School starts tomorrow – and I’m nervous like a first grader

Back to school in colourful lettersTomorrow the new school years starts in my neck of the woods and hell I’m nervous. This year I finally got an unlimited contract (but not tenure because working for ages on limited contracts I’m now deemed too old and high risk for tenure, but that’s a different conversation), but it also meant that I have to change schools and I really didn’t want to, despite the new school having much nicer working conditions.

My old school was a hell of a commute, 90 to 120 minutes each day, and it had two different locations which meant that I often had to spend my rare breaks commuting as well. We were also a school next to a poor part of the state capital with all the challenges of working with underprivileged families, lots of refugee families with language barriers and also plainly neglected and abused kids. And while having the qualifications for teaching high school up to year 13, I usually only got to teach up to grade 9 and never Spanish, because that’s year 11.

My new school is pretty close, 10 minutes by car and I’m planning on getting an E-bike next year. The small town has less social problems (though of course they exist everywhere), more space and I get to teach high school and Spanish.

So why on earth did I not want to change? Well, people. I had amazing colleagues and I actually genuinely like kids. I am a notorious “Gutmensch”, a goodie two shoes, bleeding heart progressive person who wants to see kids thrive, regardless of where they’re from. But I’ve accepted the change and am looking forward to new colleagues and new kids and so the term starts tomorrow with my brand new 8th grade who mostly don’t want to be in my class, because they, same as me, had to change.

The German school system is horribly stratified with social background having a huge influence on kids’ school career. While I’m not opposed to our different school leaving certs and vocational training system, putting the kids in different schools after year 4 is bad. It used to be 3 different schools: for the kids of workers who should become workers, for the kids of employees and clerks who should become employees and clerks, and the kids of academics who should become academics. While there’s only two types now in most states, the Gymnasium (yes, that’s a very false friend) where you get the highest leaving cert and the comprehensive schools where you get all the others and often have the possibility to go for the highest cert as well (like in my new school), people still think the Gymnasium is the best and the comprehensive school is the rest. The Gymnasium considers itself an elite school and if you have problems you don’t belong there. Not a type of school where I want to work, despite having the formal qualifications. I much prefer working with all kids and getting some of them to the highest leaving cert despite all odds. Anyway, because of these structures, around year 7 and 8, we see a steady influx of former Gymnasium kids in comprehensive schools, as well as the overwhelming majority of refugees and migrant kids, which means it’s not uncommon for comprehensive schools to form a new class in year 7 or 8 and that’s my class. Now, schools hand it differently how they do that. My old school used to form a new class with the new kids and then put all new arrivals into that class. My new school put kids from the already existing classes as well as new kids into my class. Both ways have their pros and cons, the biggest con for me right now being that I’m going to have a class where a lot of kids don’t want to be in because they lost at the raffle. That’s going to be a challenge. But hey, I’m taking it on, it’s not like there’s an alternative anyway, I’m just here voicing my feelings of being very, very nervous.

So, wish me luck!

The Spring Came Early…

And that means pain. Lots of it. However, first, enjoy two pretty pictures:

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Somehow, crocuses (croci?), escaped from our flower bed and now sprout occasionally in the lawn. I don’t mind, in fact, I like it. But I must watch where I step during these early spring working days. And boy, I do have lots of work. I harvested my coppice a bit late this year because February was way too windy for that to do safely. Now I am in the middle of processing all that wood because I must manage to do it before I must replant my bonsai. The winter was too warm and the spring came way too early this year. I dread the summer.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This year I have decided to not put all the long thin willow and poplar twigs through the shredder but to bundle them and then cut the bundles into 50 cm segments. It is a lot more work (about 3x) now but I hope it will be less work in the winter. My heating stove does not work well with wood chips, when I put too much in it at once it gets choked up and smokes a lot and later it can overheat because the chips first burn too slowly and then too fast. With bundles, there’s less smoke, and overheating does not happen because they burn more evenly throughout. Thus I can put in the oven more at once and save two or three walks down the steps into the cellar each day in winter. Further, I hope that mice will be less inclined to make nests in the bundles than in the woodchips. I find at least one nest in there each year since I no longer keep cats and traps are useless – they tend to catch more shrews than mice.

