Day 80: California wildfires

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I had no idea the wildfires were so bad—or so close—until I woke up this morning and the world was orange like a sunset and smelled like a hundred barbecue grills. I also woke up with a headache from the smoke in the air that wouldn’t go away despite the Advil and allergy medicine I took.

I transcribed yesterday’s dictation by playing the poor quality recording on my phone into my earbuds, then dictating it into my Zoom H1n Portable Recorder—man I really love that recorder. The sound quality is fantastic, as good as my podcast mic hooked up to my computer. Then I used Dragon to transcribe the new recording since it hadn’t been able to transcribe the bad recording from yesterday.

By then my headache was getting worse so I rested my eyesight a bit and took a little more Advil, but my headache didn’t start to go away until late in the afternoon. I intended to go back to work at that point, but then I got distracted by a book I was reading during my late-afternoon snack (Not If I Save You First), and ended up reading longer than I had planned.

The book was FANTASTIC so I’m not entirely upset at myself for not doing more work today. I haven’t been as good about refilling my creative well lately—not spending nearly enough time reading—and reading today felt really good, especially with a good book that kept me hooked.

But I am still hoping to get more work done tomorrow. The smoke smell decreased at the same time my headache eased a little, so hopefully tomorrow I won’t have any pain.

I wonder if part of the reason I had a hard time focusing was because I haven’t been reading enough lately?

Time spent writing: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: I forgot to set my Toggl timer

My takeaway for today: Don’t neglect reading to refill the creative well!

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