Improving with Age

I wasn't quite as insanely productive yesterday as earlier in the week, but I did manage to get the desk drawers cleared and organized. I keep having to fight against the paralyzing perfectionist tendencies, where I come to a halt if there's something I don't know how to deal with or if it isn't just right. I've got a box for things to sort through and place when I have everything else in order and I keep reminding myself that this isn't all set in stone and done for good. Once the major surgery is done, I can go back and finesse things. I can throw things in a file for now and then later sort everything in that file and create sub-files, for instance.

There was a lot going in the "deal with later" box yesterday because one of my drawers had become a catchall for random memorabilia. There were newspaper clippings, cards from friends, photos, calendar pages, etc. A few things were handy resources I wish I'd remembered I'd had, and I need to find a place to keep them where I can use them. One really odd thing in that drawer was a collection of every expired drivers license I've had since I was 18. It was interesting to look at how I've changed over the years, and I think I've changed for the better. Up through the photo taken when I was 30, my face was kind of a featureless blob, like someone hadn't quite finished sculpting it. There were eyes, nose, mouth, but there was no sense of structure to it. It reminded me of a book I read recently in which a girl had been cursed so that people never really looked at her, and if they did, they didn't get any impression of her face. After 30, I think I finally started to show the underlying structure. It's not a weight thing, since I've stayed about the same weight since my early 20s, but it is true that you lose some fat from your face as you age (which is why those facial fillers are a huge thing in cosmetic surgery), and I guess I finally lost enough of that to show that I actually do have bones in my face. I'm sure I'll reach a point of diminishing returns when I stop improving with age and just start aging, but it's rather nice to look at a picture of my 30-year-old self or even my 22-year-old self and think of how much better I look now.

This weekend is going to be an intensive plotting retreat now that I have the main idea down. For once, I don't have any obligations or plans for the weekend, and besides, the major freeways leading from my neighborhood to just about everywhere else are going to be closed for construction for much of the weekend, which limits where I could conveniently go and limits who could conveniently come to me.

Today, though, I feel like going shopping. That happens very seldom, and I think that since I'm planning to drive to WorldCon so that I can bring all the clothes, I may as well have some fun clothes. I haven't bought new stuff in a very long time. Today will likely be mostly shoes, though. I want to browse DSW because most of the shoes I love and wear a lot are starting to fall apart, so that the only "presentable" shoes I own are either uncomfortable or don't go with a lot of my wardrobe.