Now is not the time to be sleepy...
So, there's apparently an unexpected downside to soft-shoeing my way out of this funk... it means I am now together enough to be stressed! Or maybe it's just that the unexpected upside of being perpetually down on myself and freaking out every time I needed to deal with things was getting to live a little while without the looming juggling sensation that trying to keep my shit together brings...
Which is not to say that my shit or my head is entirely together yet, but I'm continuing to make progress... I'm writing this from the comfy papasan couch in my sewing room, which I hadn't just curled up in since I moved it out on my apartment a year ago, on account of how it was so buried as to be unsittable. The sewing room is still a bit of a mess, because it's where all the random knickknacks landed, and there's really not enough usable space for everything... But all the fabric is rolled up and stacked in the fabric closet rather than spilling loosely out of said closet and over a three-foot swath of the floor, the ironing board is hanging in its place against the wall rather than perched on top of a small sewing machine console/table (the machine in it is crap, I don't really use it), the tv is on the recently-vacated table with a dvd player connected to it rather than sitting in the exact middle of the floor as a lifeless obstacle, and I can access pretty much all of my sewing/drawing/musical supplies quickly and without moving any furniture. In other words, it looks like a very over-cluttered office/art cave, now, rather than a poorly-planned storage room. I may set the "finish unpacking the sewing room" project aside once I get a couple more little things dealt with in here... maybe see if I can get the big curio cabinet in the living room cleaned and organized enough that I can port some more of my knickknacks into it...
Of course, I also found a couple boxes worth of stuff in here that migrated into the bedroom, so I'll have to get some cleaning done in there AGAIN. >:(
^But yeah, above is the good of things... the rest (other than having an excellent day of LARP two weeks ago and making a pair of fabulous furry cloaks) is not so much bad, but more just a stressful variation on neutral.
I have to schedule another batch of student loan payments for tomorrow, and make hotel reservations for the USITT conference, and I have the feeling that between the two of those, my tax return is pretty much going to disappear into the aether and then some... We're fine financially, when it gets down to it, but there are enough expensive things we want or need (new mattress, office chairs, maybe some dentistry, a less crappy main tv, possibly a new washing machine, insurance...), that I'm a little afraid we might over-splurge in a way we'll only notice if I'm still unemployed three, four months from now... and although I'm fairly hopeful, I'm not exactly expecting to have a job by then...
The real stress-causer, though (on top of general "grownupping is HARD" house maintenance), is trying to get this damn portfolio ready for the conference. I've Googled my ASS off, yet I still can't find any sort of software that is designed for putting images with brief captions on a printed page (admittedly, I've been mostly looking for free software, but I haven't even seen recommendations for buyable software). Apparently, everybody that still uses a physical portfolio goes at it cut-and-paste style... which results in fairly ridiculous advice like "figure out where on the page your pictures go, then print out a page with the captions in the right place to glue the pictures to." ...WHY CAN'T YOU JUST PRINT OUT A PAGE WITH THE PICTURES AND THE CAPTIONS? And right now, all the materials I have to put in the thing are either digital-only right now, or on three different sizes of paper, or need to be cropped (usually 2 out of 3)... so really, doing all of my layout work in the computer is kind of a necessity. As I said before, I should be able to do it with a graphics program like Gimp or Corel... I have both, but neither of them are particularly intuitive *or* designed for page layout, so it will take a lot longer. Since I only have five weeks (and still need to do some material-gathering), I'm worried that I won't have anything polished enough to be worth having reviewed by a professional panel, which is sort of the whole point of this exercise...
So, I think I'm going to start with Plan B on this one - ie, a web-based portfolio. There are a lot of web-hosting services that are designed to host portfolios, a lot of them are free, and some of them are even geared specifically towards theatre. I get that done, so I'll at least have something presentable to show (even if it isn't ideal and will require taking my laptop into the interview), and then try to get the hard copy done in time as a finishing touch. I know that I'll need the website eventually, anyways, since a lot of places apparently ask for an electronic portfolio before they even decide to interview you now, but a hard copy still seems essential for taking to an actual interview... trying to talk a group of strangers through your work while you all cluster around a computer and fight over the mouse sounds just unbelievably awkward and unprofessional.
