Happily Imperfect 2015

Daily Personal Bandwidth

How much energy should I expend on what?

How much is my time worth?

With finite resources available these are questions I find myself far more aware of these days, both in my personal and professional lives.

An example: I’ve recently been having issues with my internet connection at home. Sky are my internet provider and it’s been ok aside from some quirks when I switched over (top tip: Sky routers really don’t like it when you change the SSID) but occasionally I get a little drop out here and there.

I’ve tried changing the broadcast channel but that hasn’t really seemed to help so I end up rebooting the router from time to time, probably not even once a month. Rebooting isn’t a permanent solution but as I live in a block of flats and I can see up to 20 different WIFI networks, it’s probably about as good a solution as I’ll get.

Basically I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort to find a permanent solution, so why bother? Why spend time and energy on something that doesn’t really bother me all that much?

I realise now that I’ve been taking the same approach with my emotional energy. I accept that I have a limited bandwidth and that that bandwidth changes from week to week. Some weeks I can handle anything the world wants to throw at me, others I’d much rather hole up on my sofa and binge watch TV (which I know doesn’t actually help… ⤷).

It means that my interactions with people can and do change from day to day. If I’m honest it probably changes hour to hour at times depending on how my day is going. Top tip: my Twitter usage is probably a good indicator, lots of tweets equals spare emotional energy, fewer (or no) tweets means I’m preserving what I have for the people I love.

I think I’ve been doing this for a while now without even realising it so it’s good to be able to step back and realise that I’m managing my moods better and spending my energies in the ‘right’ places.

I recently wrote (⤷) about my desire to better manage my moods and this is an extension of that. It’s not something new, I’ve been tackling this for a while now, but in the past month or so it definitely seems to have gotten better. I’m less stressed at work (which can use a LOT of my emotional energy) and I’m noticing small changes in my own behaviours and reactions to things that, in the past, would’ve had a big impact.

This year is about slow and steady. I’m tempering my usual ‘want it all now’ desires and realising that it’s taken me a long time to become who I am today, so changing any aspect of that will take a while too.

It means realising that I have a limited bandwidth for dealing with life. I won’t be able to everything every day, some days it’s ok to do nothing (something I struggle with), and some days I’ll only be able to handle a few things.

One day at a time.

February 9, 2015

On Dating and Poly

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at www.polymeansmany.com.

One advantage of being non-monogamous is that you can go on dates even if you already have a partner or two, how great is that? Not only can you have wonderful long-term relationships, you can still cast your line out into the rocky sea of potential ‘others’ and then spend nerve-wracking night after nerve-wracking night trying to convince said ‘other’ that you aren’t a complete mentalist.

I kid. Sort of.

As it turns out, I’ve not been on that many dates myself. My first date with Kirsty was under the monogamous guise and… well I’ll be honest, neither of us is really sure what our first date actually was; we worked together so already knew each other, we’d both recently found ourselves single, have similar tastes in music and movies, we kinda fell into a relationship.

That said I do remember our first kiss. It was so romantic, after a candle light dinner, we walked until the sunset, nervously hand in hand across the beach, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves. We paused to watch the last shard of the red sun dip beneath the horizon, slowly turned, looked into each others eyes and realised we’d fallen for each other. We leaned in and … nope I can’t lie, it wasn’t like that at all.

It was a hastily grabbed snog on the stairs of a bar called Nice N Sleazy in Glasgow, on a cold October night. We were both tipsy enough to be able to abandon ourselves to the moment and I won’t ever forget it! Screw you romance, gimme beer and a grungy bar any day!!

Time passed, we decided to try an open relationship and so it was I found myself walking through Glasgow on my way to meet Clare for our first date (I’m not sure stealing her chips the first time I properly spoke to her really counts).

I can’t recall why I picked the pub I did, maybe because I knew it, maybe because it’s a low-key kinda place, not too ‘old man’ nor too ‘trendy hipster’. As I walked down the lane, early as I am wont to be, I sent Kirsty a quick text telling her I was almost at the pub and completely shitting myself.

