One of the unintended consequences of a heatwave is that afterwards your house has several new occupants. Ours is crawling with flies, moths and spiders that came in through doors and windows that were left open for ventilation. It’s hard to avoid – boil to death or put up with some houseguests?
Years ago, I engaged in a furious war against a moth colony I discovered in our flat in Pimlico, and for a long time afterwards, I kept seeing signs of moths everywhere. Random pieces of rubbish, flecks of paint on walls and such that were vaguely moth-shaped and -sized triggered my fight-or-flight response. Usually fight. Nothing is more infuriating than a moth fluttering around with impunity. Now the Pavlovian reactivity seems to have lessened, but I still don’t enjoy the thought that those opportunistic little bastards are strolling in and having viewings in my wardrobe for a new home.
It’s the ‘other January’ – a natural start-over point in a year with schools starting. I’m a sucker for fresh starts and I’m engaged in a few personal change programmes already. One is that trialling Notion in August was a big success and now I’m migrating into it (IT transformation projects are spilling over into my home life). The other one is a modest Life Reinvention effort as per this episode of Cal Newport’s podcast.
I bloody love Notion. I have been using Evernote on a daily basis for more than a decade, and it has only had minor pain points for me – but I really haven’t been aware of what I’ve been missing out on. Especially the databases and being able to link content in different databases is blowing my mind.
The heatwave aside, the natural world is playing along with All Change. It’s suddenly very gloomy in the mornings. I’ve started a new knitting project that is beyond my capabilities (if you can’t get stressed about hobbies then what are they for?) – a pair of cozy slippers with a beautiful Nordic-looking snowflake motif for the autumn.
It has been months since I knitted anything that wasn’t a red-and-white sock with a maple leaf. When my son’s best friend’s family announced their plans to move to Canada in April, I started knitting four pairs of farewell socks. Various false starts, mistakes made during episodes of The Sopranos etc, meant that I only finished in the nick of time before they jetted off. But I was pleased with the result!
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