Random thoughts wandering through my mind… Found a new-to-me band that I like this morning, Slowdive. Hate today's photo of the day. It is too blurry. But I think it would look great in B&W… I might re-post it that way tomorrow.
I forgot my #1 rule… I wanted it to be the photo I wanted, not the photo it was. Same rule applies to EVERYTHING in art. I've got to let it be what it is, music, photography, writing, not forcing it to be what I want it to be, not trying to make it into something that it is not… That's the way I get my best stuff, at least.
I am still feeling discombobulated. I wanted to fire out of the gate into the new year, instead I stumbled out, teetering and tottering. So far, no falling on my face. But no great burst of productivity, as I'd hoped.
I suppose in life as in art, one has to live the life God hands us, not the one we want. Trying to do otherwise only, for me, at least, creates conflict, chaos, and confusion.
Really, I am just bitter because I wanted to feel rested and refreshed for the start of the new year. Instead, I still feel tired and burned out. I just want the little bookkeeping chores I have left over from last year to resolve themselves and to really start fresh, but that is not life.
Of course, procrastination can bring a resolution to almost any task, but usually not with the desired results. Not that I am procrastinating, but I feel like I am not getting much done.
The boys are back in school and there are a lot of appointments this week. I need to remind myself, on the family front, all the critical tasks are being knocked down. The other tasks are just my own, personal wants. They have little to do, though they are not completely disconnected from, my family's needs. So I am probably being a bit hard on myself.
However, one area probably needs attention… I feel like I am floating through chaos, grabbing at what ever piece of flotsam and jetsam that happens to drift by. I need to take some time in the next day or two and really put together a plan for the next two or three weeks. I need to get organized.
I have a definite deadline on the 11th for one project and a softer, personal deadline on the 16th for completing some other projects. Everything not done by MLK Day is pretty much going to be put on the back burner until I get back to work. Starting that Tuesday, finding a new work contract is my number one priority.
Most of what I want to do between then and now does involve preparations for that big project. But before I start on those preparations, I do want to tie up a few loose ends. Very soon, hopefully, I will have almost zero free time. There are a few personal projects I would like to complete before that happens and a few projects I should complete to help that come about. Still, it feels like a lot, almost too much, to get done in a week and a half.
But it is not. I just need to get busy and use my time wisely and follow the priorities I was able to work out for myself over the break. This was a good time for some soul searching and some redefining of priorities. I identified some goals I would like to accomplish this year and identified some preliminary steps to take to start moving towards these goals. Vague plans, but they have to be at this point in my life. I was also able to switch some gears and to get re-aligned with the new goals that the new year brings.
2012 is not going to be an easy year but it, hopefully, will be a rewarding year. This could be a much tougher year than last year and it definitely will be a much more complicated year than 2011. A lot of what I am feeling, these mixed concerns and fears, are probably due to this knowledge. However, I have to take it one day at a time and remember that the results are in God's hands, not mine. I am merely responsible for showing up and putting in the effort.
So… Last night while knocking out some old photos from the summer, I found this video that I haven’t done anything yet. It was late and it was bedtime, but I thought, what the hell? It’s a fifteen minute job to knock this out and get it posted.
I am having a lot of fun as I work on these little video projects – overall – but the actual practice has turned into a sort of living hell of tech issues. Needless to say, this simple little video has not been a fifteen minute project.
First I tried to slap it together in Windows Live Movie Maker. Total fail. Then I slapped it together with the other editor I’ve been using for most of my recent projects. Fine, looks great.
Totally jumbled, though, by YouTube. Never had a problem with that part of the process before. My problems, until now, have all come before uploading.
One thing is becoming clear... I believe that I have outgrown my computers. Upgrading will be goal for Q1 2012.
Ah, joy. Maybe I should just stick to stills? Blah… The saga of the hamster video…
10:55 PM, 1/1/12
Waiting for the damn video to upload… Had it up and was ready to pull the trigger on this post when I noticed that YouTube botched the processing…
11:02 PM, 1/1/12
Same damn problem again. Going to dump this in a different format and then go to bed.
7:45 AM, 1/2/12
Same problem with the new format.
Uploading it to Vimeo. We’ll see. Not sure if the problem is on my end or YouTube’s end… This should help me figure that out.
7:55 AM, 1/2/12
Just checked on the Vimeo upload and I have to wait 24 minutes for the damn thing to even start processing. Plus, I need to get a paid account to set up more than one channel / album / organizational grouping for my videos…
I do not think Vimeo will become my go to site for most of my videos, because of these issues. But YouTube better start working for me!
I am already assuming I will have to go back and reformat this project. Again.
8:30 AM, 1/2/12
Same problem on Vimeo, though not as bad. I’ll just leave it how it is. Deal with the issue the next time out. However, I am concerned that I may have the same problem with the One Day video when I get back to work on it later today. That would… will… be a headache.
