trisected

Tag: work

  • Getting Lost in Work

    I’ve been really keeping my head down and trying to focus all day, but it’s been a mix of creative work and planning work. Worst combination to work through, because it needs to actually use my brain 100% of the time. Really high energy stuff, but my brain is tired but my body actually needs the exercise. So I’ve been doing jump rope workouts again, and it’s been a good 10-15 minutes of just jumping rope.

    Getting lost in work means that for a period of time, I have very little friend interactions. I enjoy hanging out with my friends and intentionally catching up. But during this heavy work periods, I actually can lose days or weeks working. I blink and all of a sudden, hours have gone by, and I wonder what Clarice is up to. She’s mostly asleep if I’ve been working in the evenings, because I only notice the time at midnight.

    I might clear the dishes very late at night, and I’ll be thinking, What is everyone else up to today? What was happening in the world? I have no idea, and I just have to guess. Then I finish that, sit down to clear my daily things: This post, a drawing for Inktober, and my Duolingo Russian streak.

    Then I might read or just distract my thinking brain enough to go to sleep. Then I wake up the next day and head back to work again.

    Just getting lost in work for a period of time.

  • Space and Time

    are things I will always need. Not that I need space by myself, but I need space to store things. And not that I need time alone, but I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do in life 80% of the time.

    I have a little sticker on my computer now that says “My greatest wish is to do 5 times at the same time.” I made the sticker myself, and I wish I could really do 5 things at the same time.

    I woke up this morning, hoping to accomplish so many things. I’ve done about 2 or 3 of them by now, but I still need to do so much more. It’s not that I don’t do enough work, or that I work slowly. I’m just trying to manage between the many tasks, and deciding which are the time critical ones to clear first, and on the priority of things to do.

    Right now, there’s still other things to do, but I don’t have time to do them. But they’re distracting me still from the work I’m trying to do. Which is annoying. Thus, I write, to reset my brain, back to doing work.

    Back to work.

  • Work Mode

    Everyone has different baselines of work whenever they’re working. I have figured out that my baseline of amount of work produced in a day of work, is usually about 5 hours, and then I’m kinda tapped out for the day.

    Right now, I’ve been pushing this 5 hour amount for the past week, or thereabouts.

    We came back from Melbourne last Tuesday Night/Wednesday morning. We slept into half the day, because of the weird flight time, and then by Wednesday afternoon, I was churning sketch paintings for an artbook that I needed to finish by Friday. I painted about 15 paintings by Friday itself, and I laid out the images and printed by Friday afternoon.

    I immediately started work on my other artbook, a pixel zine, but the Saturday itself was an activity based programme at work, so I was actively engaged, but not able to do my creative work until I came home at night. I did draw on transit, but I don’t work so well on the move.

    I finished up all my images on Sunday, and Monday morning I laid out the book. Then printed by Monday afternoon, and started work on the next book.

    Right now, my brain is so tapped out, I actually feel like I might be going crazy with the amount of thoughts that are floating around in my head.

    This morning (Tuesday), I spent an hour trying to make coffee, hand wash clothing, and lay out more images for another book all at the same time. I realised that nothing was making sense, and of all things, my logic said, layout more photos first. So I finished another few images, saved the file, then went out to finish making my coffee, and took the wet clothes out of soaking to hang them up.

    The work muscle in my brain is so pulled and stretched, it physically feels like I did a work out with my brain, and my brain itself is sore.

    Sleep has not be the best, but it has been adequate, because I tell myself, if I take naps at the right times, then I would be able to work faster when I wake up, and it’s been mostly true.

    But man, this is a beast of a work mode, and I still have actual administration to finish up thereafter. There is just so much to do.

    There’s still an afternoon of meetings tomorrow. The plan is to take a break on Thursday and actually not do any work. I just hope I make it to Thursday with the work completed.

    Wish me luck.

  • 10 minute post

    Started to write this at 1141PM on 2 Sep:

    Today was a super long day. We spent the day at a wedding, and then Clarice and I both went to Artcade and Open Fields markets. These were pretty different markets, and I enjoyed myself there in a big way! By big, I mean that I spent a lot of money on a lot of things. Lol.

    One of the realisations I had at these markets was the type of merch made, and the amount that was made. There was a LOT of things, like I think if you combined all the created work together, there would easily be over a hundred thousand types of artwork made. There was just so many things. Some things looked similar, but otherwise, there was really just so many. This overwhelming amount of things really made me feel like I had too many things to choose from, and maybe I chose quite randomly at the end of it all. The ones at Artcade were a lot more similar than the ones at Open Fields, in my opinion. Both had super different types of work, but really, there was just a lot of work produced.

