Time-blocking didn't quite work out for me yesterday. The epoxy resin I was planning on using on an art piece had yellowed due to less-than-ideal storage, so I put in an order for some but until it arrives, I have to keep the setup I have in place for it undisturbed because it took a while to prep (artwork perched on plastic on table, everything leveled—not easy to do because the entire house is in fact somewhat tilted). So when I switched to taking care of fulfillment instead, the occupied tablespace made it a little less efficient and it took way more time. As a result several other things I wanted to do never got done.
So, in the future, days where I do fulfillment shall be dedicated entirely to fulfillment and nothing else. If it is really terribly necessary to squeeze more in there, it'll only come after fulfillment is taken care of, just to ensure no potential mishaps lead to an unusable table.
And the same goes for artmaking, better to reserve specific days for that and only that.
And today I am with migraine. There go all my time-blocking plans now.
#journal
Awoken at 3:30 AM today for no comprehensible reason, after getting all of 3h-47m of sleep. This despite yesterday being a wonderfully productive day. Got some scriptwriting in, along with thumbnails, and also some painting. Did a grocery run, exercised for an hour, cooked a slamming dinner with enough leftovers for today while managing to keep the kitchen tidy. Took care of business email (inbox: zero), got some reading in, and even got to socialize later in the evening. And look at me, back to blogging again. I'm liking this time-block method.
Spending this week developing my timetable as each day progresses because the nature of what I do doesn't quite allow for identically plotted out days. Today for example, there will be much fulfillment of online orders from my shop, newsletter-writing, possibly some very belated website-updating, in addition to looking after my kid in the late afternoon into the evening. And my personal email inbox has been taunting me with the number 71.
Let's see what this timetable looks like by week's end and whether or not it could be reapplied to next week.
#journal #efficiency
There are a bunch of things I haven't been doing enough of, and a few things that have been moving a little slower than desired, so rather than my usual to-do-list method of going about my day (where often times many items on the list don't end up getting checked off and are relegated to the following day's list), I'm attempting to implement a stricter time-blocking method. Essentially, a timetable. Like the kind they used to give us in school (which I imagine they must still be using in schools today).
It is for this reason and this reason alone that I managed to work in a blog entry this morning; I had it time-blocked.
Let's see how the rest of the week goes.
#journal #efficiency
Spent yesterday doing kitchen things: filling the jars in my spice cabinet and extracting all my groceries from the packaging they came in, emptying them all in reusable containers. What the latter activity does (which I'm realizing is a highly unusual practice by most peoples' standards) is completely de-brand my kitchen. No longer is my fridge or pantry an eyesore, and no longer do their contents constantly scream a cacophony of brand advertisements whenever I make use of the kitchen. A de-branded home is one of the ways to ensure your place of residence is a true refuge from the constant corporate messaging of the outside world.
Of course, they still tend to reach you through screens, but there are ways around that as well. Ad blockers for your browsers, and streaming services instead of standard television for instance.
Some friends have asked me “But why?”
Because every one of those things is a tug for attention, even if very minor, they all add up. Upon elimination, you'll be surprised by the serenity caused by the mental alleviation—and thus mental clarity—of this sort of cleansing.
#journal
An assortment of summer vacay doodles:
#sketch #doodle #journal
Got the latest “booster” the other day and my body did not take too kindly to it. Out of commission for the day which frustrates me to no end. Trying to read and failing, may end up having to be a slutty TV day. Let's see what I can find.
On another note, my latest piece:
It's called POWER DANCE PATTERN, hand-stamped on 300 gsm acid-free paper, 9”x12”. The variation in stamping makes each one completely unique.
#journal #art #work
Quite into Amazon Prime's adaptation of William Gibson's THE PERIPHERAL despite it standing on a rather shaky premise that demands a huge suspension of disbelief: That people in the future would easily be able to transmit data to the past, to the point where they could transmit the data necessary for the manufacture of devices that allow for the transmit of data from the past to the future. The how is never explained, and all the characters in the show seem to just buy into it. When confronted by this information, the characters from the past (which is still in our future) do have a holy shit moment, but that's the extent of it. Even the obligatory “nerd” doesn't seem to geek out about the science involved or anything. It's kind of frustrating.
