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FLAIR-apy and monkeys.

It’s about 3 a.m. I am exhausted, as any normal human being should be at this hour. But I don’t know if I’ll get to sleep within the hour even.

And I have work tomorrow. (Today.)

Fortunately I’ll be going in later since I have a late morning optometrist appointment. But still, yuck.

So why am I up so late? I’m working on the Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue issue 3 layout. It really should be done by now. But the file is huge, my system’s not the fastest, and I’m using an outdated version of Word (or at least, not a version that is as agile as some others). The most irritating part is that anytime I change a format of something — alignment, size, whatever — it keeps updating the style. Then I need to tell it to undo the style update. Both — the initial style update & the undo — take forever and a day. So while Word pokes along, I get to type here. Yay!

Besides losing an inane amount of time waiting around for Word to “think,” I have been wasting more time than I can afford on Facebook lately. And not in any “useful” sort or way either. I mean, I’m not on there writing friends or watching videos or tagging pictures. No. No, I’m addicted to Flair. For those unfamiliar with the Flair Facebook app, it’s similiar to the “sticker” type applications that allow users to pass around silly graphics with pseudo witty sayings, or whatever. What I like about Flair over stickers is:

  • containment – All of the flair you show off is constrained to a “bulletin board” on your profile. Meanwhile, it seems those sticker things go on for MILES. Just clutter, as far as I’m concerned.
  • constraints – There’s a limit on how many pieces you can have showing at once. Granted, that limit is somewhere around 60, but since they’re all contained, that’s not so bad. Also, there are limits on how many you can make or send, so even I can’t bombard everyone with it.
  • uniformity – The “flair maker” takes your uploaded image and “buttonizes” it, making it look like, well, a piece of flair. Every piece is round, clean, and spiffified. I like that.
  • trackability, sorta – here’s where the addictive quality comes in. You can keep an eye on the popularity of the flair you’ve created. For a while, a piece of Mraz flair was my most popular (with a whopping 50ish people having it, ranking it around 20K among all Flair). Now, though, the Mr. Rogers flair I created is my most popular. It’s addictive to see how many people pick up your design… I wish, though, there was some way to see who has your flair, or any specific piece, for that matter.


Lately, I’ve been stressed with deadlines, and then Booger got another ear infection (I won’t scare y’all away with another picture, I promise), and I’m still in the process of deciding what’s going to change (if anything) with my job situation. (I thought that was decided, but it didn’t work out as planned.) Amid the stress, my flair-apy sessions really haven’t done anything to help the situation, but they’ve been pleasantly distracting procrastination sessions. Ha.

I’m still waiting on word (or rather, waiting again). I’ve been working on this post for almost an hour now. I’m frustrated — with the software, with my hardware, with the clock, with the fact that I was only given these ads to place late last night and there’s no way I can do any work on this before 8:30 on most weeknights. I think this magazine is a wonderful, wonderful endeavor, and I am so happy to be part of it, but there are moments I wish Stephan hadn’t volunteered me for this. I kinda want my life back. I mean, not that this is all consuming all the time, but it seems to demand more than I can give sometimes.

Well, it’s officially 4 a.m. now. Crap. I’m waiting for Word again, because it keeps eating my headers in a certain section. Go figure. Anyhow, I think fixing that one last time is the last thing I have to do, so I’m now going to use this lag time to brush my teeth and wash my face.

Wish me restful sleep…

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Resolve: more than a carpet cleaner!


It’s no secret (to anyone who actually knows me) that I’m a procrastinator through perfection. In high school, I got a C in Physics because of missing lab reports. It’s not that I didn’t do the labs. Or the write-ups. Rather, I was such an anal perfectionist that rather than turn in a less than perfect report, I didn’t turn in one at all. Stupid.

But my illness goes back even further: the first manifestation I can remember was in first grade. I can remember having stacks of unfinished assignments in my desk. Most were coloring sheets & cut & paste things. In hindsight, I know they were things Mrs. M gave the class to keep the us busy between reading and math, but at the time, I remember being pretty distressed about it. It was my dirty secret. Quiet little, neat-working little, little little Julie who always did so well in school had piles of unfinished work in her little (unkempt) desk. (Most unfortunately, my perfectionism has never really overflowed into my workspace.) I remember having nightmares about it.

Since school, my perfectionsitic procrastination has continued. And usually that means that I start a lot of projects with genuinely good intentions but I fail to see them through to completion… or simply see them through.

THIS blog is no exception. Almost a year ago I established, and no sooner had I registered it than it became one of the more recent in my string of defunct online journals. And the big reason why: because I didn’t have the formatting quite to my liking.

Well to hell with that.

Today, on the eve of 2008, it’s about time I do something despite it being humanly imperfect. It’s time I do something — THIS — because it is (& I am) humanly imperfect.

I resolve to do this.

I will post no less than once a week. I will post even if I can’t add the pictures I want to at the moment. I will post even if I don’t have time to spellcheck or proofread. Likewise, I won’t apologize or feel guilty for not posting enough or for posting about the mundane. I will, however, write with a purpose each and every time.

I resolve to do this. Consistently.

Won’t you join me for the ride?