    Another realisation was the type of work I would like to produce. I don’t think I can produce at that quantity, and at that type of merchandising. There was just too many different types of things made, and I think some were smart, but some were just made to sell. It works if selling is the aim, but I think I place myself too idealistically, and I don’t want to just make things to sell. I want to make things that tell a story, and unfortunately, at markets, the feeling isn’t really to hear stories that much. I think the spot to tell stories would be at art galleries, but then there’s not much buying there I guess.

    In any case, these two thoughts were going through my head, and I think they will direct the type of things that I make in the next few months, in the zines that I’m approaching to make. I hope to change the way I sell and the way I tell stories, and to also find a spot that makes the most sense for me, as trisected, as joel.

    My thoughts weren’t meant to offend anyone, or to judge or critique. Just my thoughts for my own work and my own journey, shared on my own blog to express for how I thought through these things.

    All in 10 mins!

  • Back to Work Blues

    Usually most people would complain about Mondays in some way, but being away for the past three weeks, it was a real challenge to even just stay awake at some parts. My calendar dates were changed and there were things that I really had to tweak last minute to fit into time properly.

    I think that’s one part of my current job that I don’t enjoy: the high flux of events and dates. Everyone claims to have had settled dates early, but most of the time the adjustments really come in last minute and I just have to make do and change things. It spoils many things, or a lot of things are left hanging and I just wish that there were better ways to make sense of the things that I have to do. Or a better scheduling system. Or just to not have that many things to do as well.

    That’s definitely been a huge reason why I haven’t been able to do many keyboard things, or draw, or just have time out. It really sucks, because I keep feeling really bogged down by all the things to do, and I just have to keep doing them. I don’t want to try and stop it, but I know that the System would keep it going. It comes at the cost of the rest of the team picking up slack, and I don’t like to be the reason for things not to be done. That part really gets to me too.

    Sadly, I can’t wait to get out of my current job, and to just meet friends that I just haven’t been able to for some time. I really don’t like the standby mode that I’ve been on for way too long.

  • Aims and Purposes

    Whenever I have a meeting, or start a discussion of some sort, there’s always that question of what the point of the meeting is. Or maybe what do we hope to get out of it, after the meeting. After some time, one of the most ironic things that I’ve realised, is that the meetings with an aim that is too clear usually has someone directing the meeting specifically. On a rare occasion does that meeting leader actually utilise the meeting for it’s proper purpose: to meet with others.

    It doesn’t mean that meetings are useless, but sometimes the over directed aim becomes over bearing. A meeting would be one where everyone gives their views and contributes to that sense of where the group is planning to go towards. But a Briefing, on the other hand, is one that is planned already, and everyone is briefed on what to do instead.

    I think for the sake of my sanity, and for a lot of others, we should call more meetings briefings. Especially when the leaders of the meetings have already planned everything. If not, sometimes I really come into a meeting with ideas, and plans, only to be told that the plans were already decided.

    I wonder why I’m explaining meetings on my blog, but I guess it’s something that I’m constantly going through. Maybe one day I’ll be able to write a nice book about how to handle yourself through meetings. It would most probably include how to have multiple tabs on for shopping websites. Buying things during meetings means that when the meeting ends, you have a present for yourself for sitting through the meeting. What a good reward. Sitting still for the past three hours truly deserves some level of reward.

    In a side note, and specific to today: I have a couple of Work With Me videos on my YouTube now. So if you wanna try working with a nice keyboard typing nearby you, hit up my YouTube.

    Also, this might be one of my most boring posts ever. Talking about meetings, what a bore.

  • False Sense of Urgency

    Sometimes there’s this weird lie I tell myself: “You are very busy this week.” I’m actually not really that busy, but with a weird scale of things to do, it does feel that way. By weird scale of things to do, I mean tasks that are not clearly time defined, and might spill over into different time periods that were not allocated. So it actually feels busier than it is supposed to.

    That being said, it’s not as if I’m unable to do things fast enough. My competency is not in question. I am able to finish things, and am able to make firm quick decisions on others. But without the proper calendaring, it really feels as if everything will spill over.

    Thus, the false sense of urgency appears. I rush to sit at my desk, and get very thrown around with multiple random tasks. I could have inched my way closer to passing my major tasks, but I get distracted, thinking the more urgent, but less critical ones are the ones that I need to clear.

    It’s a false sense of urgency also because many of the things are actually not as urgent as my mind makes them out to be. I just tell myself that these are important, and it’s a great thing to clear before I hit my major tasks. It feels as if I am more productive, but on hindsight, my major tasks aren’t cleared, and I still feel as if there’s a lot to do.

    These mental hurdles are really annoying, and honestly could be solved with a good planning session every morning, to get myself going for the day. But sometimes, like the past few weeks, it’s just been hard to get started. It’s something I want to get back to doing again, but man, it really is hard to get started.

    I will start the planning now, as soon as this post goes up, and hopefully tomorrow will be a little more on track than today, and the days before.