Blog

In Which Lame Blogger Is Lame

(Cross-posted #)

First, the “Lame Blogger Apologizes For Being Lame By Not Updating” portion of today’s post – sorry, y’all. I wish I could say I’ve been too busy to blog, but the truth is that I just haven’t felt up to it lately. I haven’t felt up to much at all, really. I haven’t been sick with the flu or anything, but it’s been one thing on top of or after another keeping me down. The SAD and allergies I wrote about last time, hormonal wackiness, insomnia and other disordered sleepy-time fun, and inadvertently ingesting things that didn’t want to leave my stomach without a fight have all added up to me spending most of my waking hours on the sofa, wrapped in an afghan and alternately staring unproductively out the window or at my laptop screen. “Bleah” pretty well sums up how I’ve been feeling lately.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Why being too focused is a bad thing.

[Cross-posted #]

If you’ve been reading the Twitter updates that get gathered up and posted here once a day, then you already know I’ve got a perfectly good excuse for not posting anything else last week–I was bogged down with a big web redesign project that the client needed done ASAP. I kept my head down in hyperfocus mode, coming up with mockup after mockup trying to capture what the clients wanted, and feeling frustrated and a bit depressed because everything I came up with was just passably adequate and completely uninspired. I was giving them everything they asked for, but nobody was happy with it. (more…)

By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

I has a cheezburger kinda day

[Cross-posted #]

I’m having a day, people. The kind that’s filled with bad news — nothing devastating, just disappointing enough to ruin your day — and where things that should be simple are riddled with complications. It’s the kind of day that makes you want to throw up your hands in surrender and just go watch TV or hide in bed so nothing else can go wrong. But since I don’t have that luxury, I did what I always do when I need some emergency cheering up — I headed over to I Can Has Cheezburger and kept scrolling until smiling came easily for me again.

In the off chance that you’re having that kind of day, too (I sincerely hope you’re not), here are a few highlights from my visit. Because things are beyond bad if anthropomorphized kittens with bad grammar can’t cheer you up.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

One of these things is not like the other: macabre surprises, police apathy, and this week’s goals

[Cross-posted #]

I just posted Episode 8 of This Old Haunt, in which Ron learns her true feelings and Sarah shows her true colors.

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If you were following my Twitter stream last night, then you already know about the disturbing discovery I made yesterday while picking up trash in my front yard. We live on the corner of a busy arterial street, just a few blocks down from some pretty unsavory apartments, the kind that has been on the news for gang-related activities, and where we can hear gunshots fired on a fairly regular basis. The sidewalk running along our yard sees a lot of foot traffic, and I’m constantly having to pick up trash that people toss on our lawn. I’ve never found anything worse than broken beer bottles and cigarette butts, until yesterday.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Understanding what it means to work for myself

[Cross-posted #]

It’s been an awesomely busy and productive week, with no shortage of paying work waiting for me each day. I’ve been trying out a new work schedule all week — not starting until 3 and working as late as I need to — and so far it’s going great. 3 PM is early enough that I can still handle East Coast business calls if I need to, and late enough that my brain fog has completely lifted and I’m able to get focused and stay that way for many hours. Because it doesn’t matter how early or late I get up, I’m never fully awake until around 3:00, and evening has always been when I’m most energetic and able to concentrate. I am and have always been a night owl, and after a couple of decades of conditioning to conform to a day person schedule, I’m finally realizing that I have the freedom to keep night owl hours.

I don’t know why that realization has taken so long to sink in. I think it’s partly because I’ve also had a hard time understanding that I’m my own boss and it’s okay to keep my own hours. I started out viewing my clients more as supervisors, because that’s what I was used to, and thinking that I had to keep the same hours they did and be available during their office hours — never mind that they’re spread out over four time zones. I was really not enjoying myself.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Late-night goal setting

[Cross-posted from Daydream Believer]

It’s Sunday night. I’m blogging my goals for the week now because I have a lot of work scheduled for the next couple of days and I need to get the extraneous (read: unpaid) stuff out of the way.

Last week started really well, but the end of the week saw plenty of fail. This is mainly due to staying up too late several nights in a row and not getting enough sleep, which left me struggling really hard to find focus and enough brain power to concentrate on my work the last half of the week. I managed, but it was far from a good time.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago