Nightmares

I had some huge issues with sleeping last night. I fell asleep just fine after playing my nightly 3 Mah Jongg puzzles, but once I was asleep I started having horrible nightmares. I usually have nightmares a lot anyways, but they usually aren't very upsetting or disturbing. The only nightmare I remember jolted me awake at 8:50 AM and made me break out in a cold sweat. I really should have gotten up then, but I was so cold from sweating that I curled up in a ball to try and get warm, only to fall asleep again. Then I woke up at about 2:15, only to lay in bed for another hour thinking about things. Finally I got up, got something to eat, and took my medications.

My eyes are all puffy and my head is killing me (from oversleeping) at the moment. I hope I can still be productive today.

I really need to update the billing/invoicing system on my website. I use a version of BambooInvoice that I've modified to fit my needs, so in order to update to their newer version I have to first update my BambooInvoice installation, then modify it again. I'm also trying to implement my new "Pay Now, Pay Later" payment plan, which will involve some more tweaking of the app to include the extra information in the e-mail that gets sent out with a new invoice in pdf format.

Carb Zombie

I've been a zombie since about 5 this afternoon when I brought my shelves in. I've been staring off into space and mindlessly doing tasks all day. Delirium, what a familiar feeling; reminds me of my high school years.

I didn't go out to the club tonight, so that means I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. Hopefully my sleep schedule will be back to some semblance of normalcy within the next few days.

Today I pretty much called a client, made some changes to the design mocup I sent her, and started working on my new "Pay Now, Pay Later" payment policy. I'll have to explain that some other time. These long blinks are making it a little difficult to type xD

Note to self: put second coat on shelves on either Sunday or Monday (whenever the porch is dry after the rain tomorrow).

Night.

At Laaast...

I've started painting my shelves! At 2:15 I can paint the rest, then I'll let them sit out there until around 5 to finish drying. I'll bring them in for the night and wait for another sunny (and hopefully not so cold) day to do a second coat.

And you know what this means? I woke up before noon today. It's pretty amazing, lol.

Right now I'm waiting for some water to boil so I can make myself a nice lunch of soldiers and eggs. It's a British thing... my Nana used to always make them for me and it's my favorite kind of egg.

Well, I'm going to go check on the pot on the stove!

Insomnia

I tried so hard, I really did. I felt tired and I laid down in bed at around midnight. And there I was for another 2-3 hours, still awake. I know the worst thing to do when you can't sleep is to continue lying in bed, so I went ahead and got up to play some Mah Jongg on my DS and hang out with my roommate.

And here I am. I think I'm tired this time (then again, I thought I was last time) so I'm going to try it again.

I just have to be up in 6 hours to start painting my shelves. Yep, today's finally the day! Let's just hope I actually wake up when I'm supposed to.

Second Thoughts

I've added tags to about 60 of my 457 screenshots in my design
inspiration gallery using JCap, which leaves me at about 13% complete.
But somehow even though I've gotten this far, I'm thinking I might be
better off creating my own PHP/MySQL application. I just don't seem
to have the flexibility of adding and removing keywords/tags like I
really need to. More thoughts on this later as I'm blogging from my
phone at the moment. Maybe even tomorrow considering I'm tired before
midnight for once.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Oh! I forgot to mention! I added some new links right below the about section in the sidebar. They link to important posts within the blog.

On My Health

I've always been a very unhealthy person-- emotionally, physically, habitually... and I really think the issue needs to be addressed. Even though I've gotten my mental illnesses under control (minus my supposed OCD) and I'm still a skinny-mini, I'm beginning to see the effects of malnourishment & lack of exercise on my body.

9 times out of 10, I pretty much force myself to eat; if I didn't I wouldn't eat more than one small meal a day. I'm hypoglycemic, which means I have low blood sugar. If I don't eat, my blood sugar will get lower, I'll start to feel sick, and eventually pass out. I've had doctors recommend to me that I use a blood glucose meter, but I know my body fairly well since this problem has been ongoing for a number of years now, and can tell when my blood sugar is low. I really need to be eating more than 3 meals a day and having snacks in-between. At this point I'm lucky if I have 2 meals and maybe a snack. I don't eat as much as I should because:

• I have a busy schedule; I forego eating because it's just easier to not go through the time to make something.
• I forget to eat a lot of the time; most people know to eat when their tummy starts to rumble or they begin to feel hungry and it's very rare that either of those things happen with me
• I find myself restricted to a limited budget; because of the irregular payment schedule of my job, I often find myself without money to buy food

The main reason why I'm writing this is because of a pair of pants I put on this morning. My mom and I had gone shopping about two months ago, and I tried on this pair of corduroy black pants. They were a snug fit, and I HAD to get them. It's so rare for me to find tight pants (they're what I prefer) and so my mom offered to buy me them for Christmas. Well, this morning I wore them for the first time after having received them as a gift, and it seems I've lost 2-3 inches off my waist... and I'm bloated from my period. It seems as if my meager eating habits are impacting my weight. The sad part is that isn't even where it ends. My once beautifully long nails are cracking, splintering, and peeling. My right thumb nail even almost came off the other day. My period is also very very light, which is unusual for me.

Now, the next area of concern may come as a surprise: I need to exercise more! As a web designer I spend almost all my time sitting down in front of a computer screen. I find myself getting winded going down stairs (skinny little me!) and I get light headed a lot of the time when I get up from sitting down for a long time.

In conclusion, I really just need to adopt a healthier lifestyle. I'm going to add to my Joe's Goals chart:

• Exercise (more checks & more points the more activity I do!)
• Eat Breakfast (extra points for a healthy choice)
• Eat Lunch (extra points for a healthy choice)
• Eat Dinner (extra points for a healthy choice)
• Eat a Snack (extra points for more snacks or healthier snacks!)

