Blanket plan: create more structure in my life so I have time to do the things I want to do.

Section 1: how I plan to improve my design career

(SORTA DONE)
- Play less WoW (quit the raiding guild.)
- Compile design resources online; blogs, news, inspiration, images, free fonts, PS filters etc (links on journal)
- Invest in Lynda.com year-long membership. (have free 30-day for buying CS4, waiting for winter slack time to take advantage. 60hour work weeks ftl)
- Use old design projects, new/revamped portfolio, professional stationary as base for tutorial work (get biz cards dummy!) (Currently brainstorming on different approaches for old projects)

(DONE)
-Invest in Adobe CS4 Web Premium (ETA 3 weeks, or whenever Chris and I get around to buying it)
- Self-schedule a day of learning. Design research, read articles, take notes. Do Lynda.com tutorials. (Weekend day? Several evenings a week?) - plan out week long curriculum & adhere to it. Day planner?

- Adobe CS certification? Does it exist?
- Budget for 1 or 2 day-long workshops/year
- Do pro-bono/charity projects (find websites that list projects), free work for broke people
- Do FUN projects. Random posters, flash banners... make pretty shit for the hell of it. ENJOY design work!
- Create professional contacts in nearby industry. Chat up old professors, get career advice. Look for local printer for short runs. Network with other professionals (biz cards!!!)



Section 2: personal self improvement

SORTA DONE
- Walk/hike for lunch, every day (Been going to the gym with a friend a couple days a week. Stepped on a scale the other week, found I had lost 7 pounds since we bought the house. score!)

DONE
- Walk to Stop&Shop, buy the day-old veggies/fruit, dented cans. Figure out something to make for dinner from that. (Not quite, but am now making a lot more meals from scratch, which means less grocery shopping overall and less going out, which saves money and is healthier)

- Get out of bed at 7am. I MEAN IT. SNOOZE DOES NOT EXIST. (lolyeah right)
Overall: eat better, exercise more.


New design journal: ebuckdesign.wordpress.com

7/23/09

I'm really bad at strict diets... LOL. But I've stuck with this 10 day diet as best I can with the sort of foods I have at my disposal. I mean, I'm not going to go out and buy 3 single servings of different fishes for three separate meals. Nor am I going to make 5 completely unique types of salads for lunch which would require me buying different ingredients for each one. So I improvise.

Still don't have the scale set up, so I have no clue how much weight I've lost. BUT, I have a particular pair of underwear which would usually bite a good 2 inches into my flabby love handles... and today they're sitting smooth. MY UNDERWEAR FITS!! Either I've lost weight, or my underwear got really loose.

7/13/09

Been so long without much of an update! I fell in a slump after the race; running is srsbsns. Plus we had to finish moving and unpacking and all that junk. We're now living in the house, all is well... until I saw the photos taken of me at the race. God, they were the most unflattering shots I've ever seen in my life. Looking at them made me feel that all my working out and trying to eat better had no effect at all, or that I had done something really lazy to slump back.

I commented as such on Facebook last week, prompting my aunt Sara (only 16 years my senior) to challenge me to a weigh-off: 15 pounds by August 15th. Impossibly unhealthy, and I don't think either of us would lose anywhere near that much weight in a month. But, it kicked my butt back into action~! I have no idea how much I even weigh right now, as we don't have the Wii set up anywhere convenient, but I started the 10-day-1-jean-size diet included with the 10minute Trainer vids I got. 1000-calories a day with exercise? It's gonna be nuts :(

6/22/09

Ran the race with mah daddy. We didn't do incredibly terrible; we both finished at about 1hr10min. I'm sure Dad could have done better, but he decided to keep pace with me. I opted to walk a lot :(. But when we were walking, I set a pretty brutal pace; Dad was laughing about how when HE walked during a race, it was a stroll. We were walking almost as fast as we had been running.

The weather was actually perfect for running; I had been bitching about it raining and being overcast, but it ended up being a blessing. I realized if it had been sunny and warm, the run would have been BRUTAL.

