Despite frequent hand-issues (just pain, it goes away with rest) I've managed to do quite a lot of drawing in phases. A few minutes on, an hour off, something like that. It worked out pretty well and I feel really good about the results. I've almost finished the four seasons set (always something left to tweak...) and took out bits to create two nice and calm backgrounds:
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I made spring. With flowers and blossoms (or at least, I aimed for that). This probably means I finished the series, but I’ll just let it soak for a bit. Probably want to…
I made another design for my spreadshirt shop, one that I particularly enjoy. Now to get my family to order them… ;)
I may have gone a little nuts / overboard, but they have so many things...
I'm currently in love with the scarves but have not yet ordered one. They look so nice and I especially love the two-tones. I've picked flock printing for most of the scarves, this means they'll use a soft print (velvet-y) instead of the more plastic-like normal prints. Aaaah....
I've also added a bunch of glow in the dark things, edited my designs so they would work better with light on dark.
Now excuse me while I go drool at the scarves some more...
I’ve had this one in my head for a long time. Even started painting it (with real paint, yes). I don’t know why, but today I had to do something with it, suddenly.
So I did.
And she floats.
Meet the three musketeers. They feel a bit lonely sometimes so who knows, I might add more. These little fellows happily sat around on my hard drive waiting till I’d finish them up. Today I did.
See how that makes them happy?
Hurray!
For completion sake, I decided to post the bit to create a new task in a new or existing project in OmniFocus through AppleScript. I have this in my script that creates tasks from my mail.
If you know a bit of AppleScript, this should help out. If I have the energy, I might post the entire script later and explain the parts.
In this case, it took longest to figure out the following part:
tell MyProject
set theTask to make new task with properties¬
{name:MyTaskTopic, context:MyContext, note:ThisNote}
end tell
Apparently, when creating a new task you have to tell the project. If you want to set the context, you instead tell the task to set its context property to something.
This does make sense, in the way that you always tell the containing item to do something.
I use OmniFocus a lot, and have recently tweaked some more AppleScripts to make my workflow even more smooth. I can add any mail to OmniFocus for replies, add confirmation of orders from mail to OmniFocus which will automatically go into my project-shoebox for orders, with a 'waiting for' context and a due date set to 1 week into the future, unless I've changed or added MailTags with a project, a keyword and a due date. In that case it'll take the project, the first keyword and the due date and use them to set up the OmniFocus task. I have a few more scripts:
All these scripts make the integration between all these programs very easy. That and FastScripts.
I found useful scripts over at Curtis Clifton's site. His scripts use Growl notification so if you have Growl installed you get a small notification.
I had some trouble putting my own scripts together, so I decided to paste the info here, just in case I need it later on, or someone else runs into similar issues. I found it quite hard to figure out how to add a task to an existing project or to move it from inbox / other project. In the end, it only took a few lines.
This makes 3 out of 4 seasons, only 1 left. I’ve made them pretty square so far, however, I will tweak some more and make them all into desktop-backgrounds (normal and wide).
I started digitising the earlier sketch cause I couldn’t really sleep anyway. Now my hand hurts.
But it looks cool.
Sister asked me to ‘design’ a wall for her son’s new room. I made an initial (quick) sketch on my computer which I’ll work out in more detail.
It storms a bit today. Lots of rain and wind. I’ve decided to stay inside, apart from the quick trips with Nano. When I looked out of my window onto my balcony, I saw this little one.
It scurried about, probably looking for either food or shelter. Managed to snap a quick shot of it before it ran of because I scared it with a camera in its face.
It did come back a few minutes later though, trying to access the house. Hmm…
On August 15 of this year, I had my birthday. I spent it mostly ill (in bed), as I did most of the other days at HAR2009. Not what I had in mind.
I’ve spent most of the days since also mostly ill, either in bed or on the sofa.
It started with tendinitis in my neck, on the right side. Then it went to the left side. Then I had it in both sides. Then my shoulders, my elbows, my thumbs. My knees and feet and recently, my right hip. Mostly not all at the same time, it switches. Just as I think it has gone, it starts somewhere else. I’ve had tendinitis before, and know that the best way to get rid of it means a lot of rest and also a good dose of anti-inflammatories. I’ve taken a lot of rest. But not so many anti-inflammatories. See, they have this nasty habit of irritating your stomach and intestines, and as I don’t have the stomach anymore, my intestines get the full blow. This makes it harder to eat. So for the past 2.5 weeks I’ve juggled with the tendinitis and the rest and the pills and the eating. It slowly seems to improve, very slowly.
One of the contributing factors of my recurring tendinitis, my RA, will hopefully improve somewhat soon. I have started methotrexate injections (no more pills because they, you guessed it, cause gastro-intestinal problems) which should prove more effective and help with my pains. Other factors however, don’t have such an easy solution.
Stress plays a major role and unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of it. I’ve had appointments with my podiatrist for insoles, my RA-nurse for learning how to inject methotrexate and had to go to the pharmacy to get all the stuff. Also had to go buy groceries (a girl’s gotta eat), make at least part of my flat ‘injection-ready’ (the methotrexate requires a bit more care than the B12 injections) and eat. And eating hasn’t really gone well lately, so I had to spend extra time and extra care with the eating. Buying groceries doesn’t help with the tendinitis if I do it in bulk, so I had to do it in bits, which adds more to the stress.
Currently, I have a full-time job taking care of myself and doing all the necessary health related things, and not much, if any, energy left for other things, like say, socializing or ‘fun stuff’. I have tried hard to keep up with what others expected from me, and have found that despite their attempts to understand and to deal with what I go through, they really can’t if I keep on trying to keep up with them. I spend a lot of energy doing (or trying to do) what I think I should do, what I think others expect from me (or what they have expressed) and what I think I can do. But what I think I can do doesn’t equal what I can (and stay sane and relatively healthy). What I think I can do already lies above what I really can do.
I spend lots of time reacting to things that happen, trying to make the best of them, trying to keep up, trying to appear normal.
No more, I say! I will not spend my precious little amount of energy feeling lived and not actually living.
No more reacting, time to act on my own.
No more trying to keep up, if I can’t, I can’t, suck it up! Don’t try and ‘encourage’ me, please.
No more pushing myself to eat things I know that don’t work (hello, bread), because they make me feel like crap later on.
No more not having control over my life, my self, my sanity. I will not do it anymore.
I’ve grabbed my copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen and I will re-read it to see if I can tweak my system to help me out more with my health-related stuff and possibly the eating.
Eating takes up about 90% of my energy (no, not kidding, totally serious unfortunately) and I need to get a better grip on it.
I need to think the other things through, before I go out and do them. Yes, this means more planning and less spontaneity, a small price to pay for actually getting more healthy and getting a bit more sane. It may seem (too?) neurotic to most, for me it comes down to a way to survive and actually start living my life again. I’d very much enjoy that.
I wish I could also say ‘No more pain!’, however, I don’t have that much control over my RA. I will do what I can to ease that pain, and wait patiently for that cure, but not holding my breath in the meantime ;)
