Things Done This Week: January 11th-17th, 2014 - Rob Farquhar, Host and Presenter

Boy, does it feel good being back on a big screen…

After a few weeks of inactivity, I figured I was taking the Desktop PC Adventure nowhere (I wound up doing other things on the weekends, like shopping and housework) and, as I mentioned in last week’s update, I kept getting frustrated with working on the netbook – especially as I intend to (GUNNA ALERT!) do some more graphic intensive work.

So this Saturday gone, I nipped out to Harvey Norman and asked them about their interest free terms. I’m now the proud eventual-owner of an HP Pavilion 500-131a, and boy am I happy with the darned thing. Windows 8 is something of a learning curve, but it’s still more than familiar enough to work from.

And all you Steam users out there, steady on – even if I didn’t have other things I’m itching to do, I still only have 25GB of activity per month to work with; Space Hulk and Borderlands (the original, not the sequel) are it for now.

But enough of that: What were my small wins this week?

Routine Things:

Meditated for five minutes: Sat, Sun, Tue, Thu, Fri.
Wrote for two ten-minute stretches: Sat – Mon, Wed, Fri (mostly journaling but also brainstorming and writing e-mails and blog posts).
Wrote for one ten-minute stretch: Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri.
Sketched for two ten minute stretches: Mon – Wed.
Sketched for one ten minute stretch: Sun, Thu, Fri.
Exercised: Sun, Fri.

Writing Things:

Updated blog: Sun.

Small Wins:

Solved a problem for some colleagues at work. It’s something that will help the initial client process go a little easier, I think, and all it took was a list in an e-mail. Win!

Adventurous Things:

Bought a new computer. Some might argue that acquiring a new debt isn’t really adventurous (I might partway agree with you) and that I’m depriving myself of the opportunity to get my Mad PC Skillz back again (ditto) – but having A PC That Works takes a big source of frustration out of my life and allows me to get started on some things that were just flat-out impossible on the netbook. Plus, I’m sick of beating myself up over some things. This, I am worth.
Getting back into sketching. Between this and the guitar, I’m discovering what it is to Suck At The Beginning again. Thankfully, that boot camp last year taught me that I can persevere through any discomfort, and I’ve been learning a lot about how I draw.

How am I feeling?

Well, even though I’m feeling good about getting back into drawing I still get frustrated about how seemingly not far I’ve come. I want to be as good as, say, Ian McConville in the early days of Mac Hall right now (though I’d really love to be this good already).

I’m not sure whether to be sad or glad that such a thing is impossible.

I also feel like I ought to be putting more time into writing other things than journal entries – like scripts. For what? Well, I don’t want to set another Gunna Alert off, but I think you might have a pretty good idea by now…

Another thing I want to do a bit better is get on top of where I put everything. Vickie and I are still trying to track her PrintMaster discs down after the last home office decluttering and I’m still working to master the art of managing my Next Actions Lists.

Maybe I just need to spend a bit more time meditating. Everything comes in its own, good time…