Anyway, I set a personal best for endurance! We ran the entire first mile and a half before needing to rest. Proud of myself :)



6/17/09

Finally got registered for the run on Monday. Exercise has been very light lately... but now I feel like I don't want to really push to do anything during the week, so as not to be totally worn out by the time the run starts on Sunday. Since I've started focusing on this run, I've gotten like hyperaware of the state of my legs and joints and my posture. I've found that how I normally tend to sit in chairs (legs folded under me, sitting on them essentially) is REALLY bad for my knees. So I'm making a conscious effort to NOT do that :X



6/3/09

We actually ended up closing on the 1st, because the previous owners requested the weekend to finish up moving. Whatever, the place is ours now!

Since my last entry, I haven't done a lick of exercise. It's terrible. But today I did a 45 minute hike. I don't anticipate having the leisure time for much exercise until we're completely moved, so it's sort of a bummer. I don't think I'll be able to reach my goal of 100% run time on the 5-miler. Speaking of which, I still need to register.



5/28/09

Aaaaaah OMG we're closing on our house tomorrow aaaaaaaaah!!

So, I actually hauled my ass out of bed this morning and did some working out. Only about 5 minutes of one of the 10 minute trainer vids, but hey. It's something. I also did the 2 min warmup for it. Breakfast was slim, I had a granola bar. And then NOTHING until lunch, which was popeyes :x. But it was the 2.99 tenders meal, so at least it was very cheap... stuff that's good for me tends to be more expensive. And as this house is HAPPENING, saving money is going to be key. I anticipate losing weight just from the change in eating styles (less going out... try like NO going out for meals). Lots of canned food meals and crock-potting. Potatoes will become a staple again. I recently bought a bag of white thin-skinned potatoes, and man, they are DELICIOUS.

Anyway, to offset having eaten popeyes for lunch, I did a powerhike before eating. There's a state park with trails near my work, and the "easy" trail has a lot of connecting stairs between the switchbacks, and so I was climbing up and down those for a good 15 minutes.

And when I get home, I'll go on another run. With 20 days until the fathers day run, I basically need to train every single day to prepare, if I don't want to feel like a complete and total loser.



5/22/09

I need to go on a serious cleanse this weekend, my digestive tract is out of control. Hella gurgly. I haven't taken more than 2 Alli pills a day recently, but I'm passing grease like whoa, and it's not very comfortable. I did stop keeping track of my eating habits, so I'm probably eating a lot of fat. Vegetarian weekend, hooooo!

I also tried to run the day before yesterday, but my body just wasn't having it. I haven't really been working out during lunch lately either (too enthralled with a new book, which I've come to find out is first in an epic series I MUST HAVE ALL OF THESE BOOKS AAAAAH! It's a bit difficult to hike while reading a Kindle.) But, today I have on walking shoes, and its a gorgeous day. I'm walking, if nothing else. (I finished my book anyway, no excuse :( )

Urg.. 4th trip to the bathroom already today. I'm thinking Activia yogurt for lunch :\


5/14/09

I've lost 3 pounds in the past 1.5 weeks or so. NOICE. Weighed myself yesterday. Proceeded to pork out on chinese food that Rich bought us for lunch today :(

Rich ALSO gave me the route map for the Branford road race on father's day. Turns out it's a Five MILE, not a five k. Cue me crying. I'm going to try to go on a run after work, but my stepmom needs me to call to talk about house stuff.


5/11/09

Despite my best efforts to fail, new pants that I bought not two weeks ago are already loose on me. I could have sworn they fit me tightly when I bought them. Either they've relaxed a lot from 1 wearing, or this whole "pass almost all the fat you eat as waste" thing is actually working.


5/8/09

I was terrible, ate chinese buffet for lunch, and I haven't done anything for exercise in the past two days. I intend to do some srs working out when I get home tonight, going on another run and maybe doing the 10-minute trainer for abs and yoga.

I did get up 15 minutes earlier this morning... it's part of my new plan to "Get up early" and do something before going to work. The lofty goal is doing something like going for a jog or a bike ride before work. The more realistic goal is doing 10min yoga before work. I think that'll be a nice wake-up.

Oh, and my hair looks super stupid today. In fact, just lately in general. It's at an awkward shoulder-length, layers that were cute when short have grown out... its just.. BLEH. And I think I've actually broken-out MORE since I started using ProActiv. What the hell.



5/6/09

I ran 3/4s of a mile straight yesterday :3

But I ate a lot, mostly stuff that I didn't really need to eat. Snacking at night, etc. We should buy more carrots and such so I have low calorie/nonfat things to munch on when I get the munchies.