She reassured me, for about the 100th time that hour, that everything would be ok, that I should relax and just be myself. Thankfully the bar has a large glass frontage so I could see that I’d gotten their first so I walked in and quickly ordered some dutch courage.

The date went well, my fears about not having any conversation were unfounded, we laughed, and smiled, it was a pretty damn good first date.

So what’s so special about dating if you are polyamorous? Well for one you have someone to talk to about it, both before hand and after, and I think it relieves some of the pressure. If both parties know the situation going in then you’ve immediately taken away the ‘find the one’ aspect that a lot of dating seems to include.

One thing I would say, if you are considering a poly or open relationship, is that you don’t need to go on dates. When we first started looking at this lifestyle I read a lot of articles and there is an almost assumed state of poly = longer term partners + a lot of dating.

I will now contradict this and say that, whilst I have two very lovely, loving partners, there is part of me that enjoyed the excitement and nervous tension that dating brings. It’s not so much the New Relationship Energy (which is also great) but that sense of the unknown. Maybe that’s why so many poly people are actively dating, to keep that element of the excitement in their lives.

Kirsty and I touched on this when we discussed changing our relationship structure, we’d both come from long term relationships and recognised that one thing we should guard against is complacency. It’s easy for a good relationship to slowly crumble through comfort and familiarity, for two people to drift apart and not even realise it’s happening until it’s too late.

Regardless of your own situation, communication and honesty are key. If you are going out on a date with someone, make sure they know your circumstance in advance. Sure, they might not understand it but if they are interested you can talk them through how, and why, it works for you. Equally I know some poly families have rules around dating, and it’s not a bad idea to set some expectations; if you are going to ask someone out on a date, or have been asked, then mention it to your partners.

Of course once you get on the date it’s the same whether you are poly or not.

Nerve-wracking.

But maybe that’s just me.

February 2, 2015

My Mac Apps

Someone I know is getting a MacBook Air tonight and as I was pulling together a list of ‘suggested apps’ for her I realised it’s been a while since I posted about what I use so I thought I’d just share it all with you. I know, I know, you can thank me later…

Admittedly there is nothing revolutionary here, although personally it’s interesting to see that OSX Yosemite has removed my usage/need for some apps I used to rely on – the last time I did this was a couple of years – bye bye Alfred (replaced by a vastly improved Spotlight Search), Adium (replaced by Messages app), Growl (Notification Center), and Sparrow (GMail in browser).

I’ve also switched to Safari full time. The ONLY thing I miss is the ability to set my bookmarks view as ‘Home’ but other than that, it does everything I need. It also has extensions for 1Password and Evernote Web Clipper which help cement those applications places in the lists below too.

So here it is, a list of apps I use regular on my own MacBook Air.

Productivity

Google Drive – FREE – much as I love the Apple versions I find the familiarity (aka ‘feels a bit like MS Office’) of the Google apps covers everything I need for simple documents and spreadsheets
Todoist – FREE/Paid Premium – took me a long time to settle on a To Do list app and whilst Todoist still lacks a couple of features, it’s nicely designed, works on multiple platforms and, importantly, it works for me.
Evernote – FREE/Paid Premium – It took me a while to really get into using Evernote but it’s now become a key part of how I work/live. I use it to store all sorts of things, a backup to my ailing memory.
Simplenote – FREE – simple text/note app, syncs with iOS app. Feels ‘lighter’ than Evernote so I use it for transistory information, useful during meetings or on calls. Anything that I need to keep is tidied up and moved to Evernote.
Fantastical – £15 – I’d be lost without my calendar, but iCal is less than great, this makes using the calendar quick and easy, syncs with my Google Calendar (and the 9 other Google calendars I’m subscribed too), and my work Exchange server. I use the iOS app too.

