Score printed, parts printed, rough cover design hurled together at 1.30am, notes written, everything bound, envelope bought and addressed. And yes, finally, Deconstruct: Point, line, plane has gone out into the world in its guise as a piece for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trombone and piano. Suppose I’ll find out what its fate will be soon enough…
Tagged with: completion, composition, music | Add a comment
Just because I don’t have enough to do, I’m taking on the Creative Pact challenge. Yup, that’s it. Not content with the 50 + tasks on my to-do list, I’m deciding to go forth and take up a new challenge. Except that actually it’s an old challenge combined with a new challenge. And it’s something that’s been on my to-do list for rather longer than it ought. 3 years at least, in fact. So I figure the time has come to do something about it.
So what is this thing, I hear you clamour? Well, you’ll be amazed to hear that it’s a website. Wow. That shook you, didn’t it? But not just any website. It’s bugged me for a while (see the thing about 3 years) that my minim-media.com site is such a mish-mash of stuff – music, publication, webstuff, writing, blog, photography – most of which don’t really belong on a business site, and mostly they just serve to take focus away from the music stuff, so I’m rethinking it all and want to build a site that’s music-focused (but not exclusively) and which will be a better forum for random me-stuff too: sort of a digital exploration of caitlin-the-composer covering all the various bits that actually go into my music. The new challenge is that I want to use this project to learn more about HTML5 and CSS3.
So my Creative Pact is that I’ll do a bit of work every day for the month of September (advance warning now that I’ll be in Paris for a week later in the month, so posting may not happen every day but I’ll try to at least do the work every day) with the goal of sending the site live on 30 September. That’s the plan.
Because work on this may cover a number of categories and overlap with some other stuff (design, art, music, etc.) I’ll tag each post on here that’s related to the pact with creativepact2010 so they can be easily perused as a group (because no doubt I’ll still be baking and walking and composing in between, so it could get muddled otherwise).
Tagged with: blogging, code, completion, experimenting, incentives, self-promotion, web | Add a comment
Yes, the piece is done, printed, ready to post. Trying hard not to think about work tomorrow and the big new project I’m working on this week…
Tagged with: completion, composition, music | Add a comment
BIG-time. Don’t ever recall having this much of a struggle before. But gradually the work’s getting done. And in the meantime, oatmeal biscuits have been baked and a fantastic new dish – a Jamie Oliver roast cherry tomato and sausage bake thingy – tested and given the thumbs up for future experiments.
Tagged with: baking, composition, cooking, music | Add a comment
Made a batch of raspberry muffins with the raspberries left over from yesterday’s apple & raspberry crumbles. There were exactly enough for 3 raspberries in each muffin, which led to an amusing result: happy-face muffins!
Unfortunately, the happiest of them turned out to be living a lie – he committed suicide off the edge of the bench as I was turning them out onto the cooling rack.
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A good friend gave me a talking-to on Friday about how I’m always trying to do too much. And he’s right. I woke up absolutely hating everything today. The house is too neutral, I was disappointed with the work the landlord had done in the bathroom – he seems to do everything on the cheap and often without consideration for how it looks or functions, so in changing the shower setup so we can shower without crouching, he removed the good quality, perfectly functional and convenient mixer tap and replaced it with two cheap taps, so we no longer have the convenience of staggering, half-asleep into the bathroom & just lifting the mixer tap, knowing it’s on the right temperature – we’re back to faffing around with trying to get the temperature right before we can step in. And they’re the sort of taps where the colour panels on top start unwinding themselves the instant you start to use them. And the plumber put them on the wrong way round so hot says cold and vice versa. Small things, but enough to set off an attack of the glums.
So I spent a fair chunk of the morning thinking about how I can make the house brighter and better and feel more like home than rental accommodation. And I think I’ve at least settled on a palette of red, orange and teal. It’s kind of hard to make stuff go with the oatmealy walls because they’re neutral but not truly neutral – in the kitchen, for example, depending on the time of day and available light, like right now (overcast, indoor lighting on) one wall looks pale yellow, the other looks almost apricot. But it’s the same colour. So I think strong colours are really the only way to tackle it. Anything else will be wishy washy.