This is an old tradition with Jenna, going back to before I met her twelve years ago… We pick ten celebrities that, for whatever reason, we don’t expect to make it through the New Year.
This is Jack’s first year participating.
She has some arcane scoring system, but I don’t know what it is. Essentially, the elderly and the walking dead only get partial points.
Some names are pretty random, picking the long shots…
No prizes, just a vague feeling of superiority at besting the other competitors.
8:15 PM I talk about this later in the post, but I wanted to let everyone know right at the top that this will, probably, be the last post until 2012. I am taking a break. It’s been a heck of a year, and I’ll be back, fresh and ready, after Winter Break!
This includes the Photo of the Day on Rubble. One sign of my burnout is that the Photo of the Day has become the photo of every now and then. Daily posts will return in 2012.
2:30 PM Winter Solstice today, thank the Gods! Now the days start getting longer. Happy day. It was also my birthday yesterday. These days, though, other anniversaries feel like bigger deals than just making another trip around the sun… It was a nice day, though.
The sun is out and The Big One and I are going to take the dog out for a long walk. Hopefully I can take some pictures and keep on getting to know the new camera I received for said birthday and for the upcoming holidays.
Yes. Burnout. I am very burned out. It has been a long year. The new year is not here yet, but I am a year older and the days are getting longer, so this seems as good of a time as any for a 2011 wrap up post.
This is the last task I am knocking down before stepping away from the computers for a couple weeks. No Photos of the Day (or of the every few days, as it has been going recently), no posts to any blogs, little to no activity anywhere else. Stick a fork in me, I am done. Break time.
For the next couple weeks it is about the kids, books, cameras, watching some movies and catching up with some Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, and some other badly neglected shows.
It is going to be some time to get some perspective, to get some rest, and to get ready for 2012. This past year was a strange one and not an easy one. 2012 looks to be very different. No less easy, but definitely more stable.
2011 was a year when my life was on hold. I started in California helping my mother with several issues, and ended in Gresham helping my children through several issues. Those tasks took up the whole year.
But that leaves me in a strange place where my plans for my life in 2012 look exactly like my plans for my life in 2011. This is not to say that I did not accomplish anything in 2011, far from it. The work with my family has been tremendously productive and rewarding. But in 2012, the main goal is to resume work on my own career and to start earning some damn money.
This also not to say that the work with my family is done, of course it is not. The boys have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go, a lot of healing left. Their wounds are no longer bleeding, but they are far from being back to normal. The Big One still has a long ways to go before he is back up to speed with school. The Little One, well, he has a long way to go before he’s back up to speed with life.
However, the progress they have made since April and May is amazing. Some solid foundations are now in place and they are both further along than I would have guessed they would be at this point. They are far enough along where I am feeling pretty good about heading back to work.
There will be challenges, of course, with this transition, but I think they are part of the growing process now, challenges encouraging growth, not obstacles hindering it.
6:00 PM Dog walked, boy walked, errand ran, dinner cooked and served…
Burnout.
I’ve been putting a lot of work in on the RubbleSites for the last couple months, a lot of posts, but even more time spent behind the scenes getting this and that set up. I feel, for the most part, this work is coming to a close and that, after a few small projects that will be completed after winter break when the boys are back in school, that I am at a point where I can pretty much just focus on content creation.
And that is a good thing, because once I am back to work, there is going to be little time for anything else. Posts may get shorter, and fewer and further between… I think my goal at that point will be one decent post for each blog per week, with some other, smaller “feature” type stuff thrown in here and there too.
Of course, I’ll be keeping up with my photo of the day and throwing music I like up on Retrovirus Lab, too.
So, the plan is, after the break, to take two weeks to finish the construction of these sites and to put a new portfolio together. Then my full time work and only major project will be landing a new writing contract.
One of the things that has been a little rough the last month or so is that I’ve fallen into a strange schedule with life. Since most of the uninterrupted work time I have these days is at night, after everyone is in bed, I’ve become rather nocturnal these days. I get a few chores done during the day, then the afternoon and evening has been spent working with The Big One and his homework, cooking dinner, usually more work with The Big One and his the homework (let’s face it, it has been more homeschooling than helping with homework), then getting everyone to bed.
Only then have I found the time to get the serious work done on the bigger projects I’ve been working on, like the One Day on Earth video, the Occupation photos and videos, etc. Since The Ex One gets up early, she’s been handling the mornings, getting the boys out the door to school. Through the end of November and up until the last few days, I’ve been going to bed about the same time she’s been getting up to get her and the boys’ day started.
This schedule actually worked pretty well for that period, for the most part. The Ex One was fresh for the mornings, and I was fresh for the afternoon and evenings, and the boys were spared dealing with a tired and grumpy parent!
