Accomplished!
Car stuff:
- new tires for Zoom-Zoom
- back bumper fixed

Zoey stuff:
- pet insurance for Zoey
- annual shots up to date (for Zoey!)

Rowing stuff:
- my own set of C2 oars

Work stuff
- began a lynda.com membership for edjimicachun
- anatomical drawing class at LAAFA fall ’10

Life stuff
- my very own vacuum

Work in Progress:
- now ranked in new order of priority!

• paying off Zoom Zoom
  - this will most likely be done around June April! 2011. Yay!
  95.24%

• Three Months of Bills in the Bank
  56.9%

• Zoey Heath Stuff
  2%

  - teeth cleaning
  - operation to get rid of non-cancerous lumps
  - chipping of ear

• Move out of West Hollywood
  This one has changed. Where before, it was with the goal of moving to West LA/Santa Monica-esque, over the course of December I realized that honestly? That’s not where my life is or even where I want it to be. So things are in progress to move elsewhere, but the need for first & last still remains.
  1.3%

• spend a month in Europe this summer
  The original plan had been to go for three months, but depending on moving and what happens with employment here at Museum!Co, the idea of putting myself in a regimented program for the course of summer has become a far more fluid idea. As I talked about last week, I need to roll with the idea of making my own curriculum, so we’ll see how that one pans out.
  42%

• save up to buy my own single
  I’m at the point where as a rower it’s just time for me to save up & make the investment of buying my own 1x. Plus, I seem to be oddly proportioned compared to other female rowers, so it’s best that I have a boat whose settings are custom’ed to my body. Right now, the Fillipi brand is in the lead, but I’d like to try a Midweight Fluid before I take the plunge and write a check.
  10%

It might seem silly to keep the page, but having the list & being able to see what I’ve actually managed to get done over the last few months is really nice. Sometimes you get the feeling like there’s just no end to it all, ya know? If nothing else, after four years, being this><close to paying off Zoom-Zoom is just so phenomenal, I can’t even tell you — I’ll get the equivalent of almost half a month’s rent back into my budget, it’s that freakin’ rawk.

Don’t worry – the next post will be life revelations, how the heavens opened up & gave me the insight of how to fix the mess of my office and studio in one fell purchase, and the fact that I’m pondering using 2011 to remember how to properly knit, gods help you all.

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I don’t feel pressured to do anything except keep them all alive and, if we go out, make sure everyone is wearing clothes.

Considering that she’s up in New Hampshire, I gotta say those are good goals.

Example 2:
from Closet Buffyholic – what do you do when you’re cross-certified to practice law in six states (let’s not even talk about those bar exams, they were three very dark times) and the guy on the East Coast is trying to give you sh*t about the fact that he had to work through the holidays b/c he doesn’t know you did too?

So, what I ended up saying was “is this a measuring contest? I’ll put my job up against yours I’ll win every day of the week and twice on Sunday.” I think he was kinda taken aback and later he called to apologize for being such a dickweed.

I think she’s right – it’s definitely time for us to plan her vacation(s) this year.

One day, I will be caught up. And on that day, I totally won’t know what to do after that.
I didn’t get nearly as much done over Christmas/New Year’s as I wanted. Part of it was that things came up, & part of it was that after the last year of work and life!stress, I think my body just kind of went, “eff you, we need a break”. I’m not gonna lie, I totally spent about four days slowly plonking through some mindless photo editing and watching season 6 of Grey’s Anatomy on the Roku box that my housesitting location had.

Which now means that I have Normal Time Work to do as well as All The Other Things that I kept putting off because I was going to do them those last two weeks of the year.

Normally, this would be totally daunting for me, and I’d be all crazy-headed about Everything That Needs to Get Done. However, I made a decision last week regarding where I wanted to be living by the summer, and part of being able to do that includes getting myself fully independent financially. Right now, Museum!Co makes up the bulk of my income, with my other clients adding in the part that’s allowing me to stash money into savings and put my life in order. But I am on contract, and the blue-collar pragmatist in me always feels better with a contingency plan.

First thing for me is to get caught up on all my “now” work — everything I have in the pipe needs to be taken care of so it’s either current or done. I put away a good amount of work on it over the weekend and a little more yesterday, but over the next week there may be a night or two like Saturday night, where I just stay up the full 24 hours to push things through. (Sadly, I fear this week that my be tonight, which sucks – I have an erg workout in the morning, and since things are actually going well, I’d like to be able to turn in solid numbers. May try to push it to Wed night.)

