Ritual, Routine and Rhythm

Coffee in the Austin skyline mug, "Too Long in the Wasteland" by James McMurtry on iTunes. Two days without posting! The first day it was 5:00 pm before I realized I hadn't posted yet and I was too busy to do it then. Yesterday I started a post, but then went down a rat hole and didn't see it till 5:00 when I was, again, too busy to finish up so I trashed it. This morning has also had its share of rat holes, but I am giving up in exasperation on the one that has been driving me nuts, and I am settling in to post. Both the irregularity in my posting and the current rat hole dictate the title of the posting. The trip to Vegas, the review of the lasers for the book and having a live-in intern have blown my rituals, routines and rhythm all to kingdom come and I am scrambling to get them back.

Missing blogging *without noticing it* is a sign that either I am in the midst of a major life change or I am in worse shape mentally from the over-extension of the past two weeks than I thought. The rat hole just highlights the situation even more. I sold a couple of pieces at ACRE to another artist's husband. He wrote me check. I remembered the check yesterday and went looking for it. It took me an hour to find it, but I did just before I left to get Jessie from school. I went to put it in with today's deposit this morning--and I can't find it again! I looked for well over an hour and it is just nowhere. I have a set place where I keep checks to deposit and a routine of putting them there as soon as I get them. I have a ritual of blogging every morning. What the heck is going on?

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And three hours just went by between starting this post and now. Three hours of database creation, gallery order confirmation, other artist collaboration, vendor communication, editor clarification, and other artist order commiseration. Perspiration, irritation, exultation, the day is full. I think I'll just keep getting on with it rather than writing about it.

Next week: the trials and tribulations of creating your own data-management tools. The problem with being a former software engineer who specialized in designing and implementing workflow and data management systems is that I have a low tolerance for the off-the-shelf stuff I can afford and am not even really impressed with the stuff I can't afford. My current jumble of Excel spreadsheets no longer meets my needs and I have an intern so...