What makes a good neighbor?
It’s pretty easy to be a good neighbor as far as I go: just keep mostly to yourself. As in, you handle your business. Your responsibilities are something you take pride in, and you make sure your affairs are sorted to the best of your ability. I think that comes from the years we spent as apartment managers; our favorite tenants were the ones we never heard from unless there was something legit that needed to be taken care of, which was exceedingly rare. I prize that self-sufficiency after that experience. It’s the sign, to me, of an adult.
Beyond that, being considerate. I try to think of my neighbors when I’m doing something, like, making noise, for example. I make sure that noise doesn’t extend past certain hours. And I appreciate my neighborhood for doing the same. There are several houses that have parties all throughout the year—birthdays, weddings, etc—and they hire live bands. But not a single one of them extends the live music even a single minute past midnight during the weekends, and they never have a party during the week. THAT is considerate. I appreciate that. Because of that consideration for the neighbors, I actually find the music in our little area to be super charming. It’s a feature, not a bug, that happy music drifting through the air on the weekend.
And I guess, finally, it’s a bonus if a neighbor has similar interests. Like, our neighbors next door have a cute dog, and we always say hi to each other and ask about each others’ dogs. That’s really heartwarming. I love that.
We really lucked out with our neighborhood. I like all my neighbors. Truly. They’re all nice people, and I enjoy saying hi to them.
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I was super productive today! Like…man, I got way more stuff done than I thought I would. It started with waking up on time. That really helped. I didn’t get a ton of writing done, but only because Craig (my co-writer) sent me the couple files I needed to get these final files to him for uploading to the publishing portal. The clock was ticking on that, and I wanted to get it handled, so I did. But…I feel better about the story already. I don’t know what flipped, but I guess I finally sat with a few ideas long enough to be like, ‘yes, I would love to write that.’ So, that’s a relief. Hoping it turns into momentum on the outline. But, at some point it will have to. I am getting this thing done in the next couple months.
Tommen is curled up next to me. Sweet boy. He spent most of the day in here on the bed, lol. Every time I’d come in from my office and the pups had been by themselves in the house, I could see from the sliding door that he was on the bed. He must love it in here. Such a good houseguest. We only have him for tonight. Stephen and Thida come and pick him up tomorrow.