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In Which My Desk Is Dangerous
Nov. 18th, 2017 11:09 pmI have started to notice a strange phenomenon, which is that I have a bunch of things I want and/or intend to do with my day, and yet somehow, sitting down to work on them becomes a direct route to not getting anything done.
Case in point: today. My bullet journal for today has the following entries:
NNWM
Writing blocks/limiting beliefs
Fanservice art ;P
Groceries
Laundry
Granted, this is a lot of stuff, and I certainly didn't expect to finish it all today. But I also didn't get anywhere near as far into it as I expected. Here's what I've actually accomplished from this list:
Why did this happen? I don't know. I was all gung-ho and high energy all morning and for large chunks of the afternoon, and that energy was spent mostly working on edits/tweaks of the SJ Volume One Trade (which, you'll notice, was not on this list, because it came in from FurPlanet overnight). Still, that's a major project and needed to get done so that FurPlanet could have the books in production in time to be on hand for MFF. So I don't resent working on that.
I got the Volume One stuff done, and was eagerly working on ideas for what I would draw as soon as I got home from dinner.
After dinner... blugh. Everything resembling productivity just stopped. My B&N administrivia attempts ran into walls. My Plan for 2018, which I was super-stoked to write after re-listening to You Are a Badass, just turned into a vague cloud of mush and wore me out. As for art... no way. All energy was gone.
Maybe it was the burger? I love flame-broiled burgers but only let myself have them once or twice a month at most because they're huge health-bombs (not to mention all the environmental problems associated with beef); but it could be that such a heavy dinner sent me into a food coma.
But there's also the problem that I sometimes seem to associate this desk with, well, not getting anywhere on stuff. All of the times I've wrangled in creative frustration with Rough Housing, or stared at the outlines for By Elves Abandoned or Child of the Tower and completely failed to have a story spring forth, have happened at this desk. Many of my most successful writing sessions, by contrast, have happened at Starbucks or similar places.
But at the same time, every page of Rough Housing ever drawn, was drawn at this desk, including the issue six cover I love so much. And I have in the past managed some pretty damn impressive writing spurts here, so I know it can be done. That doesn't alter the fact, however, that headspace is a major thing for creative work, and once a place takes on a certain meaning in your mind, that meaning can come to define your interactions there.
The last thing in the world that I want, is for my desk to become the place where it is hardest for me to work. -.-
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I spend the vast majority of my time here. Writing? At my desk. Drawing? At my desk. Doofing around in the internet? At my desk. Watching anime? At my desk.
Since we're moving in JUST NINE DAYS (*flail!*) I need to address this in my new workspace. I want my drawing table to be for DRAWING. I want my writing space to be for WRITING. I want the "everything else" place to be... SOMEWHERE ELSE.
Downside of that, of course, is that I do everything on the same computer. >.> To do different work in different places, I must have a) different places, and b) either a different computer in each place, or easy portability.
My writing has to be done on a laptop, so that I can easily bugger off to Starbucks or wherever when I need to get away from the cats or whatever else might be distracting me at home. Currently, my art is also done on the same laptop, and it's not real easy to just unplug it and go, because I have so many peripherals plugged in (including a backup drive that gives me nastygrams if I just unplug it without "ejecting" first).
However, I also have this really nice, beefy PC that a certain TwitterPonies fan gifted me with, now living without a purpose since I gave Overwatch the heave-ho. So one possibility would be to migrate my art (and backup drives and printers etc.) to that machine, leaving my lappy free to come and go at will.
The other option would be to pick up something else dedicated to doing my writing on. I originally bought a Macbook Air for that purpose, but when I decided I needed a new art computer, chose the Macbook Pro to do double duty. Laurie has the Air now as her computer.
I dunno! I'll figure it out. The whole issue of desk layout might be a red herring, considering how eager my brain seems to be to send me off in the wrong direction all the time. I am trying to carefully observe my habits and behavior to find patterns, however. Every aptitude test or career-search program in the world tells me the same thing over and over again: GO WRITE YOUNG MAN, so why does being at home with a flexible schedule and leave me so often staring into space instead of, you know, DOING WHAT I'M MEANT TO BE DOING WITH MY LIFE, and frustrated with it to boot?
I've already talked some about my tendency to go into denial whenever anything becomes the slightest bit painful. This issue of having difficulty writing, when it's clearly what I was made for, is related somehow I think. My ego and my deeper self, whatever that may be, have extended relationship problems that I both need and want to overcome.
Anyway, that's enough rambling about this tonight, I think. I need to get some sleep now, so that tomorrow I can get up in the morning, slap on headphones, and get as much stuff done as possible before schlepping myself off to the job. But that's also part of the reason why I wanted a day job: to give myself deadlines. If it doesn't happen before 2:00, it's not going to happen tomorrow.
(It's nuts. Having an external schedule to adhere to stresses me like crazy and makes me frustrated that I'm not getting my art/writing/etc. done. So theoretically NOT having an external schedule should be awesome because I can do that stuff instead! So why, why, why, oh neurotic brain, do you decide that it just means I can fluff off forever instead? Bonkers.)
Feh.