But there was a bit that resonated hard; when it is explained to the main character from the past inhabiting an artificial body in the future what “the jackpot” is. Or was rather. A mass extinction event resulting from a trifecta of severe climate change + global pandemic + nuclear war. I watched that particular episode just one night before the Arctic Blast hit Houston, weather plummeting to well below freezing temperatures and losing power and all form of heating in the house. I had also just read a report on recent pandemic statistics; an all new high with something like 400-related deaths a day? You wouldn't know it because of the lack of pandemic-related restrictions/precautions though. Seems like the only thing missing is a nuclear war, which I guess we're far from actually living through. Although this batshit crazy headline appeared on the WSJ not long ago: The U.S. Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War.
#journal #watching
“And it is absolutely inevitable that when a tradition has been evolved, whatever the tradition is, the people, in general, will suppose it to have existed from before the beginning of time and will be most unwilling and indeed unable to conceive of any changes in it. They do not know how they will live without those traditions that have given them their identity.”
From an essay by James Baldwin titled THE CREATIVE PROCESS. A dear friend sent it my way the other day, and it has stuck with my since. It stuck with me in my dreams all night, and this morning too upon my awakening. There's a gem in every sentence really, but it is the bit quoted above that embodies the key to it all. Or perhaps more accurately... the lock. The act of unlocking it is what really represents the key to the creative process, at least for me. It is artists who help herald a turn in the social tide, who suggest a way of being and doing that is other. I should say that when I say artists, I don't mean it in the crass definition often accepted by today's standards. There are artists who are visualists, and those who are musical. There are lyrical artists, as are there literary. There are those who work with fabric and the human body, and those who construct habitats for human dwelling, and those who explore the sciences of the natural world and posit various uses for them. There are artists in all known field and endeavor and there are many who operate in these areas who are not artists at all but are of no lesser importance.
It is artists though who push the envelope, and are thus often reviled, feared, and ridiculed by society at large. Until—as is often the case—long after they're dead when society finally catches up with their ideas and propositions. Of course, there are artists who achieve mass acclaim within their lifetimes. Anyone can likely name a handful alive today who might fit the bill without thinking twice. I would like to posit something somewhat controversial though, and that is if indeed an artist has reached a degree of widespread appeal after having gone through the unpleasant business of social jeering at the onset of their practice, then one might say that that artist is surely lucky to have lived to witness the kind of seismic shift their art had always hoped to affect. However, if what they continue to do thereafter is being met with social glee, then chances are they have ceased to push the envelope beyond that initial push and are probably likely doing much of the same work they had done prior. No longer producing work that might suggest an alternative to established tradition, it is at this point that their work is no longer art and they no longer artists. There might be a great degree of craft involved, a great degree of skill involved, but craft, skill, and art are not one and the same. To be an artist is to be revolutionary.
#journal
Lovely biking to the post office today, where I dropped off a couple packages. I'm reminded why it's so nice to stay put during extended national holidays, because you get to enjoy the city without its usual frenzy of angry traffic. I learned this as a young boy after spending many a national holiday doing things that would never at all occur to me to do had I not been pressured into it by family and society at large. When I was finally old enough to make my own decisions about how to spend my days, I jumped at the chance to not do what everyone else did, and instead spent that holiday time doing what I genuinely enjoyed doing.
I don't quite get that kind of luxury now, as there is an awful lot of work on my plate. But it is the kind of work I enjoy, so there is that. Actually, I lie, it isn't. It certainly could've been the kind of work I enjoy, but a couple of these projects involve other parties who are nitpicky and “micromanagerial” in a way I haven't experienced in the 18+ years I've doing this kind of work. Perhaps I've grown too accustomed to being asked to just do my own thing with little to no interference from anyone. It is for this reason that I'm typically extra careful about assessing how much of a control freak the people who approach me are before taking on any gigs, but it seems my assessment powers are waning. And now I pay the price by having very little will to live and in fact wishing I was off doing some redundant holiday nonsense in some godforsaken frost town that was never intended for human habitation to begin with.
Part of the frustration I suppose stems from one's inability to assess a project's production timeline. If say, you anticipate a project might be done in X amount of time, that can easily be botched by the interference of another party who can result in it taking 10X the amount of time, and thus affecting other projects you might have on the docket. Like, say, THE SOLAR GRID for example, which of course I am terribly behind on and will be immensely depressed if I don't get Ch.7/#8 out the door before year's end. Which is uh, soon, way too soon.
#journal
As much as I may have bitched about working on these 19th century scenes in TSG, I'm quite pleased with the results.
Pages fully scanned in, now working on assembly, colors, and letters, in addition to a couple work-for-hire gigs. One in particular I'm really excited about because it just couldn't be more up my alley. Between the queer punk rock vibes and strain of revolt all effortlessly fused within a speculative fiction yarn... I mean c'mon. Could I even hope for anything so perfect?
#journal #work