Apartments

It's not even time to move yet but it's been really distracting me lately. I just have so much financial anxiety about moving into an apartment by myself with 2 cats. The options are so slim...

I keep pouring over apartment-search websites as though I'm going to find something else—which is always possible with Craigslist—but since I'm not moving until September anyway, what's the point!? I wouldn't be able to take it yet. It's just stressing me out unnecessarily. I keep repeating this to myself but I keep looking anyway. It's a compulsion. I have plenty of other tasks to take up all of my time; why am I wasting time on this?

Someone should put parental controls on all of my computers that forbid me from accessing all housing/apartment sites. Maybe I would get something done...

Challenges!!

Redesigning my website has become a nightmare.

The theme I bought... while very extensive... is difficult to understand. For every bug I fix, 5 more appear. It's rough.

Last night, I reorganized my portfolio files at least. I fished through all of the work that I have stored on my iMac (presumably the largest collection of my myriad computers) and established a cleaner collection as well as a more sensible navigation for the site itself. Baby steps I guess.

Thankfully I'm not looking for a job. The more portfolio sites I look at, the more frustrated I get. There are some really nice ones out there. I just don't have the technological skills to develop one like it just yet. Nor do I really have the direction in terms of work samples. I just want to get something up that makes sense so that I can transition into doing more illustration work. The better the work, the better the site will be.

I find that I get really tired after work on the days when I don't have aikido. I drank a coffee as I was leaving work yesterday to offset that. I was still a little tired. Maybe it worked. It kept me awake at midnight once I decided to throw in the towel for the night—that's for sure. I just find that I waste the hours between 6 and 9 doing nothing because I'm tired... and then I get a second wind around 10 or so that keeps me up until midnight... How can I alter that pattern? Maybe it has to do with food. Maybe I should push through and force myself to make dinner as soon as I get home so that the food will reenergize me. I don't know. It's frustrating.

If humans didn't need to sleep, we would get so much more done! Relaxation is worthwhile but sleep is just a waste of 8 hours if you ask me.

A Declaration

For one whole day, I am not going to rush.

Today I will take things as they come and complete things as I have the time/energy.

This past weekend was the bridal extravaganza up in Philly. Hooray! All bridal stuff is finally done! My life is mine once more! And then I got slammed with tonsillitis...

This week was essentially a wash. Thinking about everything I am behind on this morning (my one and only day of full-work this week), I started stressing myself out as usual.

I made a pact with myself during a bathroom break that I won't rush for the rest of the day. I have a lot going on, a lot to do, and a lot of places to be. And I'm still only operating at about 70% health and 30% energy. The world will keep turning. I think.

I don't even have the energy to describe the things I'm worried about these days.

Cliff notes:

• Got a new pair of glasses. They're not working as well as I'd hoped but the doc double checked the prescription and says they should be fine. The world looks distorted. It doesn't feel "fine."
• I will have to submit a claim to the ins company because of a weird snafu that made me pay for the glasses out of pocket... insurance confuses me. The idea of solving this problem makes my stomach hurt.
• I decided to re-do my website... because I can't leave well enough alone. It's the one ounce of fun I've been able to find lately. So it'll be fun when I get around to completing it. The advantage is that I'm not actively looking for a job so I can tinker forever and nothing outwardly bad will happen. I want to reorient this site to present myself as an illustrator predominantly... who also does design. My current job will pay my way through the next few years until I can formulate some sort of plan for tapping into the illustration/character creation field that interests me more. But I should begin structuring my extra-curricular life to fit my goals.
• I have an aikido test in 2 weeks that I feel underprepared for but I haven't been to class in over a week thanks to tonsillitis and travel.

Blythe likes to say that discontent is our greatest asset... in the moment though, discontent feels frustrating... Perhaps the world will seem a little less overwhelming when I can breathe through my nose again, swallow without the pain of a thousand knives, and stop coughing up phlegm. Maybe. I don't know.

No rushing today though. No rushing.

Post Finally Completed!

I finally finished the post about Lean In.

Read it here.

For some reason, my website isn't working very well right now. I will have to look into why it's breaking the links. Let me know if you can't access it and I'll copy and paste the post here.

Blog Vows

I haven't forgotten that I vowed to write a post about Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. This last week has been nothing short of a nightmare involving to do lists and check boxes. Alas, I did begin a draft of the post. I'm going to publish it on my design blog—not this one. I feel it's a poignant enough topic for more than 3 people to read.. if they so choose—and I don't want to do that by giving more people access to this blog. I like to keep this readership fairly small.

I haven't lied though. And I don't intend to be mean. I simply want to reflect on all the bad press this book has gotten and what I think (my opinion and nothing more) her message is and what I think women should take from the book.

In other news, work has gotten busy and weddings remain busy. At the risk of any brides reading this and learning things they shouldn't know, I'll forego the details—but essentially there has been a lot of planning and a lot of crafting. I'm counting down the days until both showers and bachelorette parties are over so that the things I am MOST responsible for will have ended. I have no doubt that I will assist both brides with wedding prep but the showers/bachelorettes are putting way more pressure on me at this point.

I haven't forgotten about my Jekyll & Hyde project either. Partially, I am waiting to move forward until wedding things calm down a bit, but I have managed to squeeze in some research about my favorite illustrators when I have had a free moment. Ironically, I find that I'm wasting more and more time on reading blogs lately. I subscribed to a bunch of illustration blogs in addition to my design blogs from before and I set up Feedly as a more organized source of collecting and displaying them all. So when my mind wanders these days, it tends to land on my Feedly homepage. Perhaps I can encourage it to land on more specific research. I just realized that I am attempting to organize and plan time "wasted." I realize how crazy that sounds. No life can/should be that scheduled. And yet, I find it somehow comforting.

Thanks to all the snow, ice, and obligations, I have had a hard time sticking to running lately. I haven't totally fallen off the bandwagon but it certainly has been less than 3-days a week. So yesterday I chose to do a Crossfit workout (as per Jason's designation) in lieu of being able to go outside for a run or go to aikido class (it was canceled due to the snow). I am embarrassingly sore today. Lesson learned = my muscles are weak. Benefits of this workout = it kicked my ass and took a grand total of SEVEN minutes. I can get behind that... if my muscles will allow me to.