AKA It’s so nice to get a little creative again.
Look, I probably should be resting
I won’t lie, moving house was exhausting and demoralising in that order. Exhausting because we did as lot of the work as possible and as cheaply as possible to save coin (and still it ended up costing a fortune) and demoralising because I thought I did a great job at cleaning until professional cleaners got involved…and told me I’d need another 18-20 hours to get it to ‘Happy real estate’ level again.
Good god. Well it was worth a try.
Couple that with getting back into the early wake up call for my media job (first alarm at 4:30am) just last week as well as yesterday’s ‘Easing back into workouts’ workout and as you could imagine, there’s not too much juice left in the old Almigo gas tank.
However now that we’ve stopped hurling heavy things around (aside from what’s loaded up on my weight’s bench – I meant more in terms of from one place to another) and now that I’ve got a couple of work spaces set up, I can now get back into my creative afternoons for both working on my next novel and uploading to YouTube.
And boy have I missed them both!
Just enough room for a desk and a couple of creative thoughts
While moving my desk project from one house to the other, one of the legs came off. Yes as I was moving it off the trailer, one of the very sturdy looking legs bought from Amazon decided it wasn’t up to being sturdy again and fell over, taking the screws with it. On closer inspection Baz the super helpful father in law explained that the screws provided didn’t really have enough of a sized groove to bite into the wood and suggested using others.
So I made a mental note to buy better screws and then soon forgot that idea, screwing the leg back into the desk and carefully manoeuvring it inside where I got to the door of the small room that was to be my office…and discovered the desk wasn’t going in until I took the leg off. Again. Sigh. Out came the drill with the socket attachment again and after much grumbling and swearing, I finally got it in and upright again. It did fit in the end, it was just a mission to get it in there in the first place.
Now that the desk is in as well as a computer chair and a mattress, there really isn’t much room for anything else. It’s more office than resting space (even though I’m using it as both) and without an air con vent I’m relying on any breeze from outside to potentially cool things off in here. However now that the internet is working (the office did come with a network cable setup leading direct to my modem which is very handy) and I have my usual creative time on my hands, I’ve been getting back into the things I love – namely creating something. Blogging like this page but then also writing again:
Not counting formatting things into a box set, my last book fiction release was Last Thief Running back in July 2023. And while I did work on a blogging book with a good friend of mine later on, it just wasn’t the same. Getting into this latest one (a futuristic detective novel) has reminded me just how much I like to knuckle down each day, work to 1000-1500 words a day and watch a novel grow over time. I have no idea when this next one will be available but I’ll update you as I go and yeah, it’s so nice to be writing again.
Downstairs is a different story..
I wanted at least a shed to continue to work on my YouTube stuff.. what I ended up with instead was both a one car garage AND a workshop! So my first YouTube back after signing off last year was a no brainer – a tour of the new workshop, complete with all the mess from a stack of moving!
Of course it wasn’t until after I finished the tour that I remembered where my Snowball USB Mic was packed away so I dug it out and got it up and running again…only to find the dynamics had changed somewhat. I don’t know if it’s a setting on the Samsung somewhere, but it’s struggling a bit in the big open space. Still, after filming my next vid twice, I got the hang of it.
Sort of.
Luckily in the meantime I did order myself a very basic and cheap label mic and receiver from Aliexpress to try out. This should hopefully eliminate having to stick my entire head near the Snowball to be heard clearly. I’ll let you know how that idea tracks out when it arrives!
But sound issues and small spaces aside (and lack of sleep, always a biggie), I’m relishing being back on the creative train once again. Here’s to a productive year then in the new place!