i'm losing you and it's effortless

I'm getting desperate to make my neck feel better, and desperate times call for desperate measures. [note: if you don't enjoy me going on about my neck like a cranky octogenarian, skip to the next two paragraphs] I'm pretty sure my woes stem from a combination of typing on my laptop, scrolling on my smartphone, and driving, since it's worse whenever I'm doing anything related to those activities. The laptop is particularly problematic, since my whole job/life involves the computer...but that's probably a reason to figure this out and fix it now, rather than waiting until it's so debilitating that I can't type.

So, goal for the next three weeks: stop using my smartphone, limit my driving to essential trips only, and only check email twice a day (and write a quick blog post so you know if I've survived another day). This fits with my goal to get through this draft of the book anyway, since I'm writing by hand already and can just keep going with that without messing with the laptop. If that helps, then I'll have to figure out how to adjust everything a little more permanently - perhaps by getting some of the voice recognition dictation software that I know a lot of writers use. Or by becoming a luddite and hiring someone to type up my handwritten manuscripts (ha). We'll see how this goes!

As for the rest of the day - it was pretty good, all things considered. I had to go to the far south bay for a dentist appointment, since I've never bothered to find a dentist in the city. Everything looked good, although they tried to upsell me on invisible braces that I don't need and that they were appealing to my vanity to try to sell - they said my bite is perfect and everything's in great shape, but six months of invisible braces could make my teeth perfectly spaced, since I never had braces as a kid. Ha. After the dentist, I went to Stanford and worked for a few hours; I had to type up the 6000ish words I've written in the past week, and I made it through that without dying, so yay. I figured out that the most ergonomically pleasing way to type from my notebook was to prop the notebook up on my screen and stare straight ahead at it, and then go back after every page and correct whatever typos I made from typing blind - bizarre, but it worked. And now I must go to bed - I need to write tomorrow, and grocery shop, and try not to go crazy from my laptop/smartphone withdrawal. Goodnight!