The Cat and the Colecovision

School has been really busy lately. There are a million little things that I could be doing at any one moment, but for the last two days, I think I ran out of steam. I am definitely going to be picking back up tonight, and then of course, for the rest of the week. The plus side of everything is that I have not yet fallen behind on my major projects, but then again, it's only a beginning so far. I have to print out some things and consult with my instructors about the progress of the projects that I have been working on.

One of the projects is for a phony catalog for a fake company that we make up on our own. I chose a classic videogame company as my company because I happened to have a lot of the items left over from my past. It did not reuqire me going out and spending a bunch of money, although, truth be told. I did manage to spend a chunk of change on the center piece of the catalog, a working classic atari game system with several cartridges. The colecovision that I have left over is my own, but years of neglect and poor care have made it a little ugly. I spent more time cleaning these silly things than I did photographing them. Another issue that I will need to address at some point is my lighting. I need about another light, maybe some white gauze for a phony soft box and a reflector. Unfortunately, I only have two hands, so I can't hold four things at once while I click the shutter button and hope everything comes out right. The cat picture above is a representation of what I have been working on, minus the cat of course. I think I need to work on having more confidence with my vision for this thing. I know have an interesting idea; I just wish I could feel better about my ability to execute it. Also for this project, I drew a bunch of gophers, for the company logo.

Overall, I think things have been going well. I am on a better schedule, school is going pretty good so far (even as busy as I have been), and for social life stuff, I decided to really jump on board with the whole facebook thing. Not the quizzes and games as much as the ability to reconnect with old friends. I know that some people are already sick of it, but I am not sure if I am going to give it up as easily. I jumped on the whole personal blog bandwagon when it was popular many years ago, and even though the blog fad has worn off to a large degree, I am still plugging away at it. I feel like I should post more, but if I manage a post at least once a month, I think I am doing good.

My Break

School has started once again, and Monday will be the beginning of the second week. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this term is how I am already very busy. There are a million little things that need to be done just about each day, and it is hard not to get too overwhelmed by them. Fortunately, I think I am still on top of it. I have not turned in anything late so far, and that is always a good thing.

On the downside, I knew last term was going to be a bit of a bear because I was playing catch up from a terrible last year, but I thought I had one class nailed down well enough to get an A. It turns out I did not. The last two major projects did not meet the instructor's expectations, and that might be a result of my not consulting with her frequently about it. And that, my friends, is a hard thing for me to do, for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I feel like I am almost always am bothering someone with my issues if I end up talking to them about myself for more than two minutes. I know that there are some students who would have no problem parking themselves in the instructors office for a half hour or more monopolizing their time, but I am not that student. I guess I am the exact opposite: the student who the instructor never hears from unless there is a problem that needs to be worked out, but even then only for a minute and a half.

It will be an interesting tomorrow. I hope I have managed my time well enough to where I will not be too overburdened with work during the middle of the week.

So, catching up on personal news for a moment, I spent most of the winter break housebound. I seriously did not get out of the house except on maybe two or three occasions. I sat in my room and played games or watched television. I even took to standing outside in the cold sunlight just to feel air on my skin again. And, I suppose it goes without saying that I spent a lot of time on the internet. I did manage to draw one or two things, but I did not feel like I had the energy to work hard on my art like I thought I was going to. Fortunately, a day before school started, my sister loaned me her car for several months so I at least can finish this term with transportation. The term after that might be slightly more problematic. Getting out of the house has been nice too. (The drawback to being out and about though is spending money, something which I try very hard not to do since I hardly have any.)

One bad habit that I got on winter break was that I stayed up until 2 or 3 am in the morning and woke up at 10 am or later. This meant that my first week of school has been difficult to adjust to because my schedule has been off. It's my own fault for making that mistake of course, but I am hoping to change that soon. Today, I took a nap in the middle of the afternoon, and tonight I will go to bed at a decent hour. This, I hope, will reset my internal clock a little bit so that getting up at 6 or 7 am on Tuesdays will not present as much of a struggle as it did last week.

I did read more like I wanted to during the break, but I did not finish the book I started. I also intend on buying a notebook so I can write more often offline when the mood strikes. My overarching goal is try to be more creative and artistically accomplished with my art and various school assignments. I have two more terms to really knock this stuff out, and then it is on to finding real work at an actual job. We shall see how it goes in the next few weeks.