According to FitDay.com, if I want to lose 20 lbs by August 15th, I need to eat almost 700 calories less than my body normally needs to operate at my current activity level (which is "mostly seated"). If I hadn't snacked excessively last night, I would have eaten almost 900 calories less O_o I think I can keep this up!

Had a lot of weird dreams lately that put me in a funk for the rest of the day... and they've all seemed to involve males putting me in a situation of sexual objectification. Like this one last night, I was a crew member on some spaceship, and I was caught planning mutiny against the corrupt officer core and put in jail... which I escaped and went about the ship incognito. But this guy who was a patsy for the captain recognized me, and the dream sort of ended with the implication that he'd keep his mouth shut in exchange for sexual favors.

One dream the night before involved two different males asserting their ownership over me, in a time that I was away from Chris (like Chris was on vacation or I was on a family trip). One guy had excessive flirting, the other was sort of creepy stalker "do you believe in soulmates?" type. -shudders-

I must be reacting to how I found Jeff on Facebook again and invited him to our house party. Still not sure how I feel about it, but it's not like we weren't friends when we last spoke. It's just that I haven't talked to him in like.... 5 years, and sort of assumed he killed himself in the meantime.

I got a SERIOUS "Emily, you act like a huge bitch and you need to find a way to change that FAST" talk in work this morning :(

The bad thing is I know this about me... I know that its very easy for me to go from zero to "snide bitch" the moment something happens or is said that irritates or annoys me. Even small things. And Rich is right, it's gotten progressively worse since I've started working here.

To be honest, though, I wasn't really bitchy UNTIL I started working here =\

Rich seems to think that basic stress relief is the core answer, but I'm skeptical. Yes, owning the house now has the potential to be a big stress, but it hasn't affected me as deeply as its affecting Chris... seeing as he's the one more involved with the house while I'm at work. Rich also doesn't think that this behavior is something that can be changed by will alone, but I personally disagree... I just think I've been lazy about changing it (mostly because I haven't received the appropriate punishment or wake-up call until now?)

There's two core things that I need to adjust: my relations with the sales people, and my relations with clients.

I don't have a high opinion of our current sales staff, as I've probably written about before. Half of them don't do what they are supposed to, and it makes our job in the graphics room unnecessarily hard/complicated. In my mind, the time for being nice and offering positive reinforcement to get them to adjust how they work passed a year ago (our "senior" sales staff members are the biggest culprits). Thus, I've taken to making sharp remarks and having my reaction to them illustrate JUST how I feel about how they're making MY job more complicated and difficult. Obviously being nice didn't work.

This is how I currently feel about this matter, and it's been revealed to me that I need to change how I feel about it. I'm having trouble reconciling this. How can I just smile and nod and say "thank you" when a sales person comes up to me with a new account that blatantly violates all the standards we've set forth for them, to make THEIR jobs easier? And that aside, when I'm offering positive feedback about something, it seems to come out aggressive and negative... I'm not sure about how to change how that is presented without feeling confident that what I'm saying is sinking in.

That might be the bottom of what's driving this part of my behavior... I don't want to be ignored. Yet things keep happening over and over that demonstrate that the sales staff is apparently ignoring what the graphics department says.

A solution may be to start viewing situations from the perspective of "don't shoot the messenger"... with the sales staff being the messengers. Which in large part, they are. They are simply trying to convey the information on behalf of the clients they just signed. And part of this solution would be to completely mentally remove the sales staff from the graphics - client - sales equation, forget about the standards we've requested they adhere to when getting graphic information, forget about their participation in selling the ad design to the client.

That last part especially I should just let go... I'm led to understand that the sales department simply doesn't have the time to sell and resell clients on every little thing, and the graphics department should be doing more with interacting with the clients directly. We have done all we can to make it easy for the sales department in regards to collecting graphic info (and we even intend to make it easier with more "flyers" we're developing as leave-behinds).

Another part of the solution is to keep my mouth shut and keep my comments to myself. At least when sales people are in hearing distance. Actually, that might just be step 1.

The second core thing: how I relate to clients.

A few things seem to keep going wrong whenever I write emails to clients that involve statements other than "thanks for the approval" or "thanks, I got the changes!" or "sorry, you'll need to talk to your sales rep about that". If you read my journal, you've read about the time someone asked me for input on what offer to use, and flipped their shit when I gave them input. That still confuses me to this day. It could be something in my "formal correspondence language" that seems really aggressive or hostile?

I am more aware of the importance of my interaction with the clients than I am of my interaction with the sales staff. I sort of cringe myself whenever I feel the need to send a somewhat lengthy email to a client to discuss their ad concept (IE, their kids in the ads, or the need for "white space", or whatever). Because I'm already very wary that they're going to come back screaming that I'm not doing what they request like that first guy, so many months ago. And I try REALLY HARD not to necessitate sending these people an email to steer them in more appropriate directions, because I feel less is more...

I'd really like to develop a series of "stock" emails to address some of these design issues. Nice little emails, the shorter the better, non-confrontational, helpful, something that shows professionalism and expertise without hitting them over the head with it.

I know that in the end the client is always right, and the best we can do as designers is try to make sure their ad doesn't look like complete shit based on the input they've given us. There is always going to be the people who flounce off our contact lists because their ad campaign doesn't fulfill their expectations, and blame it on the ad design (when they're the ones who dictated every little detail). All we can do is our best.

The first solution for this, as Rich put it to me this morning, is to embrace "less is more". Don't communicate with the clients in any huge meaningful way except to acknowledge whatever they've told me. Specifically in regards to clients saying they don't want to be in our up-coming issues (I guess someone flipped his shit yesterday when I interpreted his replies to mean that he didn't want to be in our magazine "until he says so"... historically that's meant "don't call me, I'll call you" and it's basically a canceled account. So I had written a note to confirm this status and apparently I had interpreted his comments incorrectly.)

I DO get frustrated when I develop a good looking ad and the client completely tears it apart... I think we all do. When "art" is something you do every day, it's your career, you want it to grow and develop, you want it to be beautiful to the extent that it can be. When a client "ruins" it, it's very discouraging. But it's also part of my job :\. It's going to happen and I need to deal with it. The hard part is, I think, all the art I am currently creating in my life is centered about my job, and thus all of it is subject to someone else's review and correction. As I've written several times before, I need to work on my own art. I think that would give me a lot more creative satisfaction, and balance out the creative destruction happening at work.

That could probably fall under "stress relief" as well, haha. Running does too, whiiich I NEED TO DO MORE OF if I want to do this run in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS! (Rich, of course, is the one who told me that runners have less stress in the long run.)

I'm a work in progress.

I have 1 new ad I could work on. I don't even want to bother. omg, another TREE SERVICE ad, what fun! This would seriously take me 15 minutes to throw together. Why not have those 15 minutes on Monday? Meh!

I'm struggling to find the nonagressive, polite, nonconfrontational way to tell our advertisers that NO ONE CARES ABOUT THEIR KIDS EXCEPT THEM.

This run in particular, people want to put pictures of their kids on their ads. WTF. "Lady, your 9 mo. old is not the best way to advertise your HAMBURGERS." "No, I don't think sport-uniform poses of your tweens is the best way to promote your CARPET CLEANING."

Okay. New phase of dieting. I'm not even going to pretend that I can just work out everyday for an hour or whatever, because I can't. I can maintain that for like... a week or two, and then something happens in my daily schedule to totally screw up my routine, and working out is the first thing to be ignored. I'm still trying to do -something- every day, and that's really all I can expect of myself. Even if it's just taking a short hike on my lunch break, or walking on my lunch break, at least it's something!

Secondly, I'm trying this Alli stuff, "the ONLY FDA approved diet aid". What it essentially does is inhibits your body from breaking down a significant portion of the fat you ingest daily, so you pass it as waste. It's not a smart idea to eat bacon cheeseburgers every day, because you will seriously shit grease. Like, pour-cooking-oil-in-the-toilet, grease floating on the water. (Yes I experienced this.) So, it's strongly recommended to have a low-fat diet and decrease the amount of calories you take in each day (which is a standard for any diet, right??)

Thirdly, because you actually eat less if you record what you eat, I'm back on FitDay.com, obsessively recording what I eat every day. So far today, I've eaten... a lot less than I expected :\. And I'm not really eating any more or less than I usually do. I guess I've been at a weight plateau for a while.