Once that’s done, we get to Part the Second, which is the Great Portfolio Update. I haven’t had a chance to fix my own website since I got laid off from Infomercial!Co, which will be two years ago this March. Considering that I’ve put several sites live since then, there’s still a part of me amazed that people offer me work based off what’s online presently. It’s all very, very sad, that site.

After that is Section Trois – namely, working on building out an affiliate network. I’ve been d*cking around with it on & off for the entire two years since getting out of the Infomercial industry, but the truth of the matter is that if you put in the time & are willing to do the SEO & CPA math, all of the smaller parts actually will combine to create a solid little side income. Problem is that after two years out of the industry, I’ll need to go re-up on what’s current knowledge, which is why I think a lynda.com membership may be in order, and the designation of one morning a week to just sit & do tutorials. Good times, good times.

Speaking of learning – what about school, anyway?
After trying to hustle every Friday morning to make it to school on time, I decided to take a different tact to this semester. Thankfully, my last professor was brilliant in that crazy way that most really good artists & teachers are, and I really did learn a lot about figure drawing, as well as have a couple moments where things actually worked, & I was like, “Okay, I do remember how to do this. Okay then. It’s not all gone.” Honestly, one of the nicest moments for me was talking to an older gentleman in the class who’s a professional sculptor by trade & was taking it to basically brush up on his own drawing skills. (Note: nowadays, a sculptor is not an easy thing to be full time, so it’s a fair bet that he’s pretty good at what he does.)

We had just finished a 15 minute session with the model, and he complimented me on my sketch. At the time, I’d chuckled & said something about not being as fast as some of the other people in the class who’d managed to lay down a full figure sketch in the time it had taken me to do from the waist up. He leaned in & said, “Yes, but theirs are all academic, and you have a style. You don’t have to sign it, and someone can tell its yours. It’s lovely. Speed comes with time.”

And it was in that moment that I realized what had been bothering me all quarter about the class. At the time, I’d thought it was that I was behind, and that not having been one of the people who’d immersed themselves in nothing but drawing all the time was hurting me, because I knew that what I was producing was different from everyone else.
It wasn’t until I had that conversation with Sculptor that I realized that what bothered me wasn’t that I was missing something, but that they were. I’m not 17. I’m not going to sit there and gasp in amazement when the professor shows us something new, or clap when he finishes lecturing. (Honestly, I think it may have wigged him out too when they did that, but whatever.) A lot of the program that I would have been on had I gone full time is basics – it’s stuff I now instinctually know, because I learned it…. literally a decade ago, & thus don’t need to stop & take the time to apply it – it’s ingrained at this point. A good amount of those classes are simply like bootcamp – they’re gonna break you down to weed the bad habits out before they build you back up so that everyone starts with the same base skill set, and then send you off into the world to find your personal style.

Problem being, it’s too late – my brain’s been mapped. I’ve already grown up. I’m a person, I have my own opinions, & my own preference to how I like things to be done, so rather than taking everything an authority figure tells me as The Absolute Truth, I tend to pull out what’s useful and apply it as I see fit. The result being that as Sculptor pointed out, rather than trying to start again, I need to simply set about filling in the areas where I’m finding I need to gain knowledge in order to accomplish my own vision as an artist, and in the end, I’ll set up my own cirriculum and accept that there most likely won’t be a piece of paper to prove what I know — my work will be my degree.

With that (and my wacky schedule) in mind, I decided not to take a set class this semester. Instead, I’m signing up for the unlimited workshop pass that they have available, which will allow me to go in & just draw at any of the model sessions that they have, and there’s at least one every day of the week, so I’m going to aim for two to three a week where I go and simply… go. Just draw. Don’t worry about it, don’t think about it, just work on laying something down on paper to increase speed & get more & more practice in. I talked to Professor!Rey, & since he does private lessons as well as teaching with us & at Art Center, I can make an appt to sit down & do a mini-review once every six weeks or so to get feedback & refinement. It’ll probably cost me about the same as if I’d done a structured course, and I really think I’ll just get a hell of a lot more out of it in terms of work progress. So I’ll give that a whirl this spring, and we’ll see.

—————

In an odd way, both of the above sections really are a reflection of my life. Every time I try to get a “proper” education, or structured degree, it pretty much just never works out. Oh, I’ve got my BFA, which gives me the base credentials to walk in the door, but in terms of what I get paid to do – psh, dude. I work on such a different space now than what my degree is actually for that whenever I’ve looked at a higher degree program, there’s always been a part where I ask, “So, can I test out of that part? I’ve already done it.”