Utilities

1Password – £40 – Works on multiple browsers and on my phone, saves me remembering multiple passwords and will generate ‘better’ passwords for me too. Life saver!
Moom – £10 – gives me window positioning and sizing, customisable and fast.
BetterTouchTool – FREE – I love the touchpad, multi-touch gestures are changing how I work, this add-on lets you take that to the next level, still figuring it all out!
Bartender – £10 – file under, why didn’t Apple fix this? Removes a LOT of visual clutter (it’s the small bar on the top-right of my screenshot above).
Caffeine – FREE – one click to stop your Mac going to sleep until you say so, handy for viewing movies etc.
Keka – FREE – file archiver (ZIP/UNZIP) deals with most archive file formats, nice and simple.
Witch – £14 – window switching made easy, a must have if you are moving from Windows.
VLC – FREE – video player, supports a multitude of formats.
Skitch – FREE – fantastic app for screenshots and image tweaking. Part of the Evernote set of apps.
uTorrent – FREE – for downloading torrents. Duh.
AppCleaner – FREE – for when I want to remove some of these apps, it’ll find all the related files and get rid of them too.
Hazel – $29 – a simple way to keep your Mac tidied. Watches folders then runs rules, very powerful and very useful.
Flycut – FREE – Clipboard manager, nice little popdown menu of the last [x] copied items.

Worky

Pixelmator – £23 – A bit like Photoshop because sometimes you need a little more power than the standard editor gives you. Not yet tried the iPad version as I don’t do that much graphic editing.
FileZilla – FREE – FTP client. I don’t have need for anything fancy, I’ve used FileZilla for years and it does everything I need.
TextWrangler – FREE – powerful text editor. Mostly used for checking code snippets.

Cloud services apps

BackBlaze – £4 per month – I recently switched away from Crashplan which would drag my internet connection to a halt. BackBlaze seems simpler but provides the same service. Cloud based backup.
Dropbox – FREE/Tiered – quite simply I don’t know where I’d be without this service. Hosted files, apps on all my devices. Drop something in a folder and it’s synced everywhere.
Spotify – FREE/Paid Premium – because sometimes listening to random playlists created by someone else is all you wanna do!
Pocket – FREE – I moved from Instapaper to Pocket largely because, at the time, Pocket seemed to be further ahead and have more integrations to other apps I used. These days it seems Instapaper and Pocket are separated mainly by marketing/buzz.

Lifey

Day One – £8 – Journal app, only downside is no web app, syncs with iCloud and/or Dropbox.
ByWord – £8 – my writing app of choice these days. I compose blog posts and other random writings in it. Syncs to Dropbox, and the accompanying iOS apps are great.
Calibre – FREE – eBook management, for my Kindle, it’s a bit clunky and not the prettiest but does exactly what it says on the tin.
TweetDeck – FREE – Because Twitter.

And there you have it. Outside of this list I use iTunes (I KNOW!) and MS Office if I need to open any files for work purposes but I’m lucky enough to have a separate laptop for work.

January 26, 2015

Less is less

I remember when I moved into my current home. I was recently divorced and starting over, so I only had a few items of furniture and a few boxes of possessions, most of which was bound for kitchen cupboards or wardrobes.

I’m never been a sentimental hoarder; we moved around a lot and got pretty good at getting rid of unused, unwanted things, so outside of the bulk of my books, most of my personal possessions fitted into a few boxes.

Of course since then I’ve bought furniture, ornaments, art, soft furnishings and more. I’ve bought gadgets, implements, knick-knacks, lego, books, lamps… well you get the picture. I’ve accumulate a lot of stuff.

Naturally some of the stuff is practical, a sofa, a bed, chests of drawers. Some of it desired, artwork for the walls, a vintage mirror, an Eames recliner. Some of it was gifted and now holds sentimental value, and some things have commemorative value.

But I have also accumulated a lot of ‘stuff’.

Stuff I don’t need. Some of which I probably didn’t need in the first place but that’s a different issue.

Recently though I’ve started to declutter.

