end of a busy day

[meeks]

I got back home on Saturday night after an unexpectedly long trip. My flight from Montreal was cancelled, and I was moved to a later one, which caused me to miss my connection from Toronto to Vancouver. The airline found me a spot on the next flight, so I was really only delayed by a couple of hours — not a major disaster, but I was tired by the time I made it home. Because I was added to the Toronto-Vancouver flight at the last minute, my suitcase did not arrive with me, and I was waken up the next morning by the airport delivery person knocking on my door. I think I managed to scribble something resembling my signature on the receipt before stumbling back to bed for another three hours of sleep.

Surprisingly, the day wasn't a total loss: I got some grocery shopping done, made a loaf of chocolate-chip banana bread, and cleaned the condensation spots off my bathroom ceiling (this always leaves me with a sore neck, so I try to do it shortly before my chiropractic appointments).

Today I have been experimenting with starting a timer as I begin each task, and I think I'm having some success. In the last 12 hours I have:

• cropped and uploaded thumbnails for ~3 months of artwork
• added the paintings from Sketchfest 22 to the database
• actually had breakfast and remembered to eat lunch at lunchtime instead of mid-afternoon
• done the dishes
• finished two loads of laundry
• vacuumed and got rid of most of the dust that accumulated while I was away
• gone to my chiro appointment and run some errands on the way home
• given myself a haircut
• made stew for dinner and
• started a new Story Sketch while waiting for it to cook

Using a timer seems to help me stay on task because I know I will be free a few minutes later to pursue whatever new item has attracted my attention. Something interesting that I've discovered is that my internal clock seems to run fast. I consistently found myself thinking that 20-30% more time had elapsed than actually had. That's probably a good thing in that I am able to accomplish more than I expected to in the time allotted — as long as I can maintain my focus.

I think I'm going to try working on more art tomorrow, with the goal of making at least one Story Sketch post or update and one book post per week, and finishing at least one painting per month. I'm also slowly moving some of the snippets and random notes I have floating around into Evernote, so I won't be struggling to remember eg. where I filed the description of a character that I need to draw again.

Comments

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I think weekly is a good target for the Story Sketches and monthly for the paintings. Maybe consider adjusting targets if a given project pulls more donations.