Overall, I think that’s what the last year really has been about for me – accepting that my path is simply going to be different than everyone else. It just is. And that’s okay. The truth is, I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll probably never have a “regular” job again – it doesn’t even occur to me to go look for one at this point. Museum!Co is probably as close as I’ll get, or a set-up similar to it. It’s just not how I’m built, or how the universe seems to want me to work. :shrug:

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go work on First Thing as outlined above, since none of today’s programming would be possible without the generous financial support of our sponsors…

Music: Crazy for you – Adele (Live from SoHo)

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Moments of technological commentary:

1. Talking to someone about being a valet & saying, “I pretty much get paid to play automotive Tetris – OH MY GOD, I never even thought of it, but there’s probably an iPhone app for Tetris!” :fist of triumph!:
   Oh yeah. My valet time just got way awesomer.
2. Every time I get a set of keys that doesn’t have a clicker, I’m always like, “Daaaaamit, now I have to actually look for the car…” oh technology, how did anyone valet before you?

Yeah, I could play here.
Went over to Blankspaces on Tuesday & tried it out for a couple hours. It’s not bad – just basically office space. It’s more the gesture of going somewhere specifically to work instead of trying to do things at home & thinking, “I could work after my nap” or “Polgara did leave the Supernatural s. 1 DVDs… I could put them in & work at the same time!” (Is work done? yes. Is a productive amount of work done? eh… not so much, no.)

I have a free week to try out that begins on Saturday, so I’m going to remand my puppy to the care of her playmates next door (and, you know their human that pays the bills) and basically spend the time that I would normally be valeting for Dolls or Prem!Co working on trying to churn out the backlog of work that I have.

This is what Chuck feels like, isn’t it? Or, it would be if Chuck were a real guy.
So I haven’t gotten a check from EDD since oh… May. They keep effin’ up my claims. The good news is that by the time I get caught up to now on the forms, I won’t need to continue filing for checks, but having the last, oh, two months’ worth of checks would greatly help me do things like… get caught up on my rent. With that in mind, I went down to the office on Crenshaw to achieve an actual conversation with an actual California state employee. (I know, Cali residents! It’s rare & exciting – I feel like I should have a button that says, “I’m an EDD Slayer, ask me how!”)

In the course of talking to the gentleman on the phone (you don’t see people in actual person, you just get to use the direct line to call them) and when he found out that I’m a web designer, he began talking to me about how he had someone making a website for him, but before they’d do anything, he had to get “the PayPals” in order to send the deposit, and while he didn’t mind, he was a 58 year old guy who’d been through two wars & just didn’t understand this whole technology thing.

This resulted in me explaining PayPal & how it works to him, and why it is that they need to make small deposits into his bank account in order to verify that it actually exists. In return, he did… something to make sure my first check was expedited to me, set it up so I’ll get all the back claims at once instead of having to wait a week inbetween, & strongly urged me to go to the CA state jobs website since according to him, “We could use some nice smart girls like you working for us around here.” I dutifully allowed him to instruct me as to where the site is, & took down the url for a friend who could probably use it, but let’s be honest — I just wouldn’t work well as a full time state employee.

In the meantime, the first check showed up yesterday, along with the back claim forms — I kinda can’t wait to get that money in if for no other reason than that my landlord’s gonna be ridiculously happy when I’m suddenly caught up on rent!
(I’ve been in my building for nine years as of January ’11. Since most of us work in creative industries, a couple of us are actually a month or so behind, but in this economy it’s actually easier for my landlord to just let us skate along until we get caught up & keep the solid residents than to try to find new renters. and considering that West Hollywood has rent control, thank god for that.)

—————–

Overall, I feel like I’m making progress, but in the way that you’ve just organized a single bookshelf and still have the entirety of the Louvre to catalog before you’re allowed to take a break to pee. More to do, more to do, and I would just love it if I could put everything on pause & take a nap.

Music: The Scientist – Coldplay

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I had a long chat with Sylvie last week, & amongst other things, I talked to her about Not!Grad School. Based on my conversations & the feedback I’ve gotten from them, I’m pretty sure that sometime around August 1st, I’ll get notification that I can start on October 9th with this year’s class.

The question then being – do I really want to?

Here’s the thing – it’s all day, from 9am – 4pm (3:30 if I make arrangements with the professors to make up the studio time so I can get to the boathouse if I end up coaching juniors this fall) Now, being able to sit & spend three years doing the course of art that I wanted to do sounds dandy, but I have some very harsh realities to deal with:

1. I have to pay the tuition myself because the school isn’t accredited yet, so there’s no federal funding
2. I have to fund the rest of my life at the same time that I’m in school for the same amount of time as a full time job.
3. Eventually, I really do need to get SOME sleep. (No, I actually do mean that)

I was explaining this to Sylvie, and she suddenly stopped said, “God, why are you Americans are so dumb?!”
(Note: Sylvie is French. Occasionally, she’s not just French, she’s very French.)

