Tag: projects

Productivity

I’m feeling a little productive today. It’s a weird feeling. It’s also partially thanks to me cheating a little.

I mentioned yesterday that I had a project that is due today that I hadn’t had time to work on. I got it done. Boom. Well… I have to review it with some other people before it’s officially declared complete, but I’m in a good spot. The cheat? I started work about two hours early today so that I could get it done. Not a cheat, so much, as just being the kind of employee who manipulates time and space to get up to speed. Nothing much.

I am so freakin’ busy today though. Meetings on top of meetings, and we have dinner plans tonight, and I haven’t taken a shower yet because I spent my allotted daily shower time working. Ugh. I’ll get it all done. Just you watch me.

Okay, red head. Time for a meeting, then lunch, then a meeting, then a meeting. As Thursdays go… this sure is one.

What is Wrong with Me?

Motivation… I just can’t…

What is wrong with me?

I keep coming up with ideas for creative things to do and I keep failing to do them. I can’t even get myself to start them, never mind finish them. What the hell, Robert?

Did I get up early and go to the ocean to take pictures? No, of course not. Don’t be fucking ridiculous. I slept three hours past the alarm. Of course I did.

DoI play the guitar every day? Do I play the guitar once a week? Don’t be stupid.

Did I plant peanuts? Did I make sugar free ice cream? Am I going to do either? Don’t be stupid, of course not.

Literally the only thing I can bring myself to do as far as projects are concerned is watch the fucking television. I’d say I was going to melt my brain but clearly it’s already been completely liquified.

Meet the New Stress, Same as the Old Stress

I wrote a little yesterday evening about getting stressed out at work over something that didn’t deserve to be stressed out over. It happens now and then, you know? It’s work.

I was working on a project yesterday and this morning I reviewed it with the person I submitted it to and it was fine. No problem. Helpful. It did what it needed to do. All is well. Nice, huh?

Unfortunately, 60% of my group is out either on vacation or sick today. We are going to be seriously short handed. Oh good! Hello, work stress. Nice to see you again, my old friend.

Heh, what can you do, right? Just roll with it, babie.

Time Off Projects

We are about 200 miles from home. We’ll get there sometime tomorrow, probably in the mid-afternoon, after we drop off the rental car at the airport. We were originally coming home on Monday. I booked time off from work on Monday and Tuesday. Eventually the plans changed and we were booked to come home on Sunday but I never cancelled the Monday and Tuesday time off. Now that we’ll be getting home on Sunday, though not as planned, I want to come up with some projects to work on to have something creative and productive to do on those two days off.

The weather is going to suck on Monday, but be pretty good on Tuesday. I think I will try to pull off an album-in-a-day project on Monday. I’ll start it Sunday evening, I think, and then see if I can get 30 minutes of new music written and recorded by the same time on Monday. It will all count toward the 50 songs in 90 days challenge as well.I have only ever pulled off the album-in-a-day thing once. Maybe I can get it done again.

On Tuesday, if the weather is as good as predicted, I hope to do some photography stuff. Sunrise at the ocean, then a spot or two on top. Maybe this will finally be my morning in Boston? Who knows. After the photo-walk (whatever it ends up being) is done I’ll get back to 50/90 for the rest of the day.

Either that or I’ll just watch Doctor Who for the full two days off. We’ll have to see how it goes.

Future Project

Driving North on route 95 in North Carolina I saw a sign for locally grown peanuts. It made me think of how Jimmy Carter made his fortune growing peanuts. That made me wonder if you can grow peanuts in New England’s climate.

I asked Jen to as Google and now I have a project for next summer.

I am going to grow myself some mutha-truckin’ peanuts boys and girls! Get ready!

I’m going to spend hours upon hours on YouTube learning all there is to know about home-grown peanuts and how to keep them safe from those asshole squirrels!

And then probably forget about the whole thing once next summer arrives.

Friday

I so need a vacation. Not even a vacation, really, just a break. Just a little downtime. It’s not happening this weekend. Tomorrow I have an MRI, a ton of house and yard work to do, a birthday get together for my father, and possibly a house painter/vinyl siding consult? A lot of the house and yard work will spill over to Sunday, though I checked the weather yesterday and it’s supposed to rain. At least that’s what it said yesterday, I don’t know what it’s going to say tomorrow.

I asked Jen if we could do something next weekend to decompress. I don’t care what. A day trip somewhere? Maybe? Just tell everyone we’re going away and then lock ourselves in the house and hide from the real world for a couple of days while watching bad TV? That would work. Literally anything, just so long as there are no deadlines or responsibilities or headaches or health issues. Just give us a break for a couple of days.

Next week at work is going to be super busy and probably pretty difficult. I’m looking forward to putting it in the rear view mirror, if you know what I mean.

I’m feeling okay today health wise. So far so good. My stomach was off all day yesterday. Today is much better. I even had a real breakfast today. Here’s hoping that my stomach stays on that course.

I want to take the camera (cameras) out somewhere one of these days. It’s still pretty cold in the mornings and that’s turning me off. Also, it’s always cloudy and rainy because it’s Spring in New England. Uh… just a couple of days of downtime… that’s all I ask for. Pretty please, universe… give me a break.