But it is hard work – the first two days I was doing the bundling I overexerted myself and could not move or even think and sleep properly for two days after that. Now I have about 1 cubic meter of bundles to cut and still some hazel, maple, ash, and hornbeam twigs to either bind or put through the shredder if they are too crooked.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I also have approximately 1/2 of a cubic meter of ash, maple, and hazel rods that can be cut into 50 cm pieces without binding.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And about 1 cubic meter of poplar logs to do the same. I will spend several more days, possibly two weeks, doing this. Altogether I estimate this to be circa 20% of my yearly firewood needs. It is more than usual, because this year I harvested all of the coppice, regardless of age. I had to do that so I could try and plant new trees instead of those that water voles destroyed – if I did not cut everything, the new plantings would be completely overshadowed.

I am glad the spring is here but as always I do wish I was more physically fit. It takes me twice the time to do something an average man of my age could do. Well, that’s life, it only will get worse.

My persimmon tree started growing this week, I want to replant it tomorrow and update ya’ll about how it is growing.

Another Overabladeance

I was spending way too little time actually making knives this year since I spend two-three days a week carting my parents to and from various doctor appointments. And when finishing this batch, my new tumbling receptacles did not work with this particular type of blades and I had to modify them significantly. However, I do have now thirteen finished blades, eleven tumbled from N690, and two from spring steel, mirror-polished with hamon.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

Four kitchen knife sets three three-piece and one two-piece. You might notice that this time I went for blades without ricasso. The reasons are several but the main one is that such blades are significantly easier to make. Really significantly easier. They turned out well and I must say there is something satisfying about getting two chef-knife blades so flat that they stick together when wet. They are probably flat to within a few hundredths of a mm.

The two-piece set in the lower left corner is actually a half-commission. A friend of mine has ordered the bigger blade and I have decided to make the smaller one from an offcut to accompany it. I will also make a bloc as a belated wedding gift. To be fair, I could not give them a proper wedding gift on time since they kept the wedding secret, so it is not that I was inconsiderate, just ignorant.

From now on, I will for several months only dress blades. I still did not finish all of last year’s Overabladeance. The two Puuko I made still have no sheaths. I only started to make these blades because of the commissioned machete in the summer and the commissioned kitchen knife from my friend – I needed a sufficient amount of blades to fill the tumbler and not waste the forge heat. For both things, ten blades is a minimum. So actually I might make some blades again – if I get a commission.

Knife Shoppe

Hi ya’all. I haven’t been very active here lately because I had some work to do. Including that after months and months of heavy procrastination, I have finally purchased web hosting and a domain and started a small webpage for my knives.

www.kb-noze.cz

Constructive criticism is welcome.

The webshop interface does not allow me to display prices in other currencies than Czech Crowns (yet), but I do hope that anyone can convert it to USD or € or whatever should they need to. I will gladly sell anywhere in the world as long as it is financially feasible for both me and the customer, but selling outside of the Czech Republic must be done through individual arrangements and cannot be done simply via the webshop interface (not yet). The reasons are simple – additional currencies and shipping outside CZ are both available for an extra charge and I am not ready to dish out more money than is strictly necessary. Not yet, anyway.

I am thinking about adding a knife-making blog there, but I am somewhat discouraged by the amount of work that it would entail.

I will leave this post pinned to the top of the page for some time.

Relativity of Value

In accordance with Czech law, my house must be visibly marked with my business identification number, my name, and the trade(s) that I am running here. So there is a small sign on the garden gate that says “manufacturing, sharpening, and repair of knives, shears and gardening tools and manufacture and repair of leather goods”. I have expected to get exactly zero business that way, because not very many people come by since I live at the end of a dead-end road, in the middle of large meadows. But my elderly neighbor has noticed it and she came by asking if I would sharpen her some shears, and two pruning shears ((large -loppers –  and small). I have told her it will cost about 20,-€, which she accepted.

The pruning shears were modern tools and not in very bad shape. I had to disassemble them in order to sharpen them properly, but there was nothing interesting about them and sharpening did not take too long. But the ordinary shears were in very bad shape indeed.

Those were tools over fifty, some possibly even a hundred years old. They were extremely dull and battered, most did not even close fully at the tip due to excessive wear and lack of proper maintenance for decades. The protective nickel or chrome coating has mostly worn off and they were covered in patina instead. But they were made in times when things were made to last, so I got to work.