To which I ventured, “um…I don’t know?”

We then proceeded to have a conversation where she explained to my horribly pedestrian Yankee way of thinking that not everything is in the United States, and perhaps instead of spending three years running myself into the ground for a degree from a school no one’s ever heard of where I won’t enjoy a bit of of because I’ll always be chasing to fill the economic hole of my tuition & life, perhaps it might be better to look at a more concentrated program in Europe for next summer so that I can actually, you know – pay attention to what I’m doing while learning, as well as actually get some time away from my life for a while – kind of a reset button.

:insert heavens opening & beam of light shining down as chorus of angels hit perfect note:

The funny thing about this is that just the week before, my sister & I had been having a conversation about the fact that, other than her honeymoon, we pretty much have never been on vacation. We just didn’t do it as kids – other than family committments, or parent-mandated “educational trips” when we were kids (which were all within driving distance & ruled more by my mother’s neurosis than anything else, so yeah, those were wicked fun) — we just… didn’t. When we were kids, we couldn’t afford it, & when we were old enough, we were sent off to get jobs, after which we all had to pay for our own school, and I guess since we never were in the habit of doing it from when we were kids, neither of us have ever incorporated it into our lives as adults.

So the idea of taking the next year and setting things up so that I can save up, put my affairs in order, and head off for a month or three to kind of explore the world & do something just for me & for the sake of having the experience of it instead of just continuing to try to pay the rent – I can’t tell you how lovely that is to me. It’s going to mean a LOT of prep, and a real push on my part to work & get things in order financially – thankfully, my car will be paid off in June of ’11 (if I can’t manage to get ahead & take care of it a little before) so my expenses will actually go down right before I leave. Since this is LA, there’s almost always someone looking for a short-term sublets and due to the fact that I presently have the best neighbors ever, I know I’ll have people to look in on the place & make sure that nothing gets blown up. (Yay 1049 Improv Troupe!)

In the meantime, I’ll wait to see whether or not I get into Not!Grad School, & then work with them to take at least two classes over the course of the year – probably basic anatomy & also Quick post studios since those would be the basis of any figure drawing study that I would take. I’d also have to finally get my arse in gear & start going to Dr. Sketchy’s when my work schedule allows for it so that I can get lots of practice for pretty cheap.

In order to actually make the cash to be able to do all this, I’m going to have to suck it up & put at least one day aside just for tutorials to bring myself up to date on more backend programming and SEO. More & more clients seem to be asking for things that involve Drupal development, WordPress dev, & SEO work, so it’s time that I hammered down on the things that will actually bring in cash, most likely with a side of HTML5, CSS3, & javascript refresher course. Lynda.com, we’ll be spending a lot of time together.

Of course, I can’t do this alone, so there’s only one thing to do:

Gathering the troops to invade Europe – it’s what Americans do!
Art aside, there’s another awesome aspect to going to Italy or France for the summer – the rowing.

That in mind, I sent Kate a text that just said, “Wanna row in Europe next summer?”

Yeah.. she’s pretty much down. So once we get things in line & I know where I’m going, we’ll take a look at where there is to row around there and have at it, baby — the Euros have way more options than we do in SoCal, and even if I’m just in Europe on a schedule where I can GO to Henley… well honey, it’s Henley the year before the Olympics are in London. That situation’s going to be awesome. Plus since I know a Bronzer or two in merry ol’ Land o’ Eng, we may be able to swing free accomodations for that portion of the adventure, which would be right up there like the guys say during soccer games on Univision – Scoooooooore!

I’ve also tapped Sachiel & Closet B to see if they want to come play, even if only for a week or two – after all, if you’re going to have to get a place to crash for two people in Italy or France, you might as well use it as a halfway house for all your friends, right? Right. Totally.

In the meantime, the upshot of this is that my sorry arse needs to make with the hustle. As Sachiel pointed out to me, “Billable hours equals Europe!”

Music: Dawn – Pride & Prejudice

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I took a class there last May, & when I first showed up the initial email I sent was basically answered with, “When would you like to start?” so I’m hoping that the application & (gods bless) acceptance process goes quickly… after which I just have to figure out how to pay my tuition – no pressure, no pressure.

