I'm going to try something different from what I normally do while writing for this personal web journal. Instead of being cooped up in my apartment, I'm sitting down to write at my part-time evening job after having clocked in a few minutes prior. It's a particularly slow night, a stark contrast to the previous. Today's flip of a coin landed on the outcome where I have enough free time to be left to my own devices over the alternative of being too wrapped up in busy work to think straight.
I'm actually enjoying this change of pace so far. I remember the soul crushing dread I would feel about going off to yet another shift at a dead end job in my 20s, selling too much of my time to some capitalist so I could afford to continue treading water. I remember spending so much time on ultimately meaningless labor that I began to abhor the notion of effort entirely. Despite now working two jobs and taking on more productive tasks in my off time, I'm feeling pretty good about everything lately.
I think it helps that both of my jobs are relatively pleasant environments to exist in. I can actually manage to get some work done for my day job at this evening job, a nice "life hack" (barf) that ensures I'll have more free time left over in the day. I don't have to waste time in traffic to get to work, I can go at my own pace and most of the time be left unbothered to just get things done.
I tend to get my best writing done in a peaceful environment far away from distractions. I can't sit down at my gaming computer to write because that corner of the apartment is the physical manifestation of my undiagnosed ADHD. In fact, I usually find myself writing in the farthest corner away from that space. There's a round table in an alcove next to the living room that I can use to fashion a makeshift standing desk, along with some tall curtains to pull open when a little sunlight is needed.
Being forced to use a budget office laptop from the early 2010s has turned out to be a subtle yet effective psychological framework for boosting productivity. I've performed a few hardware upgrades on it, but it's not going to get much gaming or video playback done on it these days. Office work, coding, writing and scrolling are hopefully all the tasks I'll ever need it for.
Speaking of productivity, I managed to get my blog site up and running! The whole process took longer than I would have liked, but it still feels great to have finally reached this milestone. Much like this website, it's nice to have a place online where I can express myself the way I want. I've got my first article up on there and I'm hoping to get started on the next one soon.
That brings me to this place. This personal journal may continue to skew toward mundane tidbits about my life and further away from creative writing. I'm not going to abandon this website or shirk my monthly journaling duties, my creative output simply has a hard cap set both by time constraints and my own personal limitations. I want to populate the blog with more articles that currently only exist as ideas, and I want them to be interesting to read, insightful.
That being said, if I continue to have nights like this where I need to find ways to kill time, there's no reason I can't freewrite about what's on my mind, do some quick editing and share it. I'm about tapped out for now, but still have over half of my shift to go. I guess it's time to see what else I can get done.