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Post to demonstrate I still exist
May. 30th, 2009 08:49 amNot in the mood to write much lately. Been very moody, and less convinced than ever of the value of writing. Nevertheless...
Yesterday was fun. I went into town in the morning to meet with the gallery owner who is hosting my appetizer table for next week's Art Walk. This is going to be big - about a hundred guests, from exactly the demographic I'm after. Which is to say, wealthy women with artistic sensibilities and a lot of time on their hands. I'm going to be plugging the home dinner party concept especially hard. I think this is going to get me a few gigs at least, and if I'm lucky maybe some regular clients. If the clients I want even exist in this side of the county, this is where they will be.
(Unfortunately, the REALLY wealthy ones all live on the coast and rarely venture inland. But with the coast an hour and a half away I want to try to keep it local if I can.)
Afterwards, I rode out to Lake Mendocino and went for a walk. This is the local cruising spot, with lots of little trails in the woods, but it's not exactly hopping with activity. A couple of rough and crusty guys were hanging there at a picnic table with a whole case of beer, and they seemed real friendly - arriving on a Harley is a surefire way to break the ice with these kinds of men. But I wasn't in the mood to chat them up. They were pretty hot looking (to my eyes, you know the kind I like...) but I figured the chances of it going anywhere were pretty low, and I didn't feel like being social just then. They sure laughed a lot, though, and part of me really wanted to waste the whole day with them. I bet a lot of guys like this are potentially available, but the amount of time you have to put into it is just too much.
Feeling kind of upbeat about the morning meeting, I indulged myself with some sushi and sake in town. Fresh local sea urchin! Boy was it good, way better than the horrid phlegm that gets harvested in California, then shipped to Japan and back. Really fresh uni has a finish unlike anything else, a high, rich, oceanic note that lingers in your head for a long time. Sort of like a cross between champagne and butter. It's such a strange thing, but so delicious. So, so delicious.
Otherwise I've been hanging at home, not really going anywhere, and trying to get things done. My list is so long that it's hard to do any single thing without feeling crushed by how long it's taking and the mass of what is not being done. Emotionally, it's easier to escape and do nothing, because at least then there isn't any anxiety about what you're doing not being finished yet. It's perverse and wildly counterproductive. I've tried to re-engineer my idle activities so that they are less anxiety-generating but still steer me towards useful work. My Web searching keeps bringing me back to Steve Pavlina's writing, which alternately inspires and infuriates, but mostly inspires.
John has been away for three days now - he got fiddling with the Big Expensive Analytical Tool at the company he's been working with, and he just couldn't let it go. Apparently he's on to some really cool discoveries related to calibration and data analysis. The company he's working for (without pay) has been overcome with the task of "validating" their process at the expense of actually making it work correctly. Pharma research is like that - it's so freaking bureaucratic that it is actually preferable to produce results that are "validated" but incorrect than ones that are correct but insufficiently documented. It's nuts - so much CYA bullshit that hardly any real science gets done.
Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, I realized that in his absence nothing in the garden had been watered, so I ran out to check on it. I think at least a couple of our new trees have died, which has left me feeling thoroughly depressed. They were so expensive! I'm really pissed about this, if I'd known they needed watering I would have taken care of them but it didn't even cross my mind. Dead trees are a shitty way to start the day.
To be honest, living here has been emotionally difficult. I am so sick of "ideas" - I wish I never had half the creative visions I've come up with, because most of them were doomed from the start and it's very hard to let them go. There is a basic bias in planning wherein the sum of a long list of things seems much smaller than it really is. Take, say, a grocery receipt - looking at the individual items and taking an intuitive guess at the bottom line, you'll often end up with a number around half the real total. Same with a list of goals. Each individual thing seems reasonable, but the total size of it is much larger than it seems. Accepting that so much of a vision is out of reach is really hard, almost identity-threatening for those of us who like to plan and execute. I sometimes wonder where I'd be now if we had never done this. Too late for second thoughts, and I really shouldn't even indulge them, even though I do think we did the right thing in moving here. But still, I can't help but wonder.
Fortunately, the Art Walk gig has given me some focus. Three hundred vaguely important but non-urgent tasks are very hard to deal with (yes, my list is really that long), but having an actual event provides a sense of priority that makes getting going so much easier. I feel good when the stakes are high and the goals are clear, which is why I do so well at catering. I'm not lazy, but I've got real problems with motivation. It would sure be nice if I could tackle the big, open-ended things with similar enthusiasm, I'd be practically unstoppable.
