xmas time was here

"Don't have a crush on someone who isn't single."
Wise words from my most recently married friend.

Been watching a lot of the American version of Shameless over the break because I signed up for a Showtime free trial on my amazon prime. I got to season 3, episode 9 before my 7 day trial ran out.
This playlist is almost as good as watching an episode: Lip's Truth or Dare  Because Lip is the greatest.

Since I've been home for a week, I've taken this time to look through my old crap to see if it's worth keeping. I am trying to get rid of all of these extra things that I have for no reason, but I truly am a sentimental person. It's a struggle. My favorite thing I've looked at so far is this composition book I kept in 2007 that just has all these random lists and events that happened. I really liked that record keeping aspect. I felt less connected to the dramatic emotional entries and also all these notes I have from other people. There is something really nice about keeping a record of your life events for lookbacks. On keeping a log book - Austin Kleon. I have a hard time remembering things. And I think it might be because everything that happens to me is mundane.
I constantly remind myself not to compare, but I've had some moments of weakness lately because this guy that I'm always on-again-off-again (currently off, I think. Haven't talked in 7 days.) is 4 years older than me and had apparently lived this crazy life unbeknownst to me. He tells me these grand tales and I have absolutely nothing to tell about that is even half as crazy as his. All the stories I muster up sound so pitiful even as they're coming out of my mouth. And my problem is not even about me not living a crazy life, because I don't have a real desire to. I just wish I was a better story teller. I guess that's what it boils down to.
I admire storytellers.


For future reference:
Here's what I got for Christmas 2015...

+All these books!

+Brother laser printer
+high yield toner cartridge
+my phone! (I dropped it on Nov 21st and I spent way too much money to get it fixed for myself for Christmas)
+Cadbury chocolate balls
+flat waterbottle
+3 pairs of Vans(grey with turquoise, all you need is love, skulls)
+jeans and lacy shirt from old navy
+Ticket to Ride(this is a shared gift with the fam)
+some other cool stuff that I can't remember so I might edit this later.

repellent

I hate to admit this, but one of those stupid facebook quizzes really fucked me up.

I keep thinking about it over and over. It was one called 'how easy to love are you?' and my friend JG got 101% and Smells got 7% and I was laughing to myself like ha, I'm totally more lovable. And goddammit I only got 1%. That fucker said I'm hard to love.

To make things worse, I'm trying not to take it personally that nobody invited me to see star wars for the opening today. I'm a little bit hurt though.

I want to be that cool person that's happy that my "friends" (just kidding about the quotes) are happy and seeing a movie franchise they love, even if I'm also a little jealous that I am apparently easily forgotten.

This all very much has to do with the fact that I have been feeling like I've been taking care of everybody around me lately and there's nobody to take care of me. I mean, I am taken care of. I'm spoiled as hell. It's kind of nice to feel like I'm being taken care of though. 

I have to get my oil changed tomorrow and I have never had to go by myself and I feel very anxious about it.

Sleepy

I've skipped class for the 19 millionth time. I'm not going to make it. I'm contented to the idea of flunking.
I've lost one of my tiny gray sketchbooks and it has one of my best ideas in it. My idea for a bearoh logo is in there and there's also some cool hand lettering of the word 'scariest' in there. I made the mistake of losing it before I took pictures of the pages. I've been trying to re-trace my steps, but I have very few hopes of it's return.
I really just want to watch game of thrones and cuddle with the boy I like.
But who doesn't want to do that really. We all want that.

Here's a collection of things that probably only I find funny

These are the kind of things that are supposed to be fleeting moments that you just keep locked up in your memory. But there's technology that can capture these things and I am greedy and I want to keep the memories as pristine as possible.

unordered lists

Here's an article I came across a little while ago about this sketchbook thing that I love. WOW it is so cool. In my daydreams, I'm very organized and put together so this technique really gets me going. I'm totally going to use this for that random stack of recipes I have and I may even venture into using it for my other notebooks that I drag around with me everywhere so that I don't forget stuff. I'm all about digitizing, but notebooks are just so much better at recording things that are spewing out of your brain too fast that you just can't type fast enough. Also, notebooks are so much more true because they can't be edited without trace of the previous version. Except now that I'm thinking about it... it's hard to edit things once their out in the internet, too. So maybe notebooks aren't more real... Just real in a different way.