Today’s step was just filling in the app – on Saturday, I’ll probably go up & drop off my samples & application deposit. And we’ll see. :fingerscrossed:

In the vein, happened across this photographer, whose pictures I think are going in the files as reference points for future paintings. This one especially caught my eye:

Run, doll run!
Got home from the boathouse today, took a shower, was about to settle into work, & my phone rings – it’s MadamG, & we’ve got a Doll-mergency.

There’s a restaurant in North Hollywood that the Dolls have a contract with, and today when D showed up for her shift, they told that hey! Fifty extra cars were going to show up.

When you’re the only valet doing lunch shifts at a bistro whose parking lot has ten spots, your only gut reaction is… whuuut?? So D called in to the Dollhouse on the 911, and when MadamG looked around, I happened to be home. Not totally in my plans for the day, but I knew I was available & it’s part of the gig, so I sighed, put on my black pants & white button down shirt, asked the universe to make this outing damn profitable and headed up the 101.

Turns out that what was going on was a retirement lunch for a public attorney, so here we are, totally overloaded on space, parking sh*t on the sidewalk and the guests? They’re all cops! Thankfully, the LAPD guys were good about it, & most of them put their cop permits in the window, which basically gave us license to park… wherever. We ended up parking across Vineyard, which meant a quarter mile sprint wearing a white button down shirt & black pants in 90 degree weather in the Valley between noon & 3, when the sun is strongest.
Add in the fact that dashing across Vineland makes any dropoff or retrieval an impromptu game of Frogger, and everything becomes awesome in the way where it’s completely & totally not.

But, come 3pm when everyone had cleared out, D & I totaled up the cash & lo & behold, not only did we make enough to pay our hourlies in cash, but we also cleared some decent tips. After I stopped to acquire some food for myself, I still put another bit in the account for tuition. Almost up to the first month in the bank, so yeah…workin’ on it. First year’s tuition – almost $1k down, $11k to go, and if I get accepted the start date is July 5th. But hey – no pressure, no pressure.

So close to freedom I can almost smell fresh air.
So my client over at Ins!Co. contacted me at the end of last week & wants me to come into the office one day a week to just… talk. To discuss options, maybe do some on-site work, etc. They don’t need a full time designer (which is good ’cause I don’t want to be one for anyone right now) but we’re kind of at the point where things would move faster for both their “official” work & the side project that they have me helping with. Between the two, it should hopefully be a steady 5-10 hours a week, which would help a lot in terms of creating an economic net for me. Right now, my goal is that if I could get about 20 hours a week of work at the rate that I want to be paid, I’ll be fully off unemployment and the project work which pays more in sporadic lump sums. That way, I can live off the steady stuff, & put the project work to building savings & paying tuition.

After the Doll-mergency, I did a call with my one entertainment-related client, NPO!Client. We’d discussed them possibly bringing me on retainer as sort of a web project manager basis — I’d still work from home, but have a contracted 10 hours a week for them that I’d be paid a fixed amount for. Not being a fool, I did the math on the proposal so that it would be about 3/4 of what I need to be completely off the dole – while it would have been the easy out to go for the whole amount, I also am aware of the stupidity of risking the gods’ wrath, so I bid slightly under to keep myself from becoming too dependent upon any one client.

When I didn’t hear anything on it, I kind of let the idea go & moved on, looking for other business. But then I heard from NPO!Client! on Friday that she wanted to do a phone call, & we managed to sync schedules today.

The end result? They like me, but since they haven’t put anyone on retainer before, NPO!Client!‘s bosses want me to work on an hourly/project basis for about 6 weeks at an hourly slightly below what I bid, and then if things work, they’ll put me on contract. If that happens, I’ll be free & clear from EDD, which would be… lovely. Like, honestly nice. And between the two, I’d have enough to live on and be able to put everything else towards my tuition and savings. I keep funneling the cash tips from valeting towards those two things, and I’m slowly building back up — in terms of savings, I’m almost back up to the $1k base that I like to keep & had before I got laid off, which will have been a year ago on the 20th. Once I hit that, I get to continue working on my tuition and trying to put three months’ worth of bills in the bank before I start in on savings again.

And it feels like it’s so much, but I need to just keep reminding myself to move through things one step at a time, and I’ll get there. I’m starting to get there, I’m starting to pull myself out of the hole. I just need to remember not to fuck things up.

Funny ’cause they’re true
Someone went through all the Simpsons chalkboards over the years & picked out 29 of the best. To see the rest, check this out. Personally, anybody that has heard me before 9am or when I’m just generally in a mood will understand why I’m favoring this one:

Music: Everything’ll Be Alright – Joshua Radin

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