On the plus side, this fit of frustration made me get up and do some tidying and cleaning and to write some lists of all the things we need to buy or get done before my parents arrive in about 3 weeks’ time. I put on the CD of Tripod vs the Dragon which we bought at the show in Edinburgh (awesome!) and sorted a bunch of stuff out.
Djelibeybi had to go to Andover in the evening so I caught the train with him as far as Shepherd’s Bush, bought some stuff for dinner and wandered round the shops & finally caved on the beautiful little red & orange Le Creuset Poterie ramekins I’ve been eyeing off for at least 2 years. They were a little more expensive than I’d seen them elsewhere, but I was so desperate for colour that I just thought ‘sod it’ and took them to the counter… Where I discovered they were 20% off!
And then I decided to take the evening off too – house to myself, Wiener schnitzel for my tea, I made apple and raspberry crumble in the ramekins and watched a whole DVD of Season 1 of Chuck. Happiness!
Tagged with: baking, cooking, design, ideas, mentalhealth, organisation, relaxing, tidying | Add a comment
Actually lasted a whole day at work. It doesn’t sound like much, but considering I’ve not managed more than a half day anytime in the past week (having had a whole week off with the flu before that), I think it’s a bit of an achievement. Got real work done too. Woot!
Tagged with: dayjob, health | Add a comment
Indeed, have gone! Our landlord’s coming tomorrow with plumber to do some repairs/improvements, and everything was such a mess that I really felt I needed to clear some stuff up, so I’ve done 2 loads of laundry, put away the clean sheets that were drifting about for ages, cleaned out the fridge, put out the rubbish, put on the dishwasher, tidied the remnant laundry which was flowing out of the basket and all over the floor and generally neatened things up. I even managed to clear out and get rid of another box. I know (like yesterday’s) that this isn’t hugely creative in a concrete sense, but for me being tidy is often a first step to getting my brain in the right place to actually do some work. So yay!
Tagged with: gtd, incentives, organisation, tidying | Add a comment
Well, it may not be hugely creative but one thing’s for sure: getting one’s financial records up to date sure helps clear the brain to make way for more exciting stuff. Plus there’s the pleasure of ticking things off the to-do list and feeling super-organised!
Tagged with: completion, gtd, mentalhealth, organisation | Add a comment
I’d actually forgotten about this poor little blog. There’s just been so much going on over the past month – work, the piece for London New Wind Festival (stress and heartbreak over that one – more on that later, I suspect), my healing ankle (good news on that one, at least!), a week off frantically working on the piece, then frantically trying to get the house in order & achieve other chores before zooming off to Edinburgh to sample the Festival for a few brief days and go to a meeting in Dundee. And of course, while in Scotland I accidentally relaxed, and within 4 hours had the flu. Which I still have, a week and a half later.
So now I am at home, bored, frustrated and wanting to get things done but lacking the actual physical strength to do it. Every nap is plagued with hideous nightmares (this afternoon I was being chased at vast speed by an aggressive eagle, last night I woke whimpering at 3am thinking my legs were wound around with hundreds of red and black centipedes) which usually indicates that my creative brain is running and ready to go… except that I don’t have the strength to actually do very much.
So it’s been a tad on the frustrating side, really. And we’re nearing the end of August now. The piece is due in final form, with parts, on 1 September; on 21 September my parents arrive for 3 months and we all go to Paris for a week, which I’m quite looking forward to – when my brain lets go of the panic of all the pages and pages of things that need to be done before then – everything ranging from doing some handwashing (working out the best way to do handwashing in our new flat) to getting the landlord to take away the horrible lumpy bed in what will be the parents’ room to harassing Djelibeybi to organise a passport for Number One Son who is supposed to be coming to live with us next year. Not to mention getting back to my harmony studies, the Satie/Dada article, the web book, reworking my website and actually doing something about the many, many incomplete projects that are lying about the place…
Now I’m going to stop thinking about it and maybe go and do a little gentle baking, if the germ will let me stay standing for that long.
Tagged with: baking, blogging, health, mentalhealth, music, organisation, relaxing, travel | Add a comment
