What I Ate Wednesday / Num. 1

One of my oldest and dearest internet pals, Helga, just refreshed her blog and it looks very QT and it made me think of this dusty little corner and she's been very good about pestering encouraging me to post something again.

Regular features are a super easy way to deal with that whole "what the hell do I blog about now" slump but I'm kind of flakey. Still, for Helga, for the love of food, here I am.



I slept in and I'll gladly go ahead and blame it on spending yesterday in a dehydration-induced headache coma. Yesterday also consisted of eating homemade chocolate pudding for 2 out of 3 meals (does chocolate pudding even count as a meal? what if there's fresh strawbs on top? and you don't eat it in bed?) so today called for Real Food.

I'm one of those people who really enjoys the process of cooking; dicing things, stirring said things, eating the things. I'm here for those things. I got it from my mam. We're also Italian and Uruguayan with European roots so I don't know how to follow a recipe to save my life. I could, probably, but I'd much rather throw things together, taste stuff, see where it goes. My boyfriend is always catching me sampling dinner but it's for science, babby, it's for research. How else would I know if it needs more black pepper (usually) or cheese (always)?



So that's what breakfast-slash-lunch was. After getting a bit of client work out of the way, I made baked spaghetti squash. This is literally just... vegetables and cheese. Mushrooms, onion, peppers, specifically. Parmesan and some cream cheese for... creaminess. Specifically. Very good, very hot. Maybe burnt my tongue. Maybe learnt nothing.

Snack time consisted of a spoonful that finished off the dulce de leche that my grandmam brought down in December. I am now in mourning because nothing is as delicious as real dulce de leche from Uruguay.

I'm spending tonight on some more client work. And I'm getting a bit snacky, you know, for strength. Get the creative juices (ew) flowing (ewwwwww.) Trying to decided between leftover spaghetti squash or leftover pudding.

The real issues, people, these are them.

So dinner will be some sort of leftovers. And tea, because there's always tea.

Oh, and I've already drank twice as much water as I did yesterday which was really important and I'm pretty proud of myself. Light-sensitive headaches and a profession that requires staring at a computer screen for hours on end don't play well. Imagine that.

On Getting Stoked to Create Cool Things

I've had this post sitting in my drafts, ready to go since mid January but oops. I've actually been pretty productive lately, getting regular in practice with traditional media (watercolour and ink are my thing right now), polishing up paperwork for freelance work, and putting in time on both personal and client projects. I actually was in the middle of some client work when I went, ooh I want to watch that one video by The AGSC, where is it. I thought I'd already posted this.

Better late than never.

A huge, huge important thing for me this year is to really polish my work and presence as a graphic designer. I mentioned this in my first post, but one thing that really gets me antsy to make something cool is watching other designers work.

Not in real life because, unfortunately, I don't have that option. I do, however, have the internet.

Disclaimer: I love Jessica Hische. Not only is she super talented but, like, she's worked with Wes Anderson? Yeah. It's also really nice to see another female kicking ass in an industry that's pretty male-heavy.

This video is just a little intro to her Skillshare course which is excellent. You can access it for free at the moment just by signing up and there's tons of interesting workshops by other creatives. Watching her work was neat because we have similar process quirks and that was very exciting and I am very lame.

I've watched this video of Aaron Draplin taking Lynda.com's logo challenge so many times. So many. I'm listening to it now while I write this post and I'll probably watch it (and the rest of these) again when I publish this.

If I'm being honest, I'm actually not a huge fan of Draplin's style but I love his drive and I'm super into his whole thing about looking into the past for inspiration, for simplifying things and getting back to the basics.
 

I've been stepping up my hand lettering game recently and this video - and all the other content put out by The AGSC - is a huge inspiring for that. Hand lettering can be really time consuming but it's so much fun, not to mention incredibly satisfying.

Cuter, Better, Stronger: 2015

2014 was a year. Neither good nor bad, it just felt like I kind of floated through it, drifting down a river with a floaty around my waist. Yeah, this is alright. There were highs and lows, obviously, and I didn't drown.

That said, 2014 did plant seeds for some cool opportunities and I ended it on a high note, surrounded by balloons.

I'm not good with resolutions because I'm notorious for getting bored and kind of forgetting about things. If I had to sum up what I want for 2015, that'd be it: finish your shit.

A few days ago, I drew up a little list of things I want to focus on this year. A general idea followed by a few specifics to kind of measure my progress, I guess.

Be Creative

Set aside time for art. Allow myself to grow both as an illustrator and a graphic designer. Something that falls under this is my portfolio rebrand, which I'm almost finished with and I'm so in love with it. I'm also going to actively and regularly seek inspiration via other graphic designers. I'm really lame in the sense that I absolutely adore watching other creatives work and seeing similarities in how we handle tasks.

Be Strong

Pretty basic: read more (my very super modest GoodReads goal is set to a whopping 12), eat good things, and get back to working out regularly. I've been doing preeeeetty good on this so far and have done some yoga every day since January 2nd (shhhhhh) and read before bed the past two days. Casually brushes shoulder off.

Be Badass

This is for the professional business kitty side of things. Speaking for my freelance work, I want to nail down both my process and how I handle / organize client things. I already have a few projects in my pocket and some later on this spring that I'm stoked for. I also want to get that online shop thing going because passive income: it's a good thing.

Be Good

This is pretty simple but very important. As I've gotten older, my favourite people have ended up scattered across Canada. My best friend is in another province, my boyfriend in another city - along with the majority of everyone else. I want to make an active effort to visit pals and also generally be more appreciative of the time, efforts, and existence of these cool dudes I've been lucky enough to have in my life.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

That's about it. My rough plan is to use this here bloggy blog blog to keep myself on track and motivated and show off my tiny (and maybe not-so-tiny) accomplishments as the year goes on. If I'm still here come December 31st, I'll assume that 2015 ended up going pretty well.