I’m writing this while I still have the energy and drive to do it. I feel like I am falling back into my old ways. The ways of Google Drive, where I would save writing to the very end of the of the day and then find that I have no will to write.

Today has been busy, and still isn’t over. Not fully. But if I wait until the end to write then I won’t do it. I’ll be too tired, too ready to fall into my bed and save it for the morning. But in the morning I will have a new list of things to do, and writing will have to wait again, wait until the end, where I will be too tired once again.

You can see the cycle here.

It’s so easy to push it off, further and further back, when really it’s the one thing that will make me feel like my day was worth it. I would say it’s the one thing I do for myself, but that’s a lie and we all know it.

I do aikido now, and that’s purely for me. And the gym. More me time. And cross stitching…

Really if I could just section of a small, little, 24 hour period of out every day to only do the things that I want to do I think I would be alright. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask for, right?

Gah, society with its silly standards of being a productive member and stuff. Lame.

So I can’t say that writing is the only thing I do for myself. But it fulfills something that the gym and working out doesn’t. I don’t know what the difference is. They both fall into the ‘spiritual / emotional’ spectrum for me.

Maybe it’s because one is a physical form of expression, while writing is a mental form. Either way, one is not a substitute for the other, and so by being lax in my writing and am not honoring a part of myself.

So I’m taking some time, now, right now, before work is over, to write because I deserve to have time in my day to do so, without falling asleep at my keyboard while I do it.

Today has actually been pretty awesome, which makes me happy. Last week felt like a disaster. I have no idea how I made it through any of it, but somehow I did, and then it was the weekend, and here we are at the start of another week.

This time, however, I’m prepared for it, and it showed with what I was able to get done today. Two to-do lists owned. /flex

I started with a bunch of ‘life’ stuff. I had to contact a handful of people (though Facebook). I messaged Sam about the phone, and Sabrina wanted to meet later in the week to talk about a script she can’t get working. I messaged Jin to see if I could remove a podcast I created for him from my Dropbox. I messaged Ray about the freelance and seeing how the rigs were holding up for him. I still haven’t heard back from him which is sort of not cool.

I checked out my assignments for my class this week. The way the class is structured is there are two main projects each week. So, this week, since I was up and being productive, I went ahead and did all of my brain storming and sketching for the assignments.

That’s sort of a huge deal because the person who posts first on the site ‘owns’ their idea. That means if you have a really awesome idea, but someone has already posted something really similar, you have to come up with something different.

So after my sketching was done I showered and went to school to scan my work and get it online. I was actually the first person to post for the week on both assignments. No slacking here.

While I had been working at home I went ahead and cooked, so I have food to look forward to. No more gross fast food nonsense for me. My body is thanking me.

I also replied to several of the Info Graphic posts on ConceptShare. My critiques tend to be more like mini novels, so that took a fair amount of time, but I felt it was worth it.

After scanning and posting my work for this new week I met up with Tre and we talked about his demo reel. I might be doing an animation piece for him. He has a mech, robot sort of thing that he just rigged. I haven’t animated in almost three years, so we’ll see how that goes. The animation idea is really nifty though, so I think I’ll enjoy working on it.

I left school around 5:30 so I could get to the dojo for taekwondo with Sensei Mike. Sadly I was the only one to show up today. But in a way that was pretty cool since I missed the class last week. I got to work all the way through the first form.

I’m still not very good at it because I have to keep stopping to think about where my arms are supposed to be. But I was able to make it all the way through, so now it’s just practice.

I got to see Sensei Ian for a little bit, but I didn’t stay for any of the Open Circle class. Instead I went to the gym where I ran 1.25 miles. Not solid, but I got to the 1 mile mark in 17 minutes even.

I got to do a bunch of stretching afterwards, too. So that was nice, and top that off with a hot shower… My muscles were in heaven.

Before I went into work I stopped by Publix. I didn’t have any food on me and I 100% did not want to go through a drive thru.

Instead I got a summer roll for the sushi bar, since I didn’t get my sushi tray when I went grocery shopping. I also picked up a pack of Special K protein shakes. Normally I get them when I grocery shop, but for whatever reason I thought it was a good idea to skip them this week… Since that’s currently what I am ‘eating’ right now, getting them was a good investment.

I came to school and ate the summer rolls while drinking water. Went into lab and got caught up on all of the WordPress reading that I haven’t had a chance to do. I feel bad that sometimes it takes me days to read a post. There were some really awesome ones though, so I’m glad that I got around to reading.

Several of the posts I read mentioned books, so I wrote them all down and will be adding them to my reading list. With luck some of them will have audio book versions available.

On the subject of books. I bought the taekwondo book Sensei Mike recommended a few weeks ago. I actually got two copies. One for me and one for Alejandro. Those should be here in a week or so.

I had to re-enroll for my benefits with work. There was a huge switch to a new provider and a lot of peoples rates when up. Mine actually went down, so I’m super happy about that. I even upped my life insurance coverage and it’s still cheaper. Woohoo.

And now I am over in ‘my’ little office cubical about to do the grading for the first project in my class. Clavan wants the grading done by tomorrow 5pm. I think if I don’t do it now, or at least part of it, that I won’t have it done in time.

I don’t know. Maybe I would. Tomorrow is kind of broken up though.

I have laundry in the morning, then some time, then a meeting with Sabrina at 5pm. Then aikido at 7pm. Going to the spin class at 9:30 am would be cool if I can get there in time.

With all of that I have to complete my reading, quiz, and discussion for school. Create a rough block out in Photoshop for one of my assignments, and then model assets for the second assignment since I’m going to make a CG image.

Basically for the ‘main’ project we have to ‘package the unpackagable’. You have to find an emotion, idea, or phrase and turn it into an object, then package that object.

I picked the term lion-hearted. It is a foundation for women. The slogan is “Unleash Your Inner Lioness”. Sort of cheesy, maybe, but I like it. I plan to create a CG scene with a glass container for the foundation, and then creating textures for the scene which will have the logo for the product.

Lots of work. But I’m totally stoked to get working on it.

But that’s added to the to-do list tomorrow. Without properly textured assets, there’s not way that I can pull off this assignment. So I need those first so I can create the UVs, so I can do the texturing…

I really only have two modes… “Hardcore, all the way, take no prisoners” and “zero fucks given”.

I think right now I’m in the first mode. We’ll see how well I survive this week with the workload I’m giving myself.

There is also a tutorial I need to look into. Rhonda is having an issue with her face rig, but I’m not familiar with the setup she is doing. So I told her I would watch the tutorial and try it out myself and see if maybe she is getting caught somewhere.

I don’t think, with all of that, that I would be able to do the grading, too. Not without something else getting sacrificed. But already it’s almost 2 in the morning, and I want to be up at seven.

Arg.

We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck.