Lost

I wrote a whole long post, then went to add a picture, this picture, and the entire post disappeared. It was a good post too, about getting lost on my first day of using public transit. But I’m too tired to rewrite it now.

Fuck it. I’m going to bed. 

Walking in LA

I made it to work nearly a full hour early, so I decided to do a very un-LA thing and walk to the bank in order to deposit some checks. It turns out that the nearest bank was a full mile away. For a minute or two I dithered: I could walk a mile in about twenty minutes- accounting for a little bit of time once I got there to execute the transactions then I had enough time to get there and back. Just.

So I hot-footed it up the block and back. Luckily for me, it was before the heat really set in for the day. My backup plan was to do it over lunch which would have involved making the hike in ninety degree heat and direct midday sunshine. I was glad for the exercise, although my feet are telling a different story at the moment, and I was glad to get one task off my mind for the day.

It was a day full of fluttering thoughts and big existential questions. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground. Big thoughts or fluff. A lot of that fluff was kicked up when I looked back at my list of goals for the month and once again discovered that most of them have been blasted out of the water by other work. I’d complain, but the other work was what I was really hoping for in the first place. Still, I continue to carry a large number of tasks from month to month without ever seeming to make progress on them. And now, working full time, I’ll have even less time to dedicate to them. I can pretty much accomplish one thing a day. Maybe two if I can get one done before I leave in the morning. Three if I do one over lunch. So I’ll really need to get focused for the remaining months of the year. There are a few projects that I just can’t carry into the new year and now is the time to be grinding them out.

I also realized, with regret, that I haven’t called home in several weeks. What’s worse, is it had gone completely out of my mind: there was no niggling sensation of “there’s something I’m supposed to be doing, I just can’t think of it”. Nope. Just completely forgot about calling home. In some ways I feel like I’m pretty up-to-date on the news: my folks put in a new patio and for a while we were getting daily photo updates of the progress, so that felt like being in touch, but it’s different than actually setting aside time to chat. I’ll have to set aside time this weekend for it.

Anyway, the week is off to a solid start. With luck the momentum will stay good.

Photo One Hundred And Seventy Four

If I were smart, and less dependent on accomplishments to make me feel like my time it’s worthwhile, I’d learn how to sit quietly and just stare into space to enjoy things like low summer sunlight.

They say that the true sign of a professional is the ability to meet deadlines, in which case I’m still an enthusiastic amateur. I didn’t write yesterday, instead using the time to work on artwork for the animated series that I’ve been designing. By eleven at night there was still work to be done, but I had run out of focus and energy. There comes a point where you have to make the choice between getting done on time or getting it done right and I decided it was more important to start fresh. So today was half spent working on artwork and half spent cleaning the house in preparation for having some friends over for dinner. I was glad to have the excuse of friends visiting to get the place clean, but YIKES it’s a lot of work. We’ve barely lived here a month and already I’m chasing dust off of every surface. I’m trying to make good cleaning habits, but I always find myself trying to get the whole house clean in one day before guests arrive. I guess I just need to entertain regularly. 

Tomorrow it is the start of a temp gig that should last through the end of the year. So it’s the first day on a job, but it’s with a company that I’ve worked with before so I’m feeling good about it. Having a day job means that I’ll need to be very diligent about choosing what other tasks need to be accomplished each day: free time is suddenly going to get much more precious. 

On that note, sleep is also going to become more precious, so I’d better not waste any more time. Time for bed: more adventures tomorrow.

I went out to run errands in the afternoon, thinking that I could get them done in an hour or two. Three and a half hours later I made it home, so tired that it was all I could do to get the groceries into the refrigerator before collapsing on the bed to rest. My energy levels had dropped off precipitously about halfway through the list of errands that I needed to get done. I was tempted to head home early, except that would mean going out on the weekend instead, along with everybody else in the working world. At least one of my stops was going to involve going to the mall. I was NOT going to go to the mall on a weekend. So I pushed through, and afterwards attempted to nap. I dozed, but didn’t sleep deeply and didn’t wake feeling refreshed. My body felt very heavy. I didn’t end up having enough energy to go for a run.

I have to think that it has something to do with the weather. It as been cool and windy lately, which feels a bit fall-like and makes me wonder if a weather pattern is going through. I always forget how much you can feel a change in the weather. Nothing seems to help it. Coffee does nothing. Napping feels inadequate- as if each nap is just enough of a stop-gap to get you to the next nap.

But for being so worn out, at least it was a reasonably productive day. The errands took care of quite a number of small things that I’ve had on the back of my mind for several weeks like getting a library card and buying a replacement bulb for a burned out headlight. Not big things, but things that needed doing and now are done. And I made further progress on the artwork that is due tomorrow. The major pieces are now complete and all that remains are smaller props and expressions that need to be added, so I’ll have some more work to do tomorrow, which is supposed to be my deadline. I’m hoping that I can have until the end of the day. I amy be cutting it down to the wire, but that’s not bad, considering that I only had two weeks to begin with, hadn’t used photoshop in years, and lost several days due to temp work.

So I guess I’ve earned my fatigue for the day. I’m going to call it a night.

Photo One Hundred And Seventy Three

This is what going to the beach feels like to me.

What Music?

No, Hubert, That’s not how you listen to music on the Cloud.

Dangit! I’m doing it again. I sat down to write a quick post and then got distracted doing everything else and now it is late. I still have to write, but at least I’ve updated my spreadsheets and delivered some artwork. Because priorities.

For reasons unclear to me, the newest update of iTunes conveniently “forgot” where all my music was. If it wasn’t on the iTunes cloud, it might as well not exist. The files were still there, and still stored in the Music folder under iTunes Media in the library, but the player refused to acknowledge their existence. If I clicked on the file, it would open in the player and play just fine and the player would be all like: “What, this? Oh, it’s been here all along.” So I spent most of the day clicking through my music collection to re-load it back into the player. I’ve made it as far as “M”. Turns out I have a lot of music for iTunes to ignore.

Aside from music woes, I managed to stay pretty focused. It was a day spent on the computer in Photoshop creating digital versions of character designs for an animated series. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share any images yet- but it sounds like the episodes may show up on YouTube in the nearish future so once everything goes live I’ll be sure to share some of these images that I keep vague-blogging about.

So it was a quiet day at home (not counting my atonal singing), spending hours deeply engaged in work on artwork that I can’t show for a project that I can’t quite talk about yet. I got out for a run in the evening, but mis-timed it slightly and found myself running in the dark by the end. Luckily the route I’ve worked out is reasonably well lit, but I still carried a flashlight. Ironically, it was searching for the flashlight that made me late getting out the door, thus assuring that I would need the flashlight that I spent all that time looking for. (Does that count as irony? I’m never sure anymore.) It was good to get out, but I gotta get in the habit of running more than once a week- every time I go out it feels like I’m starting over. Ahh well.