Now that the boys are home, though, this schedule is terrible! Today we hardly got anything done. I have a few chores I need to complete before I start my break, the day is almost done and I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. Of course, on the old schedule, my real work wouldn’t have even started yet, but I am done with the nocturnal thing.
Once I start the job hunt, I will need to be on a normal schedule. Since it would be murder on me to swing back and forth between day and night schedules every two weeks for the next month or so, I am not. I am just going to switch to a days only schedule and keep it there.
After break, my days will be compressed into what I can get done while the boys are in school. That means I will probably be a lot less productive, but there are no big projects, just a few small ones and wrapping up some big ones, so that should be fine. The challenge will be not getting sucked into any new big projects.
So, for the rest of break, I am taking some time for me. I might get caught up editing a few pictures here and there, but that is pretty much it. I have a small project, also, that I need to complete for my mother’s Christmas gift, but that is a small project. I might also finish the One Day video, but probably not until the boys are back in school.
That is the project, the One Day On Earth video, that was really burning me out, and it is still not done. I put a lot of time into that video and, at this point, I am not crazy about the results. With the limitations of the camera I shot the video on, well, there’s not much more I can really do with it.
I took a break from the video for the last 10 days or so, once the deadline was extended for a month, to get some distance from it and to make some decisions about it.
Pretty much, I needed to decide if it was something that I wanted to put another 40 to 80 hours in to or was it something I wanted to just wrap up and move on from. The break was good. It is time to put a few final touches on it and to move on. I was thinking about recording new music for it, nope. I was thinking about re-cutting the whole thing in Lightworks, nope.
I do need to put a couple more hours into it, but that is all. Upload it and move on. But it took several days of distance from it to realize that this was the best thing to do here.
The other big project I still need to finish is editing and posting all the Occupy Portland material. Of course, that stuff was sort of time sensitive, so the longer I go without posting it, the less relevant it becomes, the less of a priority... Still, I do want to get it up while it is still something of a current event and before it becomes history. But at this point, January is fine.
And that is about it. All that stuff, in a nutshell, was 2011. And since I am putting everything not done at this point off until 2012, that means my year is done. And I am tired. It is time for a long break and a lot of rest.
See you next year. It should be an interesting one!
Well, I feel that my blog Suburban Eschatology Part Two has a bit of an identity problem. Half the time I am posting tech related articles about new / social media issues and the other half of the time I am posting long navel gazing musings about my life and silly videos of my children.
One of the two topics had to find a new home.
Considering that SE2 was always intended to be my personal journal, well… Here we are.
I wanted to call this All My Base Are Belong To You… but that was taken. So I snipped them by one word. That blog is about Japanese culture, this one is about other stuff. I hope no one gets confused.
Looking at some deadlines today...
I have nine days to get through all of my One Day On Earth photos and videos. That is a hard deadline.
Before I work on that stuff, I want to get through the last of my Occupy Portland photos and videos from the eviction night and N17.
It is going to be a busy week or so. But today, I am going to throw up my Photo of the Day and call it good. It is sunny outside and I want to get a little hike in. And this evening, an appointment with The Big One.
I am not worried. I will still be buried in projects tomorrow. They are not going anywhere.
That, pretty much has been the theme this week: Resetting Priorities. After getting my calendar put together, I needed a break. Outside of my family obligations and getting a little rest and recuperation from the many long hours I've been putting in on all of these projects for the last couple months, anything else that got done this week was bonus.
But, starting tomorrow, it is time to get back to work.
So, there it is... A first post for this blog. Sort of.
Actually, I've been writing posts for this blog for quite some time, I just haven't had the proper place to post them.
Eventually, as with my other blogs, I hope to run through and sort out all of the old posts over the last ten to twelve years and get them ordered properly in their proper homes. Backdated, for the most part, so there should be earlier posts in this blog in the near future, but that, as with any further design work on this blog, will have to wait until I knock down some more pressing projects first.
I leave you with the ten year old meme I borrowed the title from...
Keeping track of important dates on your calendar is easy when you can view 12 months of inspiring images that reflect your personal interests. Our high-quality calendar has oversized date boxes providing plenty of room to write in important events.
Each page measures 17" x 11"
Measures 17" x 22" when hung on wall
Full bleed dynamic color
100 lb cover weight high gloss paper, wire-o bound
January 2012 - December 2012, 2013 preview, US holidays marked
Keeping track of important dates on your calendar is easy when you can view 12 months of inspiring images that reflect your personal interests. Our high-quality calendar is printed on thick 100lb cover weight paper and adds impact to any room.
Each page measures 11" x 8.5"
Measures 11" x 17" when hung on wall
Full bleed dynamic color
100 lb cover weight high gloss paper, wire-o bound
January 2012 - December 2012, 2013 preview, US holidays marked
