil cup, a picture of Mrs. Denmarkguy and the grandkids, and a crystal. Because I'm an old hippy-dippy dude.

See how I distracted myself, there...?

I was going to sell the pencil cup on eBay because it's actually somewhat old, and somewhat of a rarity (and valuable) among people who collect Danish ceramics... but since nobody seems to have money to buy anything, I've decided to keep it.

My auntie was a shrewd investor, so maybe some of her good mojo will rub off...

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There are always interruptions, of course... like the dog making noises to have her breakfast. So we must take a "station break" to take care of her.

Daisy the dog...

Mrs. Denmarkguy is deep in the throes of a "crisis call" with one of her clients. She gets a lot of those, these days... being both a Minister and a Life Coach and Counselor. We call night like last night "Fend" nights, meaning we all just fend for ourselves, with respect to getting food.

Except Daisy the Dog, of course!

It's amazing what you find on your desk, when getting it clean turns into a larger excavation project! Of course, many of the things I find tend to be "sidetracks" that were left there in the first place because they didn't have a "home" they could easily be sorted to.

I tend to write down the artist/names of a lot of music I like... to come back to, later.

I tend to listen to a lot of "zone out music."

I have about 30 YouTube playlists, some of which I have been adding to for more than a decade. It's funny to sometimes listen to them from the start and see how my musical tastes have changed. Or evolved. Or even how an entire musical genre has changes over time.

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All those little "X's," by the way, represent pieces of paperwork recorded and appropriately filed while also writing this post and taking care of the house around me. Feels like I'm at least making a little progress.

At this point, however, I am going to abandon the bookkeeping and try going outside to do that work... it appears to be clearing up.

The way I look at it, I have always been best at working on things "piecemeal," and almost everything I do is "fill in gaps" in my schedule between other things in need of doing.

Whether I will ever be able to fill all my gaps? That remains to be seen...

Thanks for reading this rather disjointed post... and have a great day!

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Created at 20200513 11:54 PDT
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