08.APR.01-A New Journaling Yea

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A New Journaling Year

08.APR.01

08.APR.01

I do sometimes wonder--is it the opportunity to write here or the or the opportunity to play around with the site design which interests me more? Especially since I am now right in the midst of being overwhelmed with my part time free lance job for the ORG. Harassed as I am, I've still managed to find time over the weekend to spend hours here fiddling around rearranging, archiving and obsessing over this. After all, it is the year anniversary of my putting up the site, so it calls for something in the way of a renewal of commitment. Since what I am doing for money right now is so dreadfully boring and I still give them my all, and since the ORG is not paying enough to own me, I'm not going to feel guilty about it at all.
I made the decision that this will be the very last book fair that I will ever plan. I informed the ORG of that in January, and after May 6, I am officially free of that responsibility. I hope to never, ever do event planning again, unless it is opportunity I cannot pass up and a project where money is no object. Not likely to happen, so I think I'm safe.
I still am willing to do some of the administrative tasks for the ORG, should they want me to continue. I made them a proposal. I don't mind doing tasks over which I have sole control over when and how much time I spend doing them. When the ultimate outcome of my work is solely dependent on my efforts and I'm not at the mercy of the erratic schedules and whims of committees or other entities I can deal with it.
I can feel my blood pressure dropping as I think of not having to deal with that situation. I've absolutely verified for myself, once and for all, that I do not ever want to work for other people if I can possibly avoid it.
Maybe I'm speaking too soon, though, on the event planning. I just realized that as soon as possible I have to start helping out with some of the wedding plans for my son and his fiancee who are getting married on July 3. Its not one of those huge shindigs, it's just a simple small ceremony, so hopefully it won't be that bad. Still there are things to coordinate, and with them living in Washington state and coming back here to get married, it does require some sort of organization. There will be some joy attached to that task, though.
This year has brought a lot of changes for me.
I began the year with depression still an overwhelming issue for me. Depression resulting from having had to face so many life changes in the last few years. We've dealt with the deaths of friends and family members and with family illnesses, with income changes and transitions related to our careers. We moved and down sized from our long time residence in a house to an apartment. And, no matter what, life just keeps on happening out there and new events continue to impact us all the time. So in the midst of all these changes we just had to find ways to accommodate in spite of ourselves. Yet, there were times during all of that when I really felt that I was not going to be able to accommodate and when I felt that I was losing the struggle and also losing myself in the struggle.
The discovery of the online journaling community fascinated me and eventually I just decided to try it myself. Now that I've done it, albeit infrequently, I do think they're onto something.
Surprisingly, just the act of writing things down has been a great help to me. It's helped me to organize my thoughts around certain issues. Putting words up publicly on a website means that I have to own them as well, so I have to be thoughtful about what I write. Once written, they are then there for me to reread and rethink. They become something apart from me and I can observe my thoughts in a different way than when they are just tumbling around in my brain. On review, those thoughts seem to somehow take on a different character. I do feel less depressed, and lately I have even actually found myself singing out loud. Now, you wouldn't want to be there to hear me singing my off-key tunes, but it does feel good to me when I catch myself.
I'm not saying everything is now fine, but I am certain that I feel better, and I have found a tool which I feel I can use to my advantage when things are rough.
Some other changes for the better are more tangible.
We've successfully transitioned out of the art business into the book business for our primary source of income. I still have mixed feelings about it, but I'm pretty happy because the pressure for me to design new things year after year to produce income is no longer there. The best result would be that this would allow me to tap into my creativity again. With the pressure off, I hope I will really make some time to create and not let myself get sucked up entirely in the administrative tasks of the book business.
I've worked a free lance job for a couple of years, and I learned a lot in the process. Basically, I persuaded someone to hire me to do a job I had never really done before and I taught myself how to do the job. I learned how capable and reliable I am, and I know my capabilities are not just confined to art related areas. Not having worked in the business world for many, many years, doing this job gave me some real experience for a resume, and also the personal confidence to know that if it were absolutely necessary I could get a job in the "real" world. I also listened to myself when I knew it was time to quit, and I did so before it got to be too much, and I did not feel guilty at all.
I've taught myself how to design simple web sites. Though I am using a WYSIWYG, I do have to understand something about HTML, and about the concept of web design in order to do it. I have a couple of other domains for our business which I will be working on, and I'm also maintaining the site for the ORG I've worked for. In general, I hope to be able to use these skills more as I learn more. I'll never be a hot-shot web designer, but what I can do will be useful, I'm certain. If nothing else, it never hurts to learn new skills and it keeps your brain in shape.
So, I'm starting a new year here with a more positive outlook, and really a quite different focus than I planned on originally. If I learn to type faster, and life cuts me a little slack for another year, I think I'll be okay!