I still want to try to get in good shape by August. Earlier if it's possible, because I plan on doing a 5K run with my dad on Father's Day. I don't see myself being able to run the entire thing, but I want to put in a good effort. Bleh, running.

I HATE it when I spend hours creating an ad... and the client comes back with all sorts of changes and revisions for how they think the ad should look (which should have been made known to me before I did the first proof)... and I write a long, thoughtful and helpful email explaining why their ideas (are terrible) won't work so well for their particular placement, and I offer some solutions... and the client replies, essentially, "just do it our way already, you silly girl."

OH, I'M SORRY. I OBVIOUSLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HOW TO DESIGN A SUCCESSFUL AD. PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR WANTING TO MAKE THE AD WORTH YOUR INVESTMENT.

I just fuckin' wish people would let me do my job correctly. I don't presume to know how to manufacture playsets or paint the outside of a house, but I've been doing graphic design for 7+ years. Yet these people who have been in their industries for years and years, and that means they know how to design a good ad....

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh....

I am beyond "bored out of my skull". There's no work to be done today. NONE. What little there was to do, I've done it. BLARGH. I've read all my LJcomms, I've read through the WoW forums... ugh. I could play around with photoshop/illustrator, but I feel uncomfortable doing non-work things on work time. Yet all I'm doing right now is browsing the internet? I don't know, my priorities are screwy. At least I'm reading through AIGA.org articles, so I can make the arguement that I'm doing something relevant?

Last night we had a work fieldtrip; the New Britain Museum of American Art was hosting an AIGA event. The editor of CommArt magazine was there to speak, discuss the history of the magazine and explore changing trends in design as technology becomes more and more prevalent.

Something that stuck out to me was his argument that new technologies do not necessarily replace the old. Print media is still as relevant in the Age of the Internet as it was 20 years ago. The main difference now is a designer can't really afford to specialize in one aspect of information design, they must be able to acknowledge and incorporate elements of modern communication. For every printed magazine, there needs to be an online presence reinforcing that message, etc.

Made me feel hopeful that I'm not working in a dying industry (direct mail was even specifically mentioned as a modern print innovation, full of potential for growth and ideas).

----

OH, we were also given a full hour before the talk to explore the museum, which was very awesome. I haven't walked around an art museum since I left VCU, and I need to do it more often. Such a creative inspiration. I have mixed feelings about it, though. Currently, the museum is displaying donated works that will be auctioned off, and seriously....... Some of that stuff is not worth the starting bid. Several pieces were like "oh, let me just squeeze some random colors out and mess around with a single brush". Literally, nothing but scribbles, no form or composition or rhythm or skill. No value or message in them what so ever. Not even worth hanging on a wall for soothing-but-ultimately-dismissible-eyecandy in a corporate hallway.

And people are passing that crap off as fine art? I could do that crap in 15 minutes.

And then I asked myself, "Why DIDN'T I do that crap in 15 minutes?" And I began to grudgingly admire these "artists" for at least producing something to put on a wall publicly, because that in itself takes a lot of guts. I think I suffer from extreme self-criticism and censure. Something I'd like to change.

It's 4:00.... one hour til close of business.

At around 2:30, one of those clingy, need-to-watch-you-do-everything, back-seat-designer type of clients called to report that he will be in today to revise his menus.

You know me. There's already two strikes against this situation: 1) MENUS. 2) face time with a client. If there's anything more that wastes my time than taking revisions over the phone, it's taking revisions and DOING THEM when the client is still there. I loathe it with a passion that rivals one thousand burning suns. Give me the changes, preferably neatly written or typed in an organized manner, and GTFO.

The only upside to these situations is I can devote the 1-2 direct hours to the client and get their piece completely finished and approved and ready to print. And that doesn't even always happens, sometimes I can spend 3+ hours with these people for a first proof, and then we go back and forth via email for 7 more proofs over the course of 6 weeks, until the piece is finally approved as the printer is calling us, wondering where the file is.

So, 4:00, one hour til close of business.

Beyond all the reasons described above, I'm praying that the guy doesn't show up this afternoon (also a common occurrence), because I did not take a shower today, and I don't want to look all scrubby and greasy while meeting a client.

Whatever happened to giving a day's notice for an appointment??