Tomorrow is Friday, and I don’t have to go to work. If you know me, then you know that isn’t that odd; for the last few years I have worked a flex schedule. By working eight nine-hour days and one right hour day, I could have every other Friday off. Most of the time those Fridays involved chores, movies, and seeing friends.

A few months ago, Austin and I talked about how I didn’t really have enough time or energy to write. Not enough time to work on my book proposal, and not enough time to put together other essays, or pitch articles. So we agreed I would ask my boss for a reduced schedule.

My boss knows I write. She is supportive, which is awesome. She hesitated at my proposal of an 80% schedule, but gave the go ahead to 90%. So starting this week, I work 36 hours, and get every Friday off. It’s only an extra four hours, but coupled with evenings on occasion, this will give me the chance to get even more into my writing. To really try to make a go out of it.

I’m lucky we can afford to cut about 5% on our income to let me try something different. I’m also proud if myself for trying to get my life to match more what I want it to be. I didn’t know working FL time but only four days a week was an option; I’m pretty stoked to make it work.

Of course it means i have to REALLY focus at work the days I am there, but knowing I have three days off coming up will make that pretty easy to do.

Fingers crossed this works out!

Last night after I got home from my writing class, I saw a letter from our (home + car) insurance company. It had been forwarded from our old address, so the date on the letter inside was nearly a week old. The two-page letter informed us that we had been denied homeowners insurance.

In reading through and trying to sort out what was up, a couple of things caught my eye:

• They hadn’t received some document they needed
• We still had coverage for nearly two months

Instead of losing my shit (which, honestly, I probably would have done when I was younger), I calmly sent a nice but urgent e-mail to our insurance agent, explaining the letter I’d received and asking what steps we need to take to clear this up.

This afternoon we spoke, and it turns out it was a very simple error involving a file that was improperly attached to an email. That might bug some people, but it also turned out that it happened in part because my agent had been out on leave for a serious family emergency. The office was understaffed, and he wasn’t there to follow up because, you know, serious family emergency.

Here’s the thing – he sorted out what needs to be done, gave me a plan of action, and assured me that it would all be sorted out in time to ensure there would be no lapse in coverage. And I think he seemed genuinely appreciative that I didn’t lose my shit. Yes, things could have been handled better, but the outcome in the end is that we’ll have insurance and it will have cost me the time it took to send and email and make a five-minute follow-up phone call. That’s it.

And it was a good reminder of two things:

1. I really don’t ever know what other people are going through if they don’t tell me, and I don’t gain anything from assuming the worst. If I had gotten all rage-y, the outcome might have been the same, but my agent would have felt even worse than he does. To me, this was just a really good reminder that the starting point shouldn’t be anger. Sometimes it’ll get there (and rightfully so), but for me, it’s more productive to just assume the best in a situation and then go from there. I don’t always do that though.

2. Mistakes matter, but what you do to fix them is really what I’m interested in. No one likes fucking up, but man, if you are genuinely interested in making things right (and it isn’t, like the 50th time you’ve fucked up in the exact same way), that matters way more.

Tonight I started attending a nonfiction startup class. It’s eight weeks long, and there are only three students in the class. Thankfully, the other two students seem very cool. Interesting, different, and working on projects that I would want to read. We’re all in different places in our writing, but I think that will help us all get better. Plus the instructor is very relaxed but also has interesting exercises and readings to focus us and really push us to make progress on our projects.

Who knows, this book might actually get finished.

This afternoon I went to the cafe in the building where I work. Every day they have a little trivia question; if you get it correct, they take 10 cents off of your bill. It’s usually something fairly obscure, like the tallest mountain on another continent, or the first person to do something cool. I know maybe 20% of the answers? What I’m saying is that they aren’t gimme questions.

The answer to today’s question was Wham! As in, the George Michael duo from the 80s. I have reached the point in my life where the folks most likely to be working as baristas and putting together tough trivia questions think that knowing what group George Michael used to sing with is not common knowledge.

Yikes.

So much going on in the world, but I did a bad job curating this week. So instead of my weekly round-up, today you get this: Things I Learned While Camping

This weekend Austin and I went camping with a few friends. Some of them are seasoned campers; others had only camped during their youth (me) or had never camped at all. It was car camping at the Tower Rock Campground in Washington State, and here’s what I learned.

• As much as a ‘camping pad’ might claim to help, what I really wanted was an air mattress.
• After watching multiple people start campfires, I understand how to start them in theory, but don’t think I could yet start my own in practice.
• I really don’t have a problem peeing in the woods when the vault toilet is just too far away.
• I still unintentionally scare myself by conjuring up scenes from the Blair Witch Project when I am in a forest in the dark.
• There is a lot of prep work that goes into having fresh food during a camping trip. I failed at that this go round, but am ready for next time.
• I can definitely go three nights without showering. After that I probably need to figure something out.
• I enjoyed car camping but am clearly not ready to upgrade (downgrade?) to backpacking any time soon.
• It’s nice to not have any internet or phone access for a few days.
• I can share a little two-person tent with Austin and not feel claustrophobic at all.
• The friend who planned this little camping adventure is the best. Here’s a shot of her photobombing us at the lookout near Layser Cave