I read this other thing recently that said if you want to grow your followers on your blog you need to have a clear idea and topic for each post and then I stopped reading because I was like, "Ha, no."

my brain is on it's own

I'm having one of those days where everything makes me cry. I almost cried in class, like, 4 or 5 times. Thankfully we were having a video watching day & the lights were dim and nobody could really tell I hope. It's a combination of menstruation and lack of sleep, which if you didn't know, is a lethal emotional cocktail.

I did that thing again where I'm too much and it weirds the people out that I really want to like me. It's kind of a masochistic compulsion.

I also keep doing this thing when somebody praises me repeatedly where I can't handle it and I feel like I have to disappoint them to make things even again. I can't recognize that it's happening until I've already done it so I haven't figured out a way to stop the demented cycle.

I probably need to see a doctor.

eureka moments

I was reading Swiss Miss and could not resist clicking on this tea towel because it says "cooking as therapy" on it. And then I had an epiphany.
One of my professors keeps bringing up this idea of introspection (or maybe that's not the word he kept saying, but that's the only word I can think of right now). That phenomenon where you're doing something that is physical and takes only a little bit of brain power, like when you're driving on a long stretch of highway that you've been down a zillion times before, and you think of a great solution to that problem you were having.
Anyway, that day in class, I said that my thing is probably knitting and baking and my prof was like well there's a different kind of thinking that takes place when you're baking and I argued with him for a couple seconds and then the conversation changed to something else, and that was that. While I do think that there is a bit of that relaxed, introspection that can take place while habitual baking, I didn't realize until I read that tea towel from earlier that what definitely happens for me is therapy. I like the give and take when baking and cooking. It's something I can control. And that's nice because I've been slapped in the face lately with the fact that I'm a control freak. I'm not super thrilled about it because I'm caught up with the negative connotations. Oh, the graphic designer blues.
I haven't baked in a while and I realized that I really miss it. I think I'll make some cupcakes this weekend. Just in time to celebrate my favorite holiday.

life RIGHT NOW

I wish I could find somebody to pay(not with money, because I don't have any money) to do my figure drawing assignments for me. It's not that I don't want to do them, I just don't want to spend valuable time on them when I could be finishing something, anything for graphic design.
I feel very overwhelmed by the amount of work I should be producing, but am certainly not producing. I say all this while I'm writing this blog post. Very counter productive. I could be spending this time right now actually working towards completing something. BUT isn't there something to be said for taking some time for yourself to do exactly what you want to do and not what you have to do. I'm trying to make my life better here!

One of my profs told us the other day to be proud of everything that you present to clients. If you're presenting  your work to someone and you're like ugh I hope they don't pick that one, it's the worst one I did, then why the heck did you give them the option to pick the worst one. I really liked the idea of that, but I also understand that sometimes I can only come up with crappy ideas and that's all I got. Sometimes I just hate what I make. Sometimes it surprises me when people enjoy what I make. So I dunno.

My pinterest is full of typography and food, which makes me so happy.

Currently, I'm doing a brain dump and writing down everything that is on my to do list and things that I just want to do. I'm trying to organize my life hour by hour so that hopefully I can be ahead of everything instead of way behind like I currently am. I feel doubtful that I will know how to pick times accurately, but I'll have to try. I cannot continue to pull all-nighters multiple times a week. From what I understand about life as a designer, I won't be able to cut them out completely. I just want to sleep. I love sleep. It's one of my favorite parts of the day.

The cool and also terrifying thing about life is that you can sleep for an entire day and life will still continue. You can work harder than you've ever worked in your life and the world will continue on. I'm having one of those mid semester crisises where I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm bothering to be so stressed out about it. I am stressed though. So so stressed.