Thus I have sharpened all the edges and I bent the blades and the handles and peened the rivets so they close and cut properly all the way from the base to the tips. I did not attempt to remove the patina, since that could destroy them. But I have restored them to full functionality and, given the quality of their manufacture, they will now probably last several more decades. And I managed to do all this in just over an hour of work since it was not my first time I have so I knew what to do and how, otherwise asking for money would be a bit cheeky.

Even so, I was in for a surprise when I brought them to my neighbor, who was so thrilled with them that she offered twice the agreed price, which I had to decline. I would feel like a thief taking the price of several new shears for sharpening old ones, although I am convinced that these old ones are better now than many of the cheap new ones she could get for that price. But I have told her that I will gladly accept any pretty pieces of wood if she fells some of the sickly fruit trees in her garden.

 

Look at the Grinding Noise!

I have been contacted by my previous employer, which has led me to remember the various works I used to do. One of which was measuring and evaluating noise. That has meant that I was making and interpreting pictures like this.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Of course, this was only done with my phone, whereas at the laboratory I had various kinds of fancy equipment and software available. But back then I did in fact check whether this phone app measures reasonably accurately, and it does.

At the very top, you can see that grinding handles is a very noisy work indeed. When the equipment runs idle, it emits over 78 dB, which is very near to a level when the noise becomes truly dangerous (80 dB). And during work, it exceeds 89 dB. So I am indeed diligent about wearing hearing protection since that noise level would damage my hearing pretty damn fast.

Whoever knows how to interpret the above picture, can tell that when the grinder runs idly (those parts with green at the top), most of the noise – and indeed the loudest noise – is below 500 Hz. And whenever the wood touches the belt, another very loud component is added, between 5 and 80 18kHz (those parts with red-magenta stripes at the top). There is nothing I can do about the noise that is emitted during the grinding, but I could if I were inclined to spend my time on it, try and identify the spots where the loudest frequencies are during idling and try to do something about that. For example, I suspect that a significant source of the low-frequency loud noise is the tensioning wheel.

However, as much fun as it might be, I do not think I will spend a lot of time over this anytime soon. It would be fun though. I liked my previous job, the work was not the reason why I quit.

My Shoppe is Cursed. Cursed I Say!

Yesterday I was sorting my black locust wood into two piles – usable and firewood. And whilst cutting the wood, my little circular saw started to make a weird rattling noise. So I turned it off instantly. Then I disassembled it and I started to poke around in its guts to see if I can find what is the issue. I have thought that I found it – two ball bearings were a bit worn and had a rough feel to them so I have replaced them. Then I have assembled everything again. The weird rattling noise was gone and it was running smoothly.

Hooray!  I plugged it in and started it and I rejoiced for a few seconds until a billowing cloud of smoke emerged. The stators isolation has suddenly started to burn, god knows why.

I have already ordered a new, better and bigger circular saw, a proper, stable, table saw (this one was handled saw fixed to a table). I am glad that it died now when I still have some money to spare rather than later when I run out and have to chew tree bark, but I’d be happier if it hadn’t died at all.

Well, it had a good run at least. I have bought it nearly twenty years ago and the first thing I used it to make was a table for my PC. A few years later I have used it to build another, bigger and better PC table, accompanied by a bookcase, a wardrobe, and a small tea table. Then came my own set of back horn speakers and several smaller projects. I have used it to cut material for my belt grinder and to build a lot of my current shop furniture.

I still have all those things and they serve me well, so the saw did pay its purchasing price several times over. When I have disassembled it, there was noticeable wear in the gears, so even though I did not feel like I have been using it that much, I was using it enough and it did not die prematurely.

I hope the replacement arrives soon. I have a lot of work t do.

An Overabladeance

I have not made a knife for several months now, but that does not mean I was not working on knives. Below the fold is most of what I have done and also a bit about what I intend to do with it in the future.

BTW, I would appreciate it if you let me know something about your favorite knife if you have one. Almost everyone has, even when they are not “into” knives in particular.

[Read more…]

Eye Got May Lie Sense!

When I have started building my workshop in 2009, I did not seek a building permit and I had no project. I was just winging it.

