Follow-up

So this weekend I tried an experiment. Friday night, I stepped away from the 2 sites I'm working on for clients and the big intimidating book on Javascript purchased 2 months ago and picked up the sketchbook, ordered takeout and ignored the piles of laundry while I just relaxed and worked on drawings until it was time to get some sleep. Saturday morning, I got up with Chloe, got breakfast, and found 2 skirts and a cardigan for $37 at Modern Millie's. When I sat back down at the computer later on it felt like I had been on vacation for a couple of weeks and I swear I got more done after taking a break than if I had chained myself to the hard drive.

Follow-up

Finding a Method for the Madness

Working mother+freelance job= lots of stress. I think over the past month I've had an epiphany though. My theory is that stress is actually guilt over not getting some supposedly "urgent" task done. (if you are a client reading this, don't worry, I'm just taking a break from working on your site) So for now it's bye bye "to do" list with color coded bullet points, bye bye in-box piled with ALA and Digital Web Articles waiting to be highlighted and sorted and filed. The new Joseph Cornell exhibit opens tomorrow at the Peabody Essex Museum, Russell Orchards in Ipswich opens for the season, and if there's one thing I've learned over the past few weeks, it's that sitting in front of a blank screen forcing inspiration to strike doesn't work half as well as getting out into the "real" world for a few hours.
I'll see you in the park. Have great weekend!

Finding a Method for the Madness

Synchronicity Strikes Again

So I was watching a recorded episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher" tonight, trying to take my mind off quite a few things. Maher was grilling Bill Moyers about journalistic responsibility. Apparently, buried underneath an avalanche of coverage of the Virginia Tech mass murder was the news that our military has basically given up on training Iraqi troops and advisors are now seriously attempting to explain to President Bush that in fact, he is not wearing any clothes at all. Turns out Bill Moyer was a White House Press Secretary during the Kennedy/Johnson era so there was plenty of cud to chew about the eerie similarities between the Vietnam & Iraq conflicts. In fact, it's now becoming so depressingly similar that I decided that I'd be better off just getting some work done. I went onto the web just to check in, and saw that David Halberstam had been killed in a car crash in California. It's one of those things where one might not personally know the famous name, but a loss is felt anyway. I was working on some film or other that was shooting at Milton Academy a few years ago and ended up spending a long summer afternoon set dressing in the school library. I saw a book that said "The Making of a Quagmire" and something told me to take it down from the shelf. It turned out to be a highly readable account of the Kennedy administration's clumsy overtures to the Diem regime in Vietnam. For a few minutes I considered slipping the book into my set bag and taking it home, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Some teenaged kid needed to read that book more than I did. I can still remember that war and growing up around its aftershocks and victims. I hope some freshman picked it up that September of 2000 and found it as good a read as I did. A 14 year old in 2000 would be a 21 year old today, probably just getting out of college and hopefully a little more skeptical of presidential foreign policy for having read Halberstam's "Quagmire".

Synchronicity Strikes Again

File this under, "When I get a second..."

A good guide to web apps for small businesses. If only someone could invent a babysitting/diaper changing web app, I'd be all set. Google, did you hear that?

File this under, "When I get a second..."

One Good Link Deserves Another

Via kottke.org's post today about the "low wattage web palette". This guy, Mark Ontkush runs a blog about green computing and designed it with colors that don't require a lot of wattage from your monitor. Worth checking out and cheaper than that 4 pack of 7th Generation toilet paper I just took out a loan for. ;^)

One Good Link Deserves Another

My Virtual Pat on the Back for the Day

I love Web Worker Daily. It keeps me from feeling like "a lonely insignificant speck on a has-been planet orbited by a cold and indifferent sun". There are others out there. Today "best practices for the self-employed" caught my eye and when I checked it out, it was encouraging to see that I've done at least SOME of the stuff they suggest.
Anyway, it's a great site, go check it out.

My Virtual Pat on the Back for the Day