The movie Snowpiercer fucked me up.

Here's a thing that happened. In one of my assignments from class, we had to submit the design to cottonbureau.com at the deadline as a part of the assignment. And my design got picked! It's very cool and exciting, but the shirts are really expensive. Also, I feel like they really make designers do a lot, but maybe their shirts are really high quality. But 13 people spent $33 because they love me very much. And that feels pretty okay.

knit or die 4ever

Don't trust a perfect person and don't trust a song that's flawless

I've watched quite a few videos of 21 pilots live performances and I've noticed that Josh Dun is so bouncy.


I have those after birthday blues. I don't know what it is. Maybe I build my birthday up too much and when it happens it never lives up to expectations. I mean, I know that nothing lives up to expectations, so I'm not sure why I'm surprised every year. It's not even that bad. I'm just being whiny.

You know it really bothers me when people say that you have to be "open" to having a relationship and to "not worry"and to just "ignore it" and it'll happen. One of my best friends is funnily having interactions with my handsome co-worker and I simultaneously hate her and want to be her. I don't really hate her. I could never. She should hate me actually. I'm a terrible friend. I'm very dramatic today.

I want to have a friend that tells me if my profile picture looks like me. I don't really care if I look good; I want to look realistic. I want to look how I look on a normal day-to-day.

College starts back on wednesday and I didn't get anything done related to my portfolio. Bah.

summer vacation

Staying at a hotel, or I mean staying in this hotel room, has made me realize how strangely similar it is to your own house, but things have been worn down in ways that you don't know about, by strangers.

Staying with G in a room is not as bad as I had assumed. She snores just a bit. The thing that's annoyed me the most has been her asking if I've locked the car doors every time we get out of the car. I've since asked her to stop that and she was only a little butthurt about it.

I felt embarrassed when we ate at Panini Pete's today because I had some chair problems. The kind of chairs they had were plastic patio chairs and as I was sitting on it, the legs started bowing out from underneath me. I hoped that it wasn't noticeable, but I was self conscious about it and I think I heard this family talking about it. Then when we were standing outside and I was waiting on G to get done in the bathroom, I heard one of the waitstaff say to another, "Yeah, that one needs a wipe down. It just had two glasses. And probably a new chair." That was shitty.

A lady at an art gallery saw my Einstein shirt and recommended a biography on Einstein by Walter Isaacson. She also recommended his book on Steve Jobs.

I haven't gotten a sunburn and that's all that really matters.

Consecutive

Doing 'Daily Things' is hard. I'm as consecutive as the weather is good. Does that sentence make sense? I'm like the weather.

My 100 day project has been neglected, but I'm going to finish it by September 8th. I'm going to! Maybe. I might give up. But I feel guilty about it.

I also have this 5 year journal that I haven't written in since June 18. So there's that. It's not that bad because I usually just go back through and fill in stuff with the help of social media and texts and random photos I took. Then I make stuff up for the rest of the days. But that's a while back.
I am supposed to be working on a very professional logo for my cousin-in-law. I was asked to do it probably around a year and a half ago. I was kind of hoping he forgot, but he just asked about it again recently. I don't know what I'm doing.
And I feel that way most of the time now. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing on that project. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know what I'm doing with my hair. I'm constantly overwhelmed. I constantly feel like I'm agreeing to help people and then disappointing them. Very spiral-y. 

retrospect

Thoughts from spring 2015 semester, now that it's waaay in the rear view mirror.