Yesterday was fun. I went into town in the morning to meet with the gallery owner who is hosting my appetizer table for next week's Art Walk. This is going to be big - about a hundred guests, from exactly the demographic I'm after. Which is to say, wealthy women with artistic sensibilities and a lot of time on their hands. I'm going to be plugging the home dinner party concept especially hard. I think this is going to get me a few gigs at least, and if I'm lucky maybe some regular clients. If the clients I want even exist in this side of the county, this is where they will be.
(Unfortunately, the REALLY wealthy ones all live on the coast and rarely venture inland. But with the coast an hour and a half away I want to try to keep it local if I can.)
Afterwards, I rode out to Lake Mendocino and went for a walk. This is the local cruising spot, with lots of little trails in the woods, but it's not exactly hopping with activity. A couple of rough and crusty guys were hanging there at a picnic table with a whole case of beer, and they seemed real friendly - arriving on a Harley is a surefire way to break the ice with these kinds of men. But I wasn't in the mood to chat them up. They were pretty hot looking (to my eyes, you know the kind I like...) but I figured the chances of it going anywhere were pretty low, and I didn't feel like being social just then. They sure laughed a lot, though, and part of me really wanted to waste the whole day with them. I bet a lot of guys like this are potentially available, but the amount of time you have to put into it is just too much.
Feeling kind of upbeat about the morning meeting, I indulged myself with some sushi and sake in town. Fresh local sea urchin! Boy was it good, way better than the horrid phlegm that gets harvested in California, then shipped to Japan and back. Really fresh uni has a finish unlike anything else, a high, rich, oceanic note that lingers in your head for a long time. Sort of like a cross between champagne and butter. It's such a strange thing, but so delicious. So, so delicious.
Otherwise I've been hanging at home, not really going anywhere, and trying to get things done. My list is so long that it's hard to do any single thing without feeling crushed by how long it's taking and the mass of what is not being done. Emotionally, it's easier to escape and do nothing, because at least then there isn't any anxiety about what you're doing not being finished yet. It's perverse and wildly counterproductive. I've tried to re-engineer my idle activities so that they are less anxiety-generating but still steer me towards useful work. My Web searching keeps bringing me back to Steve Pavlina's writing, which alternately inspires and infuriates, but mostly inspires.
John has been away for three days now - he got fiddling with the Big Expensive Analytical Tool at the company he's been working with, and he just couldn't let it go. Apparently he's on to some really cool discoveries related to calibration and data analysis. The company he's working for (without pay) has been overcome with the task of "validating" their process at the expense of actually making it work correctly. Pharma research is like that - it's so freaking bureaucratic that it is actually preferable to produce results that are "validated" but incorrect than ones that are correct but insufficiently documented. It's nuts - so much CYA bullshit that hardly any real science gets done.
Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, I realized that in his absence nothing in the garden had been watered, so I ran out to check on it. I think at least a couple of our new trees have died, which has left me feeling thoroughly depressed. They were so expensive! I'm really pissed about this, if I'd known they needed watering I would have taken care of them but it didn't even cross my mind. Dead trees are a shitty way to start the day.
To be honest, living here has been emotionally difficult. I am so sick of "ideas" - I wish I never had half the creative visions I've come up with, because most of them were doomed from the start and it's very hard to let them go. There is a basic bias in planning wherein the sum of a long list of things seems much smaller than it really is. Take, say, a grocery receipt - looking at the individual items and taking an intuitive guess at the bottom line, you'll often end up with a number around half the real total. Same with a list of goals. Each individual thing seems reasonable, but the total size of it is much larger than it seems. Accepting that so much of a vision is out of reach is really hard, almost identity-threatening for those of us who like to plan and execute. I sometimes wonder where I'd be now if we had never done this. Too late for second thoughts, and I really shouldn't even indulge them, even though I do think we did the right thing in moving here. But still, I can't help but wonder.
Fortunately, the Art Walk gig has given me some focus. Three hundred vaguely important but non-urgent tasks are very hard to deal with (yes, my list is really that long), but having an actual event provides a sense of priority that makes getting going so much easier. I feel good when the stakes are high and the goals are clear, which is why I do so well at catering. I'm not lazy, but I've got real problems with motivation. It would sure be nice if I could tackle the big, open-ended things with similar enthusiasm, I'd be practically unstoppable.