I’m selling things on eBay, taking items to charity shops, recycling the unwanted and, so far, I’ve had little that is just being thrown out. I’m starting to see the difference when I walk into a room, or open a cupboard. There is a way to go yet, I’m not really working to a plan, more just tackling areas of a room when I have the time, but I’m noticing the difference and even the process itself is helpful.

I can remember the first few weeks in my flat, my Eames chair and foot stool had arrived as had my new TV. I had no bookcases, no TV unit and boxes remain unpacked and out of sight in my spare room. My living room was virtually empty.

Minimal.

I loved it.

I knew it wouldn’t last but part of me wanted to keep it that way.

I’ve always loved minimalism, my preferred style lies somewhere between Oriental and Scandinavian lines, a freedom of clutter. It feels good to be getting back towards that.

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that more recently I’ve been feeling a lot less stressed, a lot less worried by life in general. I’m finding time to read, to write, and maybe that dusty guitar will survive the decluttering axe after all.

January 19, 2015

Snow joke

Last night we had some snow.

Chaos is the word that sprang to mind. A couple of hours of heavy snowfall turned Glasgow to virtual gridlock. From an appointment in the city centre (more on that later) it took me almost 1hr 40mins to get home, for a journey that would normally take 20mins tops.

One the route, which includes two hills, I had to stop twice to help push cars that were struggling. When I got to the steep hill near my flat I could see a lot of people halfway up the hill helping stranded cars, struggling for traction. I pulled in at the bottom of the hill and left my car there.

Walking up the hill I could hear shouts of help and encouragement from about 20 different people, some fetching snow shovels, others fetching grit and salt, it was almost jovial. A real spirit of helping others so, on my way past I stopped too and helped push a further three cars, mostly sideways off of the main road.

It was treacherous, the heavy fluffy snow fell on un-gritted roads, was quickly compacted then froze to sheets of ice. I waved down a couple of cars at the top of the hill to warn them. One turned back, the other continued. I hope I don’t find that car at the bottom of the hill tomorrow.

It was oddly quiet in that walk up the hill, so few cars able to move, the study thrum of rush hour silenced by the glowing white snow. It was an oddly nice moment to end my long journey home. A soothing balm after a stressful drive full of slips and spinning wheels.

Last year I felt very proud of my city, the Commonwealth Games and the vote for Independence seemed to bring something new to Glasgow and Scotland, or perhaps it just revived some things that never really go away.

It was nice to find it again, if only for a few moments, in the freezing cold as a group of strangers slipped and slid and struggled together to help another stranger, that spirit of camaraderie; Glasgow, the friendly city. Snowbound or not.

January 17, 2015

Bandwidth

How much energy should I put into a problem? How much is my time worth?

Sky are my internet provider. They’ve been ok aside from some quirks when I switched over (top tip: Sky routers really don’t like it when you change the SSID) but occasionally I get a little drop out here and there.

I’ve tried changing the broadcast channel but that hasn’t really seemed to help so I end up rebooting the router from time to time, probably not even once a month. Rebotting isn’t a permanent solution but as I live in a block of flats and I can see up to 20 different WIFI networks, it’s probably about as good a solution as I’ll get.

I did spend some time looking for a more permanent solution, tried a few things , but very quickly realised anything further than ‘turn it off and back on again’ would be both more complicated and time consuming, so I stopped looking.

I realise now that I’ve been slowly taking the same approach with my emotional energy. I accept that I have a limited bandwidth and that that bandwidth changes from week to week. Some weeks I can handle anything the world wants to throw at me, others I’d much rather hole up on my sofa and binge watch TV.

That means that my interactions with people outside of my nearest and dearest may change week to week. If I’m honest it probably changes hour to hour at times and my Twitter usage is probably a good indicator, lots of tweets equals spare emotional energy, fewer (or no) tweets means I’m preserving what I have for the people I love.

I think I’ve been doing this for a while now without even realising it so it’s good to be able to step back and realise that I’m managing my moods better and spending my energies in the ‘right’ places.

January 16, 2015