For a building of this size (25 square meters, single story), that was perfectly OK and legal, especially since it was build in place of the previous much bigger wooden barn that I have torn down because it was becoming unsafe. The new workshop is not a workshop per see, it has two rooms, one half is made from bricks and is the workshop and one half is just a storage of gardening tools and materials. It is a combination of a small workshop, garden shed, and whatever.

I was quite happy with it for a few years, but when I decided last year to start a business and went to the business registration bureau, a problem arose. I was told that since I intend to do at least some work in my new workshop, I have to register the building in the land register/cadaster. For which I needed a project and some other paperwork.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

So I had to pay a surveyor and a project architect to get the building surveyed, measured and a proper drawing made. Which I did. And then pandemics started. That has delayed the rest of the paperwork quite significantly. The whole summer and fall of 2020 I got an answer every month that “maybe next month it will be done”.

And then the bad news came. To register the building in the category “production and storage” It would need to have running water. No matter that the house with running water is literally two meters away. The office worker who issued the decision knew the law is stupid, he even said so. But his hands were tied, the law is written for corporate buildings and does not differentiate between a one-man small workshop and an airplane-building workshop. And the law says that every workshop in a production and storage building must have running water (period).

After some back-and-forth I have decided (on advice) to let the building register as a hobby workshop and garden shed within the category “building with other purposes” with the reasoning that the purpose of the building before during and after I run a knife making and leatherwork as a business will remain the same, it will always be a part small workshop, part garden shed and part whatever. Now the only requirements were that I have to have a fire extinguisher and certified revision of electric installation, which I both had because unlike running water these both make sense and I was expecting them.

That went through at the cadaster this spring, but at the same time the pandemic was roaring in CZ, the offices had limited hours and the country was in lockdown again. It was only last week after my mother had both doses of the vaccine and both my father and I were two weeks after the first shot that I felt safe enough to visit the business registration bureau in person again and apply for the license.

And it went well. The type of building the workshop is registered as was not seen as a problem for intended purposes and today I got my official papers. So as of this month, I am officially allowed to charge people for my work – and I have to pay taxes accordingly of course. I have to contact a tax consultant and research some things that I have neglected to do while the whole thing was in limbo, but that is not a legal problem anymore, that is just learning the ropes of a new business.

In other good news, today was also the day that I got my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine. My shoulder hurts like hell, I cannot use my left arm, but I feel quite happy nevertheless.

Gardenscaping: Where the Solution of one Problem Creates Three Equally Interesting Ones

Last time we saw the garden we had a new terrace and stairs, but were still far away from it being finished, which it still is. Since then I gave the old bench a new coat of paint and we got new garden furniture and somebody competent is working on a handrail. What we still need is a lamp. The easiest thing would be to screw one to the side of the house, but when has easy ever been an option? the plan is to put a lamp post in the upper corner of the slope, at the end of the terrace.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

In this pic that’s the upper right hand corner, basically where the wooden fence starts. This way it should give light to the small terrace, but also to the stairs. Also I want a small fountain there so we need electricity anyway. Therefore we spent most of Saturday doing what we’re good at: me telling Mr what he should do and him doing what I told him. Sounds pretty much like some sexist trope about the domineering wife and the poor hapless husband, but it links to the concept of the mental load: The fact that in heterosexual relationships the women are usually the ones who have to do the planning and coordination and sadly, our family is a poster child for this in most parts. Mr has gotten better over the years (often because I simply refused to to do it. If we agreed that it was his task then I would simply unburden myself. No more checking in, no more doing the thinking), but on the whole the mental load is still mine. It doesn’t help that he’s really not good at planning in several steps. He’s more of a Scrabble guy than a chess player and his plan was to start pouring a concrete base at the top where the lamp should go and worry about the slope later. Supposedly after the first heavy rain washed down the earth including the concrete base.