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I do sometimes wonder--is it the opportunity to write here or the or the opportunity to play around with the site design which interests me more? Especially since I am now right in the midst of being overwhelmed with my part time free lance job for the ORG. Harassed as I am, I've still managed to find time over the weekend to spend hours here fiddling around rearranging, archiving and obsessing over this. After all, it is the year anniversary of my putting up the site, so it calls for something in the way of a renewal of commitment. Since what I am doing for money right now is so dreadfully boring and I still give them my all, and since the ORG is not paying enough to own me, I'm not going to feel guilty about it at all.
I made the decision that this will be the very last book fair that I will ever plan. I informed the ORG of that in January, and after May 6, I am officially free of that responsibility. I hope to never, ever do event planning again, unless it is opportunity I cannot pass up and a project where money is no object. Not likely to happen, so I think I'm safe.
I still am willing to do some of the administrative tasks for the ORG, should they want me to continue. I made them a proposal. I don't mind doing tasks over which I have sole control over when and how much time I spend doing them. When the ultimate outcome of my work is solely dependent on my efforts and I'm not at the mercy of the erratic schedules and whims of committees or other entities I can deal with it.
I can feel my blood pressure dropping as I think of not having to deal with that situation. I've absolutely verified for myself, once and for all, that I do not ever want to work for other people if I can possibly avoid it.
Maybe I'm speaking too soon, though, on the event planning. I just realized that as soon as possible I have to start helping out with some of the wedding plans for my son and his fiancee who are getting married on July 3. Its not one of those huge shindigs, it's just a simple small ceremony, so hopefully it won't be that bad. Still there are things to coordinate, and with them living in Washington state and coming back here to get married, it does require some sort of organization. There will be some joy attached to that task, though.
This year has brought a lot of changes for me.
I began the year with depression still an overwhelming issue for me. Depression resulting from having had to face so many life changes in the last few years. We've dealt with the deaths of friends and family members and with family illnesses, with income changes and transitions related to our careers. We moved and down sized from our long time residence in a house to an apartment. And, no matter what, life just keeps on happening out there and new events continue to impact us all the time. So in the midst of all these changes we just had to find ways to accommodate in spite of ourselves. Yet, there were times during all of that when I really felt that I was not going to be able to accommodate and when I felt that I was losing the struggle and also losing myself in the struggle.
The discovery of the online journaling community fascinated me and eventually I just decided to try it myself. Now that I've done it, albeit infrequently, I do think they're onto something.
Surprisingly, just the act of writing things down has been a great help to me. It's helped me to organize my thoughts around certain issues. Putting words up publicly on a website means that I have to own them as well, so I have to be thoughtful about what I write. Once written, they are then there for me to reread and rethink. They become something apart from me and I can observe my thoughts in a different way than when they are just tumbling around in my brain. On review, those thoughts seem to somehow take on a different character. I do feel less depressed, and lately I have even actually found myself singing out loud. Now, you wouldn't want to be there to hear me singing my off-key tunes, but it does feel good to me when I catch myself.
I'm not saying everything is now fine, but I am certain that I feel better, and I have found a tool which I feel I can use to my advantage when things are rough.
Some other changes for the better are more tangible.
We've successfully transitioned out of the art business into the book business for our primary source of income. I still have mixed feelings about it, but I'm pretty happy because the pressure for me to design new things year after year to produce income is no longer there. The best result would be that this would allow me to tap into my creativity again. With the pressure off, I hope I will really make some time to create and not let myself get sucked up entirely in the administrative tasks of the book business.
I've worked a free lance job for a couple of years, and I learned a lot in the process. Basically, I persuaded someone to hire me to do a job I had never really done before and I taught myself how to do the job. I learned how capable and reliable I am, and I know my capabilities are not just confined to art related areas. Not having worked in the business world for many, many years, doing this job gave me some real experience for a resume, and also the personal confidence to know that if it were absolutely necessary I could get a job in the "real" world. I also listened to myself when I knew it was time to quit, and I did so before it got to be too much, and I did not feel guilty at all.
I've taught myself how to design simple web sites. Though I am using a WYSIWYG, I do have to understand something about HTML, and about the concept of web design in order to do it. I have a couple of other domains for our business which I will be working on, and I'm also maintaining the site for the ORG I've worked for. In general, I hope to be able to use these skills more as I learn more. I'll never be a hot-shot web designer, but what I can do will be useful, I'm certain. If nothing else, it never hurts to learn new skills and it keeps your brain in shape.
So, I'm starting a new year here with a more positive outlook, and really a quite different focus than I planned on originally. If I learn to type faster, and life cuts me a little slack for another year, I think I'll be okay!