*Now, I notice type, logos, & packaging on everything. I can't tell if I love that or hate that. No, wait, yes I absolutely love it. I just have to remember that literally only other graphic designers get excited about those things. Every one else gives no shits.
*I have no idea how I would get anything done without social media. I know the internet gets a bad wrap for being a distraction, but after this semester, I have a new appreciation. There were so many times that I needed to get in touch with somebody from class and I just looked to see if anyone was online. It really made me remember all those times I stayed up on AIM in middle school.
*Also, that social media thing is a double edged sword. Sometimes I dream about going dark and cutting ties with the internet, but it would really hurt me because I couldn't get in touch with anyone I need to for school.
*I am constantly struggling to be creative. I want to keep the vigor going from the semester, but I also want to slow down because the semester was crazypants.
*I'm completely scared to graduate. Last semester felt so real. I was and still feel completely unprepared. There are so many things.

Here are some arts from my favorite professor's classes:

As far as I could tell, we were allowed almost free reign on our projects. They had to be based on a piece during the art period we studied. Otherwise, anything. Any art medium. I made A's in all his classes so I guess I did it right. Every single one of these, I put on the back burner and finished them at the very last minute. Almost all of them turned out so much better than I could've hoped and probably even better than anything from any of my other classes.

My first project from Dr. J's class was this cactus guy. I have him sitting on top of a shelf in my room and every time a newbie walks into my room, they comment on how creepy he is. It's not his fault. He's a Cactus Man! (Based on Redon's Cactus Man.) He's the only one of his kind. He is just lonely.
The other is a master copy painting of a Mondrian that I can't remember the name of and some sugar cookies I made based on another Mondrian. I spent a lot of time making the sugar cookies and then I was worried that Prof J would be displeased with the medium of baked goods so I hastily painted the other piece.

I know I already posted this one, but for the sake of continuity, here it is again. '2 Hearts'

These two are the same painting. Based on a still from Repo Man.

This skeleton finished up my personal skeleton theme I had going last semester. It's a super poorly done master copy of De Humani Corporis. I am actually super embarrassed about these two because they are so crappy. The vader one is a simplified movie poster. 

 My De Palma pieces. A stationary package for Swan from Phantom of the Paradise and the birthday cake from Sisters. This was another case where I wanted to just use the cake as my project, but since I just bought the cake from a bakery, I wasn't sure if it would count so I just threw together the stationary package. When I got to class that day and showed my project, Prof J was like, 'why did you bring 2 things? You could have just brought one.'

Hello old friend

I am making my triumphant return to blogging. I have missed you so.


Recently at a party I went to, someone that I met brought up that it's weird how close graduates of Bob Jones still are. Are all graduates of BJHS this close? Is it just 2009? I wouldn't say we are all as close as we were in those days, but I wouldn't hesitate to invite any of my high school friends out to eat, or to a party, or anywhere really. This guy should be so glad that we BJHS graduates are so friendly that we would be friends with the likes of him, or something.
I noticed at parties that people like to ask who you know at the party and how you know them. And at this particular party, because I didn't go to college where the rest of them did, my only connection is BJHS. Like I know, who cares that we all went to the same high school.
I was snooping on a friend's text conversation and the person he was texting had asked "Pharmacy people?" and he responded, "A family friend's party." And unless my spy skills are pretty bad, (& they are so take this observation with a grain of salt.) he was referring to the party that he was at and why didn't he just say friends from high school. Is it really that taboo? Apparently it's a big faux pas.
This observation is really of no consequence to me. What else am I going to do to escape my little brother while I'm at home? Make new friends with strangers? Ha.

There was another dude at that party that apparently graduated high school with the rest of us, but I definitely felt like I was meeting him for the first time. He was like, yeah! I know you! we had a few classes together! But I did not remember this character at all. So it's not all bj graduates that are connected. It's just the people like us who spent so much time with each other during those 3 years.

the haircut

On June 19, I got the most drastic haircut of my life so far.

Right now I'm sitting at V's desk typing this post, trying not to think about the pink splotches on my best white shirt from my recent purple dye job. It's on my shirt so it's probably on my neck, too. Since it's only freaking 10:18am and I have so many more hours to go before I can crawl back into bed, here are my thoughts on my hair, 5 days gone by.