At my suggestion (haha) we started securing the upper part of the slope:

 

©Giliell, all rights reserved

What looks like just a couple of stones was the backbreaking work of several hours. The slope goes in two directions: into our garden and towards the neighbour’s garden. And we had to start somewhere in the middle, because that stone that looks like I had drunk the gin tonic before and not afterwards is turned over on purpose: It covers the drainage pipe from the terrace, making sure the water can exit freely. To prevent animals from getting in there we put in a tin with holes in the bottom. I’m curious at how this will work out, but it’s raining today so I’ll take a look later. This means that we had to start right there, that was our fixed point, and work our way up and to the sides and down as well. Every other stone has a steel bolt at least 30cm into the ground and a layer of concrete to secure it. And some drainage because I do want to plant something in those stones. The first row is always the hardest because it needs to be very level. Sure, the stones will always have their irregularities, they won’t all be the exact same height, but if you’re off there, you’ll be in a lot of trouble later. That means putting the stone (15kg) into position, checking, lifting it off, altering the ground, putting it back, checking… Yes, my arms are hurting, why do you ask? Especially since our ground is full of stones and pebbles that will just not give a millimetre, no matter how hard you push down.   And the worst part: because the whole terrain is helter skelter it looks like they’re all askew because all the other supposedly “straight lines” you’re looking at are, in fact, not straight, which is probably a metaphor or something for my life  but that’s off topic.

In the background you can see some boulders to further stabilize the slope. We still had these lying around, but we’ll need to get more of them to create a girdle on the lower edge to prevent the ground from being washed out. It will also create a nice habitat for lizards and insects, because with all the work we’re doing and all the alterations we’re making to suit our desires, that is always an important aspect. That’s the allotted “wildflowers” side of the slope anyway. I hope to get enough of the stones set in time to plant the pumpkins and courgettes. We’re not lazy, we’re environmentally friendly! We’ll spend a lot of time in the garden this year (I seriously cannot understand people who are planning their holidays this year. No, not even within Germany), so we better make it look inhabitable.

I Never Thought I am Going to be Happy About Loosing my job. Again.

You might have noticed that over the last two years I was getting more and more dissatisfied with my job. Or, more precisely, with my employer.

Twelve years ago I landed a job at a USA corporation owned factory that had all the right components – interesting job where I could learn new things all the time, both manually and intellectually challenging so I could show off my wide skill set, and well paid, extremely so for my humble standards. After a few years however the shine got a bit worn off, as I was constantly struggling with the mindset that was prevalent on key management positions and I was always outspoken about my disagreements with anyone, no matter how higher in  the hierarchy they were above me. Despite this (or maybe because of it?), I got enough respect and clout at all levels in the company that when it came to a serious clash between me and a complete nincompoop of a mid-ranking manager, where unkind words were said on record, the manager was sacked and not me.

All this instilled in me a deep loathing of managers and especialy those who have MBA. To me, MBA managers are the embodiment of Dunning-Krueger effect – they have no discernible skills, but they think they can dictate actual experienced experts how they should do their job. Not every manager is like this of course, but enough of them that it is noticeable.

Then the whole company was acquired by another international giant, this time a german one. For a short while it looked like things will get better, that the flaws/positives ratio will shift a bit for the better regarding how workers are treated. It did not last – our division was chipped off of the big block and sold off again. And unfortunately again to a USA owned company.

From the start I was fearing that things will go back to the bad old ways, and they did. More than that, it quickly became apparent that things will get a lot worse before they get better – if they get better. And these suspicions were proven true when previous years – in direct contradiction to what we were told after the acquisition I might add – a massive round of layoffs has started. First people were “merely” encouraged to go and they got adequate or even generous severance packages if they decided to do so. Then started the push to slash personnel even more, and people got terminated. Still with severance packages, because this is EU and not USAistan, but loss of job is still a loss of job, even when you get handed several month’s worth money.

When I started, I was first part of and then the head of a three-person team. The clash with the idiotic manager was because the team was taken from me and I was forced to do all the work alone, which was only possible in an Excel sheet, not in an actual real world. I got one team member reinstated and some duties were given to another team. It was still not ideal, but it was workable and under the then german owner it seemed like it might improve again in the future. However this last round of layoffs took also my last subordinate for good and it meant that I would, again, have to do everything by myself.

I am not willing to risk a full blown burn-out.

So I decided to quit. Had I been a mediocre or worse worker, I would have gotten a decent severance package and I could leave the company straight away. But being good has some drawbacks. The company did not want me to quit, and I was told I won’t get anything if I do so. I had some quite intense (but polite and respectful) exchanges with both my supervisor and my HR manager and an agreement was made, due to be signed on Monday. I cannot  of course disclose the details (and if you by some coincidence know or think you know any of the obscured details, do not disclose them in the comments, it would get you banned and the comment deleted), but I can say that I will stay at the company until November and do my best to impart some key components of my extensive experience on my successors. In exchange for that I won’t be completely stiffed. I would prefer to go straightaway, but this is the financially more savvy option.

