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Firewood

At Sunday couple of my friends were visiting here. They helped me with cutting and chopping firewood, and I offered them food and sauna.

Today it is tuesday, I had a full day of work and returned home at about seven pm. Since it was a warm, sunny evening, I felt like chopping some more firewood. I finished at ten pm. There was still daylight left, so I climbed on top of my house to enjoy a can of beer. While looking at my yard I was thinking about what to do this summer.

The old sauna looks like it is about to collapse. Maybe I should fix it soon, before it gets damaged beyond repair. It might be something like two or three weeks of work. Then, also, I'd like to build a new shed for the firewood - it would be good to have a shed with two rooms, always having the other roomfull of firewood drying, while using wood from another room. With a careful planning it could be possible to build one in a week - provided that I buy ready sawn timber for building, instead of starting with cutting down trees. Oh, and my house badly needs more renovating... and then, of course, there is some gardening. And all kinds of routine maintenance to be done. I don't yet if I can afford having more than two or three weeks of proper holiday this summer. So, it is already clear that there is always more work to be done that I have time. Not to mention I'm bit kind of dreaming about "indie summer" - ie. spending a lot of time coding for UnReal World...

When I was younger, I easily felt this kind of situation as extremely stresful. I went into a mood of "First I try to get all this done, and only when everything is ready then I can think of doing something nice. There is not a single hour to waste - I should be working every waking minute." Well, it only takes a little thinking to realize that the moment when "everything is done" never arrives. There is always something waiting to be done - so the trick is just to remember to breathe. To take it easy, to allow myself to spend time with my friends, to play with the kids in the neighbour, or to go fishing. And just to drink a beer on top of my house, feeling that everything is done for the day.

So, for this summer I have to pick the most urgent and time-senstive tasks first. For example gardening is something which I should start doing pretty soon. And while gardening I can ponder about building projects, and try to decide which one should be the one for this summer. And then just do programming a day or an evening every now and then. But, for the rest of the May my calendar is pretty full of appointments for massage. The coming weekend is free, but the week after that I don't have a single day wihtout any customers. Still, I believe I can do the gardening in time. And I've already decided to have the first week of June completely free, with minimal plans.

a traditional axe is good for splitting
a traditional axe
an evening beer
an evening beer
the old sauna looks like it needs some renovating...
the old sauna
tags: 
diary
homesteading
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