• I've spent too much money on this haircut. The haircut cost $40, I bought $10 volumizing powder & a $14 straightener. What am I doing? I don't have this kind of money! 
• I don't really like how the right side(the short side) looks, but I'm optimistic that it'll look better as it grows.
• I have no idea how to style the left side(the long side). There's too much hair there, but I don't want to cut it off because it's the only hair I've got. Maybe I can floof it up and it'll look better.
• One of my co-workers just talked to me for way longer than normal. Probably doesn't have anything to do with my hair though.
• Another co-worker talked to me less than normal. Probably because I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to use words. Ugh. Why does he have to be so cute?
• I have noticed that I touch my hair so so much when I'm nervous. I noticed because I have way less to touch now.
• I have also noticed that I'm glad that nobody seems to care about my hair. The only negative-type comment I've gotten was from my grandmother & it wasn't even bad, just kind of passive aggressive.
• My dad and bro have both said on separate occasions that I look like Lena Dunham now.
• I don't know if I actually like this haircut all that much. I might become a hat wearer. I like it okay, I guess. It's different and I love different. Sometimes I desperately just want plain long brown hair again. Sometimes.

This was after I went to supercuts to get some of the bulk shaped up.

Week 1 of 100 days

If you've been following along on my instagram, you'd know that I've been willingly participating in a form of self-imposed monotony. My summer class professor brought up the idea during the last week of class, that we should all do it. The 100 day project. It wouldn't be the actual one because that one started in April. So I decided I would do it. I gave myself until June 1st to think of something to do and then start.
I've begun to really respect the self control it takes to do something everyday. It's really hard. It sucks. But I'm doing it. I'm going to do it as long as I can. It's about the process, not the finished product. As I was deciding on a topic, I found that I really liked the projects that were pretty specific and kind of had a string of connection the whole way through. I wanted to do something that was specific, but the idea of doing something in the same style for 100 days feels so daunting right now. Maybe for the next 100. I decided to give myself the parameters of a 4.125" x 6" canvas and it's gotta say happy birthday somehow. I like switching from digital to analog and back again & I wanted to make sure I built in that flexibility into my prompt.
I really am drawn to this project because I like that I can do whatever the hell I want. I can put shitty type with shitty colors and be done. I'm very excited about that freedom. I like that it's actual "art" that isn't school related at all.

And now onto the outtakes from this week!

Day One-
I finished this one at about 11:30pm on June 1. If I hadn't already decided that I was going to follow the rules on this one, I'd probably have done it over and made the dots more even. I've got to take a better picture of this though. I discovered that when it gets dark, my room is horrible for photography. Plus I suck at photographs. I'm hoping this project forces me to get better.

Day Two-
I had this idea about spray paint and stencils. The finished postcard is definitely not how I envisioned my idea. It's okay.

Day Three-
I really need to figure out how to do this 100 days thing while still working on other creative projects that I'd like to get done over the summer. I've been spending a ton of time daydreaming about how I'll say happy birthday next. Too much time, I'd say. I saw a friend of mine this day & she said she thought I picked the perfect major for myself, which I thought was really cool of her to say.

Day Four-
It took me a long time to do the highlighter background so when I messed up on the lettering, I didn't really want to bother to re-do it.

Day Five-
DOUGHNUTS. It was national donut day plus I love doughnuts. I had to go along with the occasion. Putting the sprinkles on there took forever and it didn't even look that great. But hey, I tried. I put the sprinkles on there and took these photos, then I went to staples to get them printed on 100lb paper. I cut them to 4.125x6 and then I took another picture of the physical postcard for instagram.

Day Six-
So this was the first card where I had a person in mind like I was making it for them, instead of just a vague idea to go by. I really like how it turned out compared to the others. It makes sense because they always tell us in GD classes to design for your audience.  I roped my father into helping me take a photo. He said, "You're nuts."

Day Seven-
I must admit that this one was done a few days in advance. I bought some candies last Thursday and then I arranged them and photographed them. I got the card printed today at Office Max. For Future Reference: I've got to remember to tell the person I'm printing from to not scale the pdf.