My computer froze every hour on the hour
Oh, hi friends!
My MacBook Air is a five-year-old terror.
He freezes when I have too many applications open, screams every 15 minutes that my storage space is full, and spins the beach ball when I press “save” on a story, which crashes Pages and, in fact, does not save anything at all.
This madness has gone on for years.
When I went home to California, my pragmatic Dad said, “Have you tried updating your software?”
Of course I hadn’t.
It was so much more fun to complain than find a solution.
Weeks later, after another terrible beach ball incident that involved rewriting 800 words from memory, I finally listened to him.
But to download the new Pages, first I had to download the latest Mac OS.
To do that, I had to delete eight gigs from my hard drive.
To do that, I had to find my external hard drive.
And so on.
A 10-minute task turned into my entire afternoon. (Downloading Mac Sierra or whatever it’s called took three full hours. I took a nap.)
But finally, it was done.
My MacBook terror is calmer now. He doesn’t work perfectly, but…he's better. And since I spend many hours a week typing and saving and bullying the poor thing, those three hours were time well spent.
The point is…sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of your eyes. You just have to want to see them.
Thanks, Dad.
“When the timer’s down to the 30-second mark, the light starts blinking faster and faster, and you’ll start working quicker and quicker, and before you know it, that task that once seemed impossible is now blissfully behind you."
Time-blocking is my religion. When I can't bring myself to begin a task, I'll set a timer for 15 minutes and suddenly it's like I have no choice but to start.
So to further my quest to monetize my every waking moment, I wrote about this genius timer, which is the only way I get my work done. (And yes, I had to set the timer to finish writing the story about my dependency on the timer.)
Malai, my favorite ice cream shop in New York, is hiring an operations manager. The founder is very nice and the ice cream is very good and I’m sure I could learn about supply chains and manufacturing runs, right? No? Okay, then you go work for them—or at least pick up a pint of Masala Chai at Whole Foods.
The New York Times is hiring a staff editor to join their newsletters team. Hey! Everyone loves newsletters! (h/t Sujay Kumar)
Shine is hiring a content strategist for web and audio. This popular start-up sends a free daily motivational text to over one million members every morning; they also have a standalone app. Very cool job at a start-up with heat. (h/t Haley Goldberg)
The Economist wants a summer intern to write about foreign affairs, based in London. “We are looking for originality, wit, crisp writing and clarity of thought.” And they’re paying 2000 GBP a month! (h/t Angelica Frey)
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is hiring a museum writer-editor in Nashville. Wonderful gig for the right person.
PS — If you're new to this newsletter, hi! I'm Kara. Brass Ring Daily shows up in your inbox every weekday at 7:30 a.m. and I hope is full of little nuggets you or someone you know will find useful. I like talking to people about their creative projects, and want everyone to have more energy to pursue the things they love—or to find the things they might love. Hit "reply" anytime to say hello and tell me what you're working on. I'll be glad to meet you!
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara