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This afternoon I was able to harvest my first batch of high-potency compost from my indoor vermiculture bin. Exciting!

I didn’t really get into this for the end product — the intent was more to have a better way of disposing of vegetable scraps. Still, I’m sure the house plants will love it.

Pretty sure the wermz have multiplied, also. There’s got to be at least twice as many in there now as when I started. Makes me wonder whether there’s a maximum werm density, and if I’m anywhere close to it.

Things I have learned:

• to add food slowly and in small pieces
• to stir regularly, especially when there’s lots of food
• that “harvesting” the compost takes longer than I expected
• and that the cat should be kept far away from this process

And in a couple of months, I get to do it all again.

This season’s Discardia is March 20-26, and once again I am celebrating. Because I am that sort of a geek.

The point is, generally, to get rid of unnecessary things in one’s life; to clear out the clutter and the trash and emerge happier. My strategy is a little different. I do more.

The one thing that is the biggest problem for me is procrastination. I tend to pile up ideas, projects, and plans, and then leave them lying around in the corners of my mind to get worried about for months. So in fact it’s quite helpful to get that motivational kick in the head, in the form of an arbitrary calendar date, to actually start finishing things and checking the long-term items off the list.

Last March I moved to a new city and a new job. This time, it’s nothing so extreme. Fortunately.

Yes, I am one of those people who really does benefit from productivity tips. The ability to admit it is recent, and, I think, a major step in personal growth.

Walking to work yesterday morning, the sun was just a few degrees above the horizon, straight in front of me. It was cold and dry, and the sky was unflinchingly clear.

Everything came together in just the perfect condition for me to be able to see a steady stream of water vapour sublimating directly from the snowbanks.

Mornings like these make me wish I knew how to use a camera properly.

The past few days have been pretty unimpressive for me.

I’ve  been spending a lot of time doing things that bring me a lot of short-term happiness: reading and re-reading short fiction I’m already well familiar with, watching videos on YouTube, things like that. I know that it’s not the stuff that I need to be working on. But there’s this draw.

The problem is not because the other stuff looks so attractive to me. The problem is that the things that I’m meant to be doing are looking harder and harder.

And thus I find ways to avoid those things. It suddenly becomes very, very important to read everything that’s been posted on Boing Boing today. It would be horrible if I missed something neat, wouldn’t it?

The solution, I am trying to teach myself, is not to convince myself of how very important the things which actually are important are.[1] I know that full well. I am very good at feeling guilty and completely blithely ignoring those feelings.

The solution is to make those things that I need to do as exciting, interesting, easy, and fun, and as immediately satisfying as anything else. Bit of a challenge, yeah. I started writing this post at about 7 pm. And got distracted.

[1] Love the grammar, yeah?