| Current mood: |  crappy |
Bad Health
A lousy topic if ever there was one; however, I've been under the weather more often than not in the past few weeks and it has little to do with the weather. Bad sleep and bad digestion. My wee lassie and I had a hike on Tuesday morning and then went for brunch at Denny's nearby the park where we were walking and birdwatching. I carefully avoided anything with gluten, including putting ketchup on my hash browns because of the bloody wheat vinegar that is in most commercial ketchup; yet, I still could not escape unscathed. Probably the hash browns were fried up in butter and so my dairy intolerance has left me with the unpleasant reactions and weakness overall. Yesterday, after we finally retrieved my lady wife from her office, I collapsed and went to sleep about 6 p.m. and slept for 12 hours with only the usual interruptions.
So, my spirits are low and I am not getting much work done. I'm trying hard to finish a wand that needs to be enchanted while the moon is waxing, but I'm not sure I'll even manage that, the way I'm feeling today. Fortunately, LK has a play date with a friend today so I at least don't have to worry about supervising her and entertaining her while trying to clean house and address my projects. She and I had a brief exchange sitting on the couch this morning. I said, I wish my life were simpler. Just a job and a paycheck. How lovely that would be. No taste for bizarre clothes or hats, no inner voices telling me to create things. No talents to go to waste. How lovely that would be. Anyone who envies a creative artist really has no idea what its like. My wee girl told me that I didn't have to run Avalon Center if I didn't want to. I agreed that that was true, but if I give up, then it ceases to be. There is no one else to carry on with it. Of course, there are other schools and centers out there. But essentially, it takes me a great deal of energy to remain optimistic, dynamic, and positive enough to be a leader of a group enterprise like this. And at the moment my body is using up all the energy that might be otherwise used to create those positive emotions.
But I said to the girl, I said, I'm in low spirits and I've learned never to make decisions when I'm in low spirits. The only thing to do is wait until the wind changes. Yes, that's a good analogy. My body is like an old sailing ship and from time to time I am becalmed with not wind in my sails and there is nothing to do but wait for the wind to return and blow me somewhere else. It's a good analogy in another way too because the wind does not always blow in the direction you want to sail, so in order to get where you want to go you have to usually tack across the wind, using its energy to take you on an indirect course towards your destination. Avalon Center is a bit like that too.
For the past week I've been trying out a new architectural drawing program called "Punch! Home Design Studio". At first glance it seemed like it did all sorts of cool and useful things that would make architectural drawing much faster than simply using Adobe Illustrator. However, the more I've used it the more maddening it seems to get. It lacks some fundamental features. For instance, it has libraries of rooms and furniture and so forth that you can paste into your drawing, but it seems to have no way to copy and paste your own creations into the libraries. It automatically connects walls together, but not all of them. And when you highlight a section to copy (such as a large bay window that you want to use over again), it picks up the extra walls attached to what you've highlighted even though it doesn't tell you beforehand that there are walls attached to what you've selected. Arrrrrrghhh! There seem to be no tutorials and the manual that came with the software is the usual sort of useless manual that just goes through each command and feature and tells you what it does, not how to use it or how to solve problems. Sigh.
I'm about ready to give up on that too. I hate learning new software without a teacher. I wish I had a teacher for this one. Maybe I need to go back to the School of Architecture. But, I don't really want to deal with all the engineering and details anyway. I just want to draw the floorplans and elevations so that I can turn them over to an architect to produce professional renderings, and much later, working blueprints.
Sigh. What is the point of doing all this when I have no inkling of a financial source to permit it to be carried out? Hope, I suppose.
On the bright side, I was, out of the blue, today contacted by a Ph.D. in Celtic languages and literature who has experience in on-line course design and who is interested in joining our faculty. Crazy, huh? Well, I will have to pursue that and hope it works out. I have a hard time getting over disappointments, especially when my spirits are low.
Well, at least I can say that today I mounted the under-cabinet radio/CD player in the kitchen and cleaned out all the dust behind the refrigerator. I even walked the dog! Kudos to me.
I've bought a lovely collection of colored index cards to use to organize and color-code my to-do items. It's been about a week now and I haven't been able to sit down to do that. Sheesh. Day after tomorrow the Renaissance Festival starts, so I'll be out there bright and early doing calligraphy. Must get all my bits and bobs ready for that.
Yours truly,
Eeyore
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alferian) wrote,