I could only go into the negotiations as I did because I predicted the situation and I was already preparing for this option for the last year, saving money so I feel more secure and can actually afford to say “I quit anyway” and mean it. I still get less than I would if the company fired me (partially because I still underestimated the strength of my hand, but for that I only have myself to blame), but a lot more than I would if I had one-sidedly quit. I do not recommend to anyone to try what I have done, however, I have also seen people to overplay their hand in these things.

My next plan – and it will affect the blog, hopefully in a good way – is to not seek another job. I feel pretty confident that I would find one, but I am so mentally tired from corporate culture that I need a looong rest to get my bearings back. So the plan is to make knives for a year and see where that goes. I will wake up just as if I were to go to a job, work 8-10 hours daily at knives, and when I build a bit of stock I will try if people will buy them. If it works, great. If it does not, the worst that can happen is that after a year (or perhaps a bit more, depending on how quickly the money dries up) of doing something I like doing I will be forced to sell the knives for just the price of the raw materials and seek employment again.

This is not the first time I am doing this. Straight after university I was working in USA for a short while and with the exchange rate at that time I could subsequently afford to be one year unemployed and live off of the savings. I used that time and money for purchasing a good PC and learning myself the skills needed to build and maintain one, as well as the skill set needed for work with Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Photoshop etc. all that new fangled stuff that I did not learn at school but thought – correctly – will be important in the future.  This has helped me to land my first job, in which I have spent five years and I left it for similar reasons (and under similar conditions, funnily enough) as the current one. I felt quite happy leaving that job, despite not having a new one yet. And I feel similarly happy now as I did then. I hope it works out well for me again.

 

I Had Plans

They didn’t include a break, but as it happens, ’tis the season.

Last y’all heard of me, I was becoming a star, and I expected to be back on track by now – turns out, two post-1am nights plus a workday plus a day of rogaining followed by a day of children’s tae kwondo tournaments isn’t exactly a recipe for recovery (after 22km and a record* 48 points in 4 hours on Saturday, I hope you believe me I was practically dead on my feet come Sunday, but parental duties meant I got to sit in a gym for most of the day, keeping a little person’s nerves calm)… and then there was the work trip to Vilnius, and then the centennial celebrations plus my mum’s birthday this weekend. That’s a long list of excuses, but there you have it, at my age, excuses is all you have. I’ll be back on track with a couple of more Macedonia posts (have to finish with those before the next trip comes up, and that, as it turns out, has come up a lot faster than expected, by request of the project leaders and I have two kinds of thoughts about that), I have at least one more post from Austria, and then a few randomly selected picture essays from the summer and early autumn.

In the meantime, please accept my apologies, some rather boring photos from the show (I am in the circle of light) and this lovely song by The Stars, which quite often reflects my ideas about life, planning, and my own expectations. I can write a script and set the scene as much as I want, but life provides its own twists and turns and cliffhanger endings. In other words, I am fine, and I apologize for not keeping up with the rest of you, especially with my forest raking. ‘Intermittent’ is my middle name.

  • A record for my team and I, since we’re not hardcore and we don’t run, we maintain a fast walk, preferably between 5  and 6 km per the hour, take breaks in picturesque locations, and collect as many points as we can. Previous high-scoring events have topped off at 43 or so.

Stupid Work

Do you know this when you’re doing something that is physically and intellectually easy but takes so much time you cannot believe it? As you may know I started a new job this week, which is as a special ed teacher.

Now, I’m not a tidy person. Actually, saying that is probably like the Queen claiming to be not amused when her house just burned down. And because I’m chaos incarnated, I need to be very organised, because I cannot be trusted. So to have a good start, I created a folder for all my kids, with their files, their names printed on colourful paper sorted by their class, note paper,…

That stupid shit just took me two hours of my life. Who has got time for this? Do tidy people simply get a few hours more a day in whi9ch they can be tidy?

Blue folder on a cluttered desk

As you can see in the clutter behind the folder, I struggle with keeping my workspace clean.
©Giliell, all rights reserved