Sunday Radio

It's Sunday, so all the radio stations are on their second-string DJs running their third-string playlists. There's no reason in the world why Sunday radio should be any worse than the rest of the week, but that's how it seems to come out. Even the DJ-less stations seem to pick up that it's Sunday and downgrade the rotation accordingly. Fortunately, I have a CD player. Unfortunately, my brain is locked into Sunday radio mode. First-rate ideas and thoughts don't seem to be coming through for all the second-rate junk and general static.

I'm writing this while waiting for ink to dry on a potential Skyhaven template. (I always say "potential" when I ink a template because sometimes, between the sketching and the scanning and the cleanup, a beautiful idea turns into unusable garbage. It works the other way sometimes - an afterthought doodle can scan and clean into a great little critter - but usually it goes good-to-bad.) My work on the site overhaul has slowed a bit after the initial burst of energy. I've reached the point where I've pretty much done what I want to do (for now) to the main part, and it's time to set up the subdomain and redo the Hunt. This, as one might imagine, is a far more monumental task, and one best not attempted on a Sunday-radio brain.

Speaking of things Sunday-radio minds aren't suited for, I'm still struggling to grasp Flash 4. The part of my brain with no concept of budgets wonders if I shouldn't look into a newer version to see if it's any more user-friendly. This is also the part of my brain that says my Pentium III computer's heading the way of the Commodore in terms of relevance, and that I ought to look into an upgrade. I have one book on learning Flash 4, but so far it's not being as helpful as it could be, either jumping straight ahead to the mind-boggling complexities of Actionscript or lagging behind the tutorials that came with Flash 4. Still, I'm pushing ahead. I think what I really need to do is stop thinking in terms of mega-complicated Flash games and come up with some nice, simple (or relatively simple) "starter" projects and go from there.

I've been working on my second/third resolutions (related to creating more, and on a more consistent basis.) Having just finished reading a book on writing (Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg), I figured I'd try implementing a few of her exercises. Not all of them, as they seem primarily geared toward poets or writers of nostalgia/reality-based works, but a few of them. Of primary interest was the exercise of writing about something - anything - for a set amount of time a day, completely unrelated to any books or stories or anything else one is actually hoping to show the rest of the world someday. The instructions are to write anything that springs to mind and follow it wherever it goes, even if it seems silly or stupid or otherwise pointless. I've been at it for about four days, and so far I may have the roots of a new story (hopefully short, but that's what I always hope), but it's hard not to feel like I'm just killing time, even if I do understand the end goal (breaking down the internal barriers that lead one to stare in blank-minded terror at an empty page while the mental literary critic mauls every semblance of an idea that happens along.)

One part of my life that hasn't been spinning its wheels or drowning in mental static has been my new job. My two-week review seemed to go pretty well. Right now, I'm looking forward to my first paycheck from the library. I should probably get my budget in order before it arrives so I can get right back into the habit of tracking income versus expenses. (I kinda let that habit lapse during my days of unemployment, as it was just too depressing.) Again, not something today's brain seems to be ready to deal with.

I suppose I ought to check on that template, and maybe start working on another one. Sketching's one thing I can usually convince myself to do, even if I have to listen to Sunday radio while doing it.