Sometimes it’s the little things you learn about using technology that really pay off in the end.
| Spell check | = | pretty handy |
| Adding words and names to your spell check dictionary | = | pretty cool |
| Adding Welsh names and places and words to spell check and getting to right click on your typed word to replace it with the correct version | = | priceless |
I did write a bit at midnight, you know, just to kick NaNoWriMo 2013 off right at the start. Then it was off to work very early this morning for a day of new iPad launch and other craziness. There was a lot that was nice, like the conversation I found myself in with a man who had moved to this area to work in the food industry and had that revelation: “self, this isn’t really doing it for you.” He decided to take a year off, I think he said he was doing some work at the Chatham Food Co-op and just trying to decide what to do next. Not my normal work conversation but we had that moment, in between the techno-talk. It was nice.
Came home. When I turn onto my actual road, it’s not even a quarter mile to my house. Being a nut-case, I don’t go too fast and I use my turn signal to indicate I’m turning here, into my driveway. Tonight the headlights behind me were coming up very very fast and I finally aborted my normal turning into driveway for a slide across the driveway mostly off the road onto the shoulder just in time to let the big car fly past me. Stuff like that I really don’t get: to slow down for someone turning into a driveway in a residential area delays your journey by a matter of seconds.
Glad that I was able to pull out again and pull properly into the driveway, I came in and made a pot of tea and sat down at the computer to write. Total NaNoWriMo Day One success with 1947 words and a nice stopping point for the night. (You can follow along at home with the counter in the sidebar!) I want to focus a bit on the progress of the main character as he continues to adjust to his new life. It’s not all smooth sailing for him.
Guess that’s it for the night. Going to goof off a bit before closing the eyes.
This is what it’s all about.
Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto. – Dale Carnegie
Sometimes you have to be putting yourself in the path of people who do good in the world. Came home and was eating my dinner, catching up with some of the stuff out there on the web and there was a link from Humans of New York. You remember how Brandon raised a whole lotta cash for the YMCA summer camp program… well, in a chance encounter today, he took a picture, talked to the guy and blam, did the simple thing that enabled the man and his wife to reunite their adopted daughter with her brother.
Simple thing. Tell the story, set up an IndieGoGo site and put it out there in the Humans of New York world as a VERY short term campaign. It happened so fast it was amazing. It wasn’t a huge amount of money but it would have taken the couple a long time to raise it. And now they can bring the brother home to them all and be one family.
It’s a good reminder that it’s not always a big thing we can do to change a mind, or a day or a life. But you have to choose to do it, whatever it takes.
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Oh, the averted crash? As I was waiting on the mall road tonight, leaving work, the car in front of me turned left just as I was waiting to do, only they turned left onto the off-ramp of the northway rather than onto the ON-ramp of the northway. That’s right, they were driving the wrong way onto the northway. I can’t believe how many times I honked my horn and he stopped. I stopped, wondering if he’d suddenly back up. (and no one behind me honked, which means they must have realized what was going on). And the cars who were now on the off-ramp actually split to allow the wrong-way guy to make an awkward left turn onto the right hand ramp of the off-ramp. O.M.G.
And that’s just how easy it is to end up driving the wrong way on a major highway…
The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.
