Okay week, I guess

Career: Reached out for a meeting for more information for another position, but scheduling conflicts prevented me from attending

Writing: Didn't make an edits to my novella. Finished the main character outlines for another story and wrote a very bare bones plot outline for it.

Reading: Begain reading some of Dune. Liking it so far

Animation: I took a few glances at the user manuel for Blender and fiddled with some bits of it but that's it.

A little dissapointed with this week, tbh. Thought I was going to do more. Especially animation. I just find learning so daunting. But what little of Dune I've read has taught me that fear is the mind killer. And it's the little death that brings total obliteration. Best to grapple and conquer that fear than lit it rule my life and just wishing I had done something instead of actually doing it.

Another okay week

Career: Reached out to someone about getting a metting about a position but didn't hear back from them.

Writing: Finished up chapter 3 of my novella draft. Rushed it becuase I knew I had to do some revisions before going on because will reivsing 3 chapters isn't very appealing to me, having to revise the whole story sounds even less appealing. Better to revise as I go along. Just need to do those revisions. I also did a little more character outlining on another story. That other story is one I want to sink my teeth into more, since even in this embryonic state it has a lot of themes and ideas I really dig.

Reading: Still nothing. I got to bite the bullet and begin reading Dune. Begining anythung is the hardest part. I want to read it because I bought it a while before the movies came out and I wanted to read it before they came out and I still want to read them before I watch them. Plus I want to read Blood Meridian again, but I want to work through moreo f my backlog first.

Art/Animation: Another week of big fat nothing. I really want to learn, but don't know where to start. Pico Day will be here before I know it, and it want to do something. No time like the present to learn, though.

I do look forward to the coming Spring and Summer. The weather getting warmer is always nice. Plus since tax season has passed, my job is going to be less ardous and my hours get lighter. Hope to find a new one before the next tax season, but I disgress. Before I leave I do want to acknowledge that today is 420 aka Weed Dat aka the 25th anniversary of Columbine aka the 135th birthday of Adolf Hitler. Pretty unpleasant things are associated with this day. But on a much better and more positive note, today is the 73rd birthday of late singer Luther Vandross. I want to share a song of his I heard on the radio today. It's pretty cool and makes me want to check out more of his music. See you all next week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-JM08vVFSI

What's the deal with airplane food?

Okay Week

Career: Honeslty nothing. Internal job positions are scarce and I'm honeslty toying with the notion of maybe starting to look for a job somewhere else. Hopefully somewhere with more upward mobility. I do like my current place of work, it's just my position sometimes stinks like fish and houseguests after three days.

Writing: Finished up chapter 2 of a draft of my novella. Planning on starting and finishing chapter 3 before editing and sprucing up what I have before contiuning further. Also thought of another segement of the story but haven't put it in yet.

Reading: Finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is a very dark, very grim book. But is also one that ultimately give the reader a glimmer of hope. The love and sacrifice the main character makes are beautiful. Above all, the book makes you want to carry on the fire. Meant to start reading Dune, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Art/Animation: Nothing

Like I said an okay week.

Out of the blue Youtube recommends me this Youtube Poop. It's almost 15 years old, edited in Windows Moviemaker and the source material is off-centred footage of a Fairly Oddparents epsiode that was taken off a camcorder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juaNaUNDQ14

But it gets even better. This is the video's description

And here's a comment I want to highlight

That's right. This video is old enough to have once had the 5-star rating YouTube had way back in the day. I just wanted to highlight that because I thought it was cool to come across this itty bitty piece of Youtube history out in the wild like this. This discreption and comment act as fun windows back to long bygone era of Youtube.

Good week for writing.

Career: Attended a meeting for another job. Honeslty wasn't super interested in it. I actually forgot to apply for it before the application deadline, but wasn't that broken up about it.

Writing: Got finished a chapter of a draft and a little bit of the next one of my novella. The secrect to this increased productivity is music and standing up. I put on an album and write for who ever long the album is. I also have a little standing desk dohickey type thing I can put on my desk and put my computer at a height high enough to stand. It felt great. I felt so much freer than just sitting down. Plus my back hurt less.

Reading. Still reading The Road. Admitedly I've gotten bad with keeping up with it. I have like 100 pages left and I assume with renewed effort and the album-standing desk combo will help me plow through.

Art/Animation: Nothing. I went to an art museum and bought some pastel pencils and and art book by a painter named Jamie Weyth. They had a big exhibit on his work and the book has pictures of those works in the exhibit. Really cool stuff. Writing this out makes me realize the album-standing desk combo probably would also do wonders for making any sort of progress on gaining any sort of skill in art.

I'm calling it a good week because of the progress made on writing. Something about just sitting down made me feel so stagnant and it hurts my back after a while. But with standing, I feel invigorated. Also the art museum had this painting called Snow Hill by Andrew Wyeth and it's genuinely one of my favorite pieces of art ever. I want to share it here.

Another fine week

Career: Had the meeting. It went pretty good. Applied for the job

Writing: Still only a little more outling on one story and barely any progress on another

Reading: Reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's about a father and his son travelling through post-apocalyptic America. About halfway through. It's very dark, but the father's love for his son is really heartwarming.

Art/Animation: Nadda yet again.

Like I said fine, but I don't want to be fine anymore. I want to be exceptional. I lack discipline. I also think I might have a fear of being excellent, or at least trying to get to excellence, because it's a long road to get there and that first step is daunting. Plus maybe deep down I'm afraid of being excellent? I'll stop there before this log turns into a diary entry. See you all next week. Also since it's tomorrow, I wish you all a Happy Easter.

I don't get what's so funny about the sign. Anybody know what it means? I've been trying to figure it out all day.

Okay week

Career: Got denied from both positions I applied for, so a little bummed about that. But I did setup a meeting for next week about another position

Writing: Nothing

Reading: Finished Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut. It was fine, but I didn't like it as much as other Vonnegut books I've read. It's about the lowest ranking memeber of the Nixon administration that sent to jail because of Watergate and he recollects about his early life as a young man at Harvard and about the working class and labor unions in the present day at the time of the story. It's fine, but not a lot happened in it for my taste. It also lacked a lot of the dark and detached sort of tone of the Vonnegut books I've liked (i.e Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Craddle).

Art: Nothing

Like I said okay. See you next week

Cool little update

Career: Didn't apply to anything. Haven't heard back from the two positions I applied to I mentioned in the last log

Writing: An iota of work on outlining a novel. I have a few ideas percolating from just that little work, but I haven't put those to paper yet

Reading: Finished The Things They Carried by Tim O' Brien. It's a memoir of the author's time in Vietnam peppered in with some fiction he wrote. It's okay. I remember seeing kids in high school having to read it for class and that's what prompted me to buy it a while back. I am glad I read it but I'm not over the moon about the book.

Art: Nothing I did but something cool happened to me. I got scouted! Saw the message this morning, and honeslty was shocked. My art is a bunch of crappy MS Paint doodles. People who get scouted have legit talent. I did see in the message that if I submit enough low quality stuff to the portal I could get unscouted so what better motivation to learn how to create art. Learning basic fundamentals would be a good start. But enough about my self-doubt and lack of talent because I want to express me gratitude. To whomever scouted me, thank you so much! In a way I feel as though I've been knighted. I'm glad that inspite of, or maybe because of, the simplicty and crudeness of my art, people enjoy it. And that one of those people took the time to scout me. It's humbling to know someone likes my stuff enough to do that for me. I am honored and privileged to be scouted. And I'll work to retain that honor and privilege. Thanks again for scouting me!