Realisation of entropy

A continuation of yesterday's theme, my day at work today was amazingly good. Not because everything worked out (in fact there were/are significant dramas and stresses in a number of cross-section and interpersonal relationships going on). But I realised that I'm genuinely contributing to improving things, to minimise damage where needed, while adding value to my team's decisions.

A couple of times I found myself spontaneously smiling and being grateful for where my work life sits right now. Whatever it is that I'm doing is exactly what I want to be doing (even in spite of working 8-5 with no lunch break, practically workaholic in my usual terms).

I even had the energy left over to ride 10km, and add my latest drawing ... and now I'm off to bed to rest my weary eyes, as I'm forced to wait another week or so for the inevitable news of a changed eyeglass prescription, to hopefully improve a waning focus which threatens my burgeoning artistic habit.

Sunny side up

All the work I've been putting in to developing a more positively focused mindset seems to be getting to the point of automatic now.

Exhibit A - A thoroughly frustrating and pointless day of meetings a couple of Mondays back had me ready to explode with annoyance, as I headed home. My solution? 20 minutes of weights and 10km cycling, and all the ill will towards the world was gone, allowing me to relax into an evening of DVD watching, the anomaly of a bad work day not to be perpetuated into a bad week.

Exhibit B - On Friday, I got home from work feeling pretty good about achievements over the past couple of days. As I went to put a couple of cartons of So Good in the fridge, one slipped from my hand and smashed on the ground, leaking soy milk all over the floor. With a shrug of the shoulders, I grabbed a cloth, cleaned up, salvaged what I could of the carton's contents, then went about my cheery way. This is certainly not the Bertie of the past.

Exhibit C - After an excellent time catching up with friends in Civic last night (despite any angry-looking photos you might see!), my last bus home drove away within eyesight but out of running distance. Rather than being angry about it, I strolled to the taxi rank and appreciated the much faster ride home, including an enjoyable conversation with my African taxi driver (who was actually enjoying the start of winter, saying he'd had enough of heat!). I was snugly in bed 20 minutes before I would have even been home via bus, and that's (occasionally) worth the extra $30.

None of that's to say I'm the perfect beacon of cheer, but I certainly feel more resilient in dealing with the inevitable downs of life. Not only good for me, but certainly better for those around me too :)

Engaging virtuosity

Just in case you thought I'd lost my camera, and only had time for sketches, here are some shots I took on Thursday evening, when I got off the bus and began my walk to my family's place.

Purdy!

Birdy!

Dunno

It only took 5 days for the below pic to move to #4 in my most viewed Flickr pics. While I'm happy with how it turned out, I don't think it's anywhere near my best drawing. So, somehow, despite not tagging it with "hot bikini chick" or some other obvious fodder, it eclipses all my other creative works! The web is a weird and wonderful and wacky place - that's what www stands for you know ;)

P.S. It still has a way to go to catch up with the #1 viewed pic on my Flickr account, which was pushed up to its astronomical heights by the favouriting of foot fetishists (ah, alliteration abounds):

Adventure thy name is Bertie

As misleading titles go, that's a doozy :)

However, the last few days have been very active for me, in an almost totally sedentary way. Roughly 10 hours of drawing spread across the weekend, followed by my entire team being away on a training course today, leaving me to carry the burdensome load all on my own.

Bought a replacement DVD player at lunchtime because my current one started acting up last week, and I have too many new TV DVDs to watch to tolerate that (Family Guy, The Larry Sanders Show, and Thank God You're Here, to name a few).

When I got home from work, a malfunctioning security screen kept me out of my house, luckily rescued by a quick call to my Dad, bearer of useful tools. Which only removed my excuse not to do an hour of weights and cycling, before setting up aforementioned DVD player and spending the rest of the evening in front of the TV.

Now, if you try to say all of the preceding run-on sentences out loud, in a single exhalation, you will capture the sheer, breathless magnificence which is my existence ;)

Hobbyist

A little update...

I've been busy doing weights and cycling (working hard to get my waistline shrinking rather than expanding again), as well as watching many a DVD - Blackadder, Clerks 2, and Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny to name a few.

But, more importantly to me, I've finally regained my drawing passion. I'm seeing steady improvement as I do a lot more drawing, which is heartening, and it totally absorbs me while I have pencil to paper, which is rare these days, my concentration flagging steadily as time goes on. As my proof, below are a couple of my favourites from last night and this morning.

Eurovision triumph?

OK, I take it all back. Last night's musical acts were actually much more enjoyable than I've come to expect without the excessive cheese factor usually present and there weren't quite as many ballads as I'd warned of. The song that won was the one I chose to use as my toilet break, because of its boring-ness, so it was destined to succeed. However, 2 of my selections for top 3 (Finland, Russia and Turkey) made it into the final 4, so not too bad overall.

Eurovision disaster!

Apparently the voters on the preliminary final decided rock wasn't the wave of Eurovision future, and largely blanded out the final 10 qualifying spots with ballads. I was hanging out for Andorra's pop-punk in the final, the most fun I've seen performers ever have on Eurovision, but it was not to be. Not to mention there'll be no Netherlands to wear my long-sleeved T for, and no Denmark drag queen for B (hope that doesn't spoil the night for you!). There was some great variety in the preliminary finals, countries actually taking some chances, but unfortunately safety first seems to have won through.

My hope now is for a back-to-back Finland win, with their Evanescence-alike entry.

Sweeping vistas

Or just some simple representations of a lovely autumn day...

Water the frogs

"Sorry, the frogs all jumped out when I tried to top up their water."

I was a split second of reflex action away from this being the greeting for my zookeeper housemate when she returned from holidays. Luckily, I managed to close the door quickly enough to avoid the amphibian exodus, and found an alternate way to fill their enclosure.

Gave me some cool photos though!

Tempting fate

Hmmm...

After a week of not-nearly-enough sleep, I finally managed to scrape out a whole 6 hours on Monday night, which gave me some actual energy and enthusiasm to start my 2nd day back at work, after my first was hampered with nausea and fatigue. I coped with 11.30-2pm meetings, which conflicted heavily with my eating timetable, got to catch up with JS for the first time since I visited Melbourne last November, and went for my first decent walk in a fortnight.

So, rather than risk some kind of fatalistic collapse of my universe into negativity by daring to crow about good things, I figured I might hold off on this post. But, apparently, the mere thinking of positives is enough to smash my sleep back into many fragmented moments, meaning that I woke up at 2am, after a whole 2.5 hours sleep, and it took me 3 hours to return to somnolence.

"Yeah, we've heard all this insomnia crap before, Bertie!" I hear you rant.

"Not so!" I reply.

This time, I didn't calculate how many hours sleep I would be able to get before my alarm went off, or really worry at all about the disturbance. I simply listened to a few podcasts, enjoying the extra kind-of-awake time, and eventually let nature take its course. Of course, I'm grateful for today being my day off, so a return to sub-6 hours of sleep is far more manageable.

I have no idea why I'm having trouble sleeping, and I'm not going to overthink it, just keep on exercising, being relaxed and making use of the extra hours.