wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

I've been staring at Evernote for the last several minutes, wondering how to begin this post.

If you're wondering why I write in Evernote, I should probably do a quick walk through the insanity of where/how I write.

For years I wrote in text editors – in markdown format – and saved the text files in a neat tidy year and month folders on my computer, backed up to the internet. Then a couple of years ago I started using Evernote to write – mostly because it was convenient, and free. For a little while I tried out Notion too – because it was shiny, clever, and new. I decided pretty quickly that it was also a gigantic rabbit hole that surrounded me with far too many distractions. For the last year I tried Google Docs – again, because it was conventient, and free, but there was something I didn't like about it that slowly pulled at me like the loose thread – the pages. When I write, I don't want to see pages – I just want to see my stream of writing stretching off down the screen. I know it's ridiculous. Anyway – I've been back with Evernote ever since.

You're probably wondering why I don't just write into Wordpress, or wherever my blog is. Do you even know how many places my blog has lived? Actually – that's not the reason I write elsewhere. I just don't like writing in blogging platform interfaces. I would rather write somewhere that's designed to handle writing, and then copy the words into wherever. It takes seconds.

Anyway. I'm still staring a Evernote, and now I've written however many hundred words about nothing at all. Well, nothing about my day.

I went shopping earlier. Shopping for a surprise for my eldest daughter to cheer her up a bit. She's been struggling a fair bit recently, so I thought it might work as a kick-start of sorts. I came home with chocolate, an “anxiety busting” colouring book, some nice coloured pens, and a book by Matt Haig about his journey with depression. She had her nose in it over dinner, and has vanished off with it this evening. I bought pizzas from the supermarket for dinner.

I've read several of Matt Haig's books. If you've not read any of them, do check them out. They're all available from Amazon, Kobo, and of course brick-and-mortar bookshops. I will admit to becoming a bit of a fan during the pandemic. I think the most popular of his books you might have heard about is “The Midnight Library” – where people are invited to take a different path at an earlier point in their lives to see what happens.

Anyway. It's getting late. I think perhaps it's time for a hot chocolate, then read a book in bed for a bit (you know, and fall asleep with the book propped on my chest, as per usual). I'm still reading “Sapiens”, by Yuval Noah Harari – it's about how we came to be here – our story on the planet. It's a pretty huge book, but the story is told wonderfully and is full of intresting side stories. Did you know there were originally several different subspecies of “Homo Sapiens” – and that they have slowly merged into one? They've figured this out through DNA in recent years, and through analysis of various burial sites. I'm not talking about the neanderthals, or anything like that – they were an entirely different species. They did overlap with the homosapiens though, and there is evidence of their cross-breeding. I find it all fascinating.

I find most things fascinating. I suppose that's why I regularly end up noodling around on the internet in the early hours – reading random articles and papers about all sorts of things. Last week I watched an hour long math lecture about integration. I have no idea why.