Stomach Ache the Next Generation

Bad reactions to food on Sunday and Monday. Migraine on Tuesday. Bad stomach aches all day on Wednesday. Mostly okay except for a bad lunchtime food reaction on Thursday. What does the shit roulette wheel have for us on Friday?

Another stomach ache. But it feels different today. It’s not an oh I think I might be hungry kind of ache. Today it’s more like a you are disagreeing with something you ate last night kind of ache. Lots of gas, eating doesn’t help at all. I’ve had eight ounces of water, a protein bar, and a little protein snack. Still feeling it pretty much exactly the same as when I woke up.

Shit.

The good news though is that I have watched the season two premier of Yellowjackets. You know that show, the single most fucked up thing on television at this point in time? Yeah, that one. Great freakin’ show that is seriously disturbing while also really funny. No spoilers but the first episode was excellent and the last second reveal at the end… ewwww.

I checked the forecast for the weekend. Guess what’s not going to be out in the morning on either Saturday or Sunday. Go on, guess. You know it… the sun. No sunrise pics for me this week. It’s getting to the point where I might start taking this personally.

If we go to California in the fall, should I think about making a photo book for fun? Not like, oh I took a bunch of pictures so let’s throw the best ones into a book type of thing. More like planning out what I want to see in it and then trying to take pics that make it happen. Something like that. I’m sure I can get that done super cheap through Shutterfly or something. Maybe I can talk Jen into going up to the mountains a lot this summer and I could do something similar there. Just a thought. I like projects sometimes, you know? Like creative projects and stuff. I’m old, leave me alone.

The cats are in the cellar with me but they are avoiding me. I don’t think they like me very much. Sad face.

Unrelated productivity note: I am watching a youtube video of a guy using a folding camera from 1940 with a discontinued film format that expired in 1970. He’s in his home office talking about how he handled the ISO on the expired film and he’s standing in front of a white board that’s hanging on his wall. That’s super cool, of course. The stand out thing though, is that he has a Texas Instruments TI-83 calculator velcro’d onto the white board. Oh my god my nerd brain just exploded with how awesome that is! KaBoom!

Projects are Hard

I said I was going to start an album-in-a-month on September 1st (yesterday) and I did. I came up with bass lines that will eventually be song . I wanted to work on it last night. You know, come up with a song form, tweak the percussion so it fits better, and a guitar part. Stuff like that. Recording nerd stuff.

Instead of doing that, I spent an hour and a half trying and failing to eat about five ounces of chicken (I stopped at about 3.5 oz) and then went to bed early.

So there is that, and there is also a new/continuing photo-a-day thing. I started yesterday and all is well. Today though… let’s just say that in the past three years I was just snapping whatever I saw with my iPhone. Over the last couple of months I’ve put the camera phone away in favor of one of my actual cameras. Does that mean I am no longer willing to consider just any old pic good enough for the photo-a-day thing? That might be the case today. I might need to stage a photo that is better than just a random cat or something. I’m also guessing that within a day or two I will be back to all cat all the time. Just a thought.

I am also getting the urge to get my two 1970’s guitars worked on. Frets, wiring, maybe pickups. I can’t afford any of that, and planned on selling my Stratocaster to fund the work. I just haven’t done anything with the whole selling thing. I think this weekend I might give craigslist.com a shot. If for no other reason that it will require me to take a couple of pictures of that guitar. Heh heh heh. Ain’t I a stinker?

I also want to do some camera walk time this weekend. Andover center, downtown Lowell, Boston/Cambridge. I want to do something. Unfortunately for the camera walk stuff, I also want to clean the house and rearrange the living room and hang out with my wife doing nuttin’. So… the projects are likely to take a back seat.

Where’s my camera… and where’s my cat?

I Don’t Like Mondays

Raise your hand if you like Mondays. I’ll wait.

I suppose there are folks who work weekends and have Mondays off who might like Mondays. For the rest of the working world? Mondays suck.

I am about to have a tough couple of days. I am not going to say I left a project until the last minute, but I may have left a project to the second to last minute and now the clock is close to running out. Shit. I had been doing so much better with planning and scheduling and not letting myself get tied up in things that keep me from what I need to do. Things have been weird this month. Let’s blame it on that, m’kay?

There’s not much else going on today. Here’s hoping for a burst of professional productivity. Happy Monday, everyone.

Hit it, Max.

Sleepy Red Head

Another less than great night of sleep last night. The data my Apple Watch collected actually looked okay, but coming on the heels of the previous night’s bad sleep it has left me feeling pretty sleepy and crummy today. I’m hoping to get to bed early tonight but I am pretty sure it ain’t happening. We’ll see.

I’m in a weird state right now where I have a few projects to work on and I keep letting them get in the way of each other. I start working on project A but my mind wanders to project B so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project C so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project A and so on. The end result is I don’t make progress on any of them. Blah.

Referencing back to the previous post, if you’re wondering about our neighborhood trash pick up, they still haven’t arrived… though I do hear the sound of trucks in the distance. Maybe soon?

Finally, as my lunch break comes to an end, I return to the topic of guitar gear, what with guitar and cats being the two most common topics of this particular page (are they? I should do some research into that… but I won’t), I am starting to think it might be time to start searching the youtubes for a new wah pedal. I’m starting to want to upgrade up from my Crybaby. Hello, rabbit hole. Allow me to fall down you for a while.

Okay, back to work, red head!