-The Gneech
Case in point: today. My bullet journal for today has the following entries:
- Don commission
- B&N website/time tracking app
- New! Improved! Plan for 2018/visualization journal
- House
- Work
- Money
- Exercise
- Books
- (Badass Book for ref?)
- House
Granted, this is a lot of stuff, and I certainly didn't expect to finish it all today. But I also didn't get anywhere near as far into it as I expected. Here's what I've actually accomplished from this list:
- Messed w/ B&N site/tracking stuff, only to have it fail. Maybe my employment stuff isn't in the system yet?
- A very pokey and uninspired Plan for 2018, because every time I tried to write on it my brain just went all fuzzy and I couldn't focus.
- Groceries.
- This post is kinda/sorta the writing blocks/limiting beliefs item. At least I'm starting to look at the issue.
Why did this happen? I don't know. I was all gung-ho and high energy all morning and for large chunks of the afternoon, and that energy was spent mostly working on edits/tweaks of the SJ Volume One Trade (which, you'll notice, was not on this list, because it came in from FurPlanet overnight). Still, that's a major project and needed to get done so that FurPlanet could have the books in production in time to be on hand for MFF. So I don't resent working on that.
I got the Volume One stuff done, and was eagerly working on ideas for what I would draw as soon as I got home from dinner.
After dinner... blugh. Everything resembling productivity just stopped. My B&N administrivia attempts ran into walls. My Plan for 2018, which I was super-stoked to write after re-listening to You Are a Badass, just turned into a vague cloud of mush and wore me out. As for art... no way. All energy was gone.
Maybe it was the burger? I love flame-broiled burgers but only let myself have them once or twice a month at most because they're huge health-bombs (not to mention all the environmental problems associated with beef); but it could be that such a heavy dinner sent me into a food coma.
But there's also the problem that I sometimes seem to associate this desk with, well, not getting anywhere on stuff. All of the times I've wrangled in creative frustration with Rough Housing, or stared at the outlines for By Elves Abandoned or Child of the Tower and completely failed to have a story spring forth, have happened at this desk. Many of my most successful writing sessions, by contrast, have happened at Starbucks or similar places.
But at the same time, every page of Rough Housing ever drawn, was drawn at this desk, including the issue six cover I love so much. And I have in the past managed some pretty damn impressive writing spurts here, so I know it can be done. That doesn't alter the fact, however, that headspace is a major thing for creative work, and once a place takes on a certain meaning in your mind, that meaning can come to define your interactions there.
The last thing in the world that I want, is for my desk to become the place where it is hardest for me to work. -.-
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I spend the vast majority of my time here. Writing? At my desk. Drawing? At my desk. Doofing around in the internet? At my desk. Watching anime? At my desk.
Since we're moving in JUST NINE DAYS (*flail!*) I need to address this in my new workspace. I want my drawing table to be for DRAWING. I want my writing space to be for WRITING. I want the "everything else" place to be... SOMEWHERE ELSE.
Downside of that, of course, is that I do everything on the same computer. >.> To do different work in different places, I must have a) different places, and b) either a different computer in each place, or easy portability.
My writing has to be done on a laptop, so that I can easily bugger off to Starbucks or wherever when I need to get away from the cats or whatever else might be distracting me at home. Currently, my art is also done on the same laptop, and it's not real easy to just unplug it and go, because I have so many peripherals plugged in (including a backup drive that gives me nastygrams if I just unplug it without "ejecting" first).
However, I also have this really nice, beefy PC that a certain TwitterPonies fan gifted me with, now living without a purpose since I gave Overwatch the heave-ho. So one possibility would be to migrate my art (and backup drives and printers etc.) to that machine, leaving my lappy free to come and go at will.
The other option would be to pick up something else dedicated to doing my writing on. I originally bought a Macbook Air for that purpose, but when I decided I needed a new art computer, chose the Macbook Pro to do double duty. Laurie has the Air now as her computer.
I dunno! I'll figure it out. The whole issue of desk layout might be a red herring, considering how eager my brain seems to be to send me off in the wrong direction all the time. I am trying to carefully observe my habits and behavior to find patterns, however. Every aptitude test or career-search program in the world tells me the same thing over and over again: GO WRITE YOUNG MAN, so why does being at home with a flexible schedule and leave me so often staring into space instead of, you know, DOING WHAT I'M MEANT TO BE DOING WITH MY LIFE, and frustrated with it to boot?
I've already talked some about my tendency to go into denial whenever anything becomes the slightest bit painful. This issue of having difficulty writing, when it's clearly what I was made for, is related somehow I think. My ego and my deeper self, whatever that may be, have extended relationship problems that I both need and want to overcome.
Anyway, that's enough rambling about this tonight, I think. I need to get some sleep now, so that tomorrow I can get up in the morning, slap on headphones, and get as much stuff done as possible before schlepping myself off to the job. But that's also part of the reason why I wanted a day job: to give myself deadlines. If it doesn't happen before 2:00, it's not going to happen tomorrow.
(It's nuts. Having an external schedule to adhere to stresses me like crazy and makes me frustrated that I'm not getting my art/writing/etc. done. So theoretically NOT having an external schedule should be awesome because I can do that stuff instead! So why, why, why, oh neurotic brain, do you decide that it just means I can fluff off forever instead? Bonkers.)
Feh.
-The Gneech
