saturday sneak peek

I rested for most of the morning because I had been on the verge of falling ill the night before. The cat stared at me from the other end of the bed, probably wondering why I was still not up.

When I felt a bit better I tagged along with my parents and sister to check out a garage sale by friends who are moving out. I got myself this pair of ceramic cups which are perfect for holding my pens and highlighters. You can never have too many pens and highlighters.

I was still feeling a bit under the weather but I made myself deal with long-postponed chores that could help ease and release stagnant energies in the house. I finally got around to organizing the bedroom bookshelf.

I also finally got around to clearing and organizing the art corner (which also happens to be the room's love and relationship bagua so maybe something nice will happen in that aspect of our lives). 

I have sideline/dayjob work to do and I just keep telling myself that it will all be done soon enough.

wednesday

Attempts at making sense of too much information. Sitting at a cafe while waiting for a fellow consultant to work together on a project.

Had cinnamon sugar cronut and coffee.  Both very good.

After the meeting I peeked at the secondhand bookstore on the way home and got pulled in and the next thing I knew I have five "new" books. 

snippets

No more missing pages. The gifts of daily writing are too good to miss.

I have been short on sleep because of work. Too much to do but I refuse to give up on the daily writing so I give up on sleep instead. One day I will finally be able to give up work.

Last night I read while waiting for my second wind so I could do a few more hours of work after I had done my evening writing. The second wind never came.

quick roundup

Today's quickly thrown-together brunch : eggs, butter-tossed fresh mushrooms, coppa ham, chunk of gouda cheese, with arugula on the side.

It's a working weekend so it has been rough and tough. 

This fluffy one keeps me smiling though.

The other day I sneaked out from working and had oden at the convenience store with my sister.

I also finally found out for myself what the fuss is all about Cookie Butter. Not bad at all.

I got myself a new stack of books because work always ups my spending mode in an attempt to console my aching heart for still having to have a dayjob that steals so much time and effort from what I really want to do.

I can't wait to have that huge chunk of time just focusing on my writing and art-making. I do feel so tired and drained. I have not had a proper vacation from work since the year started, to be honest. It has been a series of tests and trials and monster battles.

How have YOU been?

not yet

It's not yet TGIF. I still have a whole day work tomorrow. Today's work went okay. But as dayjob demands go, I am almost useless at end of day. All I wanted to do was take a bath and go to bed, and that was what I did. (I am writing and posting this via mobile phone in bed.)

On a happy note, I WROTE today. This morning to be more specific. By that I mean that I wrote a portion of a story that may or may not be part of one of the stories I already have in progress but a portion of a story nonetheless. It was the beginning of a scene and I felt that it will be an illustrated kind of story. Which reminded me of my poetry books. Which pressed upon me even more urgently the need to get back on serious track with my writing practice. 

useful distractions

I always get a bit anxious at the beginning of any work project and today is the eve of one. Fortunately there were enough things to occupy my mind and time even as the internet constantly went on and off due to some plant trouble and made me worry about missing last-minute emails from client (there have been none so far).

I went out to buy bird seeds (in my new home my mornings are serenaded by bird song and I wish to express appreciation) and ended up having coffee with my sister.

When we got home my dad was in a home-improvement mode and we finally had the TV mounted on the wall plus I got the wall frame rack mounted as well to keep all our accessories (necklaces, rings, brooches, headbands, bracelets, and other frills).

I also took the cat for a quick trip to the vet to have his claws trimmed. 

In between I read Sherlock stories.

So now I am a bit too tired to waste energy getting anxious and worried. I will probably relax even more with a cup of hot chocolate after dinner. In the meantime I will figure out what I can play on the newly mounted TV given that I have yet to apply for an extension cable and all my consoles are still in the old place. 

Later.

a semblance of control

So this is how my calendar and daily list look like. The digital ones at least. I have a back up little army of notebooks, notepads, and post-its to cover everything else in-between.

I have this need to see things done. I crave for tangible results. Perhaps that is why I am constantly drawn to creative arts and book writing because the output is very visual. 

I love seeing checkmarks nestled happily into check boxes. Tick marks of time that tell me where my hours went. That is why it can be so depressing to realize that I have spent an hour on social netwroks and nothing really much to show for it, at least nothing that would have honestly improved or enhanced my well-being, not for that whole hour at the end of which I sometimes feel a niggling doubt about the way my own daily life is going.

Anyway, I start on a dayjob work project tomorrow and I am hoping for another pleasant success. It will be tricky and interesting since it will be my first time working in my new nook. 

This is what I really want to do all day: gather inspiration and then transform some of the ideas into actual drawings, paintings, poems, or stories. 

Maybe if I sort through the tedious details of preparation for tomorrow and finish it early enough I might actually have time to do what I really want.

an Artist Date

After a rather long while I found myself finding time to get out of the house and do something purely to inspire myself and shake down some ideas from the slumbering shadows in my head.

I went to Heima along Brixton which is about a ten-minute walk from home. I told myself I would only look and soak in the creative energies and not buy anything. I ended up leaving with a shopping bag of goodies and a mental list of what to go back for. 

I did not spend very much. Just a little. Nothing like how I would spend in a bookstore. Besides, I seriously felt that I needed a boost of creative inspiration plus some proper reward for successfully moving out and moving in and keeping the family's spirits up and positively bent.

Of course, count on me to get all fired up for creative work just before the start of a new dayjob work project, when bulk of my time is about to be taken away. I seem to have a knack for hitting upon the muse button at the last minute, just when I have to go someplace else and it could not be helped.

In any case I refuse to be disheartened by the amount of time left. The work will only take three and a half weeks, four at the most. After that I have half a mind to keeping November to myself to write the draft for my second novel, with small art projects to serve as breaks in between. As I was browsing at Heima I am reminded of how much I really love the interplay of image and words and thus I would like to strive and practice it in my creative works. 

That is all I have to say for now. I write this post on my phone while tucked in bed. The very heavy volume of Sherlock Holmes awaits by my side. I hope to solve a few more mysteries before I call it a night, but to you I bid a sweet good night!