In other news, I've felt like I've just gotten up and still need a cup of coffee in order to function ALL DAY. It's after 5pm. I've been up 14 hours. But I am still SO TIRED and have gotten next to nothing accomplished today. Pretty much I got that student loan payment in somewhere between paragraphs, and that's it. I was supposed to go to the butcher's shop next door and get tasty meats for dinner... I even had El text & remind me to do that... But I didn't. Look's like prefab food AGAIN. :,(
Which is not to say that my shit or my head is entirely together yet, but I'm continuing to make progress... I'm writing this from the comfy papasan couch in my sewing room, which I hadn't just curled up in since I moved it out on my apartment a year ago, on account of how it was so buried as to be unsittable. The sewing room is still a bit of a mess, because it's where all the random knickknacks landed, and there's really not enough usable space for everything... But all the fabric is rolled up and stacked in the fabric closet rather than spilling loosely out of said closet and over a three-foot swath of the floor, the ironing board is hanging in its place against the wall rather than perched on top of a small sewing machine console/table (the machine in it is crap, I don't really use it), the tv is on the recently-vacated table with a dvd player connected to it rather than sitting in the exact middle of the floor as a lifeless obstacle, and I can access pretty much all of my sewing/drawing/musical supplies quickly and without moving any furniture. In other words, it looks like a very over-cluttered office/art cave, now, rather than a poorly-planned storage room. I may set the "finish unpacking the sewing room" project aside once I get a couple more little things dealt with in here... maybe see if I can get the big curio cabinet in the living room cleaned and organized enough that I can port some more of my knickknacks into it...
Of course, I also found a couple boxes worth of stuff in here that migrated into the bedroom, so I'll have to get some cleaning done in there AGAIN. >:(
^But yeah, above is the good of things... the rest (other than having an excellent day of LARP two weeks ago and making a pair of fabulous furry cloaks) is not so much bad, but more just a stressful variation on neutral.
I have to schedule another batch of student loan payments for tomorrow, and make hotel reservations for the USITT conference, and I have the feeling that between the two of those, my tax return is pretty much going to disappear into the aether and then some... We're fine financially, when it gets down to it, but there are enough expensive things we want or need (new mattress, office chairs, maybe some dentistry, a less crappy main tv, possibly a new washing machine, insurance...), that I'm a little afraid we might over-splurge in a way we'll only notice if I'm still unemployed three, four months from now... and although I'm fairly hopeful, I'm not exactly expecting to have a job by then...
The real stress-causer, though (on top of general "grownupping is HARD" house maintenance), is trying to get this damn portfolio ready for the conference. I've Googled my ASS off, yet I still can't find any sort of software that is designed for putting images with brief captions on a printed page (admittedly, I've been mostly looking for free software, but I haven't even seen recommendations for buyable software). Apparently, everybody that still uses a physical portfolio goes at it cut-and-paste style... which results in fairly ridiculous advice like "figure out where on the page your pictures go, then print out a page with the captions in the right place to glue the pictures to." ...WHY CAN'T YOU JUST PRINT OUT A PAGE WITH THE PICTURES AND THE CAPTIONS? And right now, all the materials I have to put in the thing are either digital-only right now, or on three different sizes of paper, or need to be cropped (usually 2 out of 3)... so really, doing all of my layout work in the computer is kind of a necessity. As I said before, I should be able to do it with a graphics program like Gimp or Corel... I have both, but neither of them are particularly intuitive *or* designed for page layout, so it will take a lot longer. Since I only have five weeks (and still need to do some material-gathering), I'm worried that I won't have anything polished enough to be worth having reviewed by a professional panel, which is sort of the whole point of this exercise...
So, I think I'm going to start with Plan B on this one - ie, a web-based portfolio. There are a lot of web-hosting services that are designed to host portfolios, a lot of them are free, and some of them are even geared specifically towards theatre. I get that done, so I'll at least have something presentable to show (even if it isn't ideal and will require taking my laptop into the interview), and then try to get the hard copy done in time as a finishing touch. I know that I'll need the website eventually, anyways, since a lot of places apparently ask for an electronic portfolio before they even decide to interview you now, but a hard copy still seems essential for taking to an actual interview... trying to talk a group of strangers through your work while you all cluster around a computer and fight over the mouse sounds just unbelievably awkward and unprofessional.
In other news, I've felt like I've just gotten up and still need a cup of coffee in order to function ALL DAY. It's after 5pm. I've been up 14 hours. But I am still SO TIRED and have gotten next to nothing accomplished today. Pretty much I got that student loan payment in somewhere between paragraphs, and that's it. I was supposed to go to the butcher's shop next door and get tasty meats for dinner... I even had El text & remind me to do that... But I didn't. Look's like prefab food AGAIN. :,(