I was also thinking about getting a pedometer and making myself get to x steps a day! But that will come (maybe) once I get paid.

I read a blog entry last night about taking care of yourself and how important it really is. It brought to my attention that I'm really lacking in the area of self care (as most women are) and while it is important for me to be accomplishing all these goals, it's important to sit back and take some time to tend to myself.

On A Roll

So, an update to that last post where I kind of abruptly, well... ended the post.

I found this program called JCap that takes care of all my design inspiration gallery needs without having to spend a few hours to write my own script. It doesn't eat up a lot of system resources, it doesn't add anything to your existing files, it isn't loaded with a bunch of features I'm never going to use, and best of all it's FREE.

Not to mention I can totally store my gallery on a cd once it's big enough and have the keywords/captions I added still intact (so long as I keep the text files in the same folder as the images).

I've added captions and keywords to 30 of my 457 screenshots! I didn't even realize I had that many... Apparently that means my inspiration gallery as it stands at the moment is 6.5% complete. That was only after spending about 20 minutes figuring out and adding captions to the program. This should be done in no time!

EDIT: Oh, and by the way... I'm going to sleep now xD

I'm Invincible!

Wow, go me. I woke up this morning feeling as worthless as a designer as ever, and now I've gone and sent off a design mocup to the customer. Score! Being a big roadblock now (hopefully) out of my way, I think this design deserves 10 points. You can't even begin to realize what a relief this is... a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I feel so ready to take on the world now.

I really think it was designer's block, as I like to call it. It was just this seemingly endless period of... blah. I made this awesome Christmas card for the company my dad works for, then I kind of fell out of it.

But I'm back!

I have to say my design inspiration gallery helped me out a lot, but a huge thing that I realized while browsing through my screenshots is that I need to be able to search for them by tags or keywords. While I DO have apache with PHP/MySQL installed on my computer, and I'm perfectly capable of making my own database-driven screenshot search engine, I think there may be a program out there that can handle sorting/tagging pictures for me.

Looks like I have a little project to do. Sounds fun!

Behold!

Okay, so I've really been struggling with this one design for the past month or so. Whenever I get down to it, I just seem to spew out these designs that start with a decent concept, but end up looking like crap. I kept on saying to myself that it was the company's logo (it's ridiculously unbalanced) and their color scheme (green and gold... the ugliest combination evar) but once I modified their logo and changed the color scheme, I still couldn't seem to come up with a design. As of right now, I have 8 scrapped designs!

My boyfriend called me earlier, and I randomly found myself working on a design while we were talking. Lo and behold, it was actually DECENT. I'm not going to use it, but it's definitely given me the confidence I need to go on and create a better design.

I actually woke up early today. Even if it was 3PM, it's still 2 hours earlier than I would normally wake up. And I did my best to force myself up and out of bed even though I was still tired. Sad, isn't it? I went to bed last night at about 5AM... and completely on accident. I got distracted...

That's pretty much it thus far today. I have to go clean out my earrings now.

Immune System on Vacation

I wasn't able to do much of anything today. I woke up late (at about 5:00PM) and felt sick to my stomach for the majority of the afternoon. Then my roommate started watching bad horror movies... which I couldn't seem to resist!

I need to get back into a regular sleeping schedule (like I've mentioned before) and the only way I can seem to do that is go to bed when I feel tired, then wake up early. Even though it's almost 2AM now, I'm a long way from getting to sleep. I tried getting to bed early last night and well, it didn't work out too well. I figured Monday would be the best day to get back in the groove of things... since Friday I'm going out to the club, Saturday we're having a party, and Sunday I'm probably going to the movies with my friend Mike. Sunday night I'll go to bed as early as I can (not before I feel tired, though) set my alarm for ~10 hours later, wake up, and if I don't feel tired I'll just stay as active as I can to make myself tired. Or even try to be active on Sunday to make myself get to bed early that night.

I'm thinking I may walk to the nearest shopping center to try and find a job again. I'm getting to the point where I'm considering in working in the food service industry again... just because my clients are horrible at paying their invoices on time.

Well, I'll post again once there's something interesting to report on. For now, I'm going to try and get a few things done.

Grape Lady Moment

Holy crap my teeth hurt. Not ALL of them, just my problem teeth... around my left canine. The tooth right next to my canine towards the front used to be twisted almost all the way around, and was never completely fixed from my braces. My orthodontist modified one of my retainers to help it turn the extra 5% it needed to go. And of course, because I haven't been wearing my retainers like I'm supposed to, that one tooth shifted the most.

I don't exactly grind my teeth when I sleep, but I nibble/gnaw lightly if there's something in my mouth. That's just pushing my retainer further onto my shifted teeth, forcing them to shift back faster, making them hurt more.

I honestly could not sleep because of the pain, so I had a snack (which hurt my teeth more!) and took some ibuprofen. I can't take ibuprofen on an empty stomach or else I will inevitably get sick.

So now to play Mah Jongg on my DS to distract myself from the pain until the ibuprofen kicks in and I can get back to sleep.

Looks like I can't start enforcing this "normal sleeping habits" bit until my teeth stop hurting. Trust me, this is NOT an excuse... I'd much rather be forced to go to bed early than be experiencing this pain!

Cruel and Unusual

Agh, so I just put in one of my retainers and it is TIGHT. I made sure to take some Tylenol after putting it in so any pain that may result from it will be dulled at the very least. Fortunately I have a very high pain tolerance (unless it's a headache). I can tell my teeth have shifted, but if I wear my retainers on a regular basis they'll go back to where they should be.

As you've probably noticed in my sidebar, I've started to use Joe's Goals. It's a website where you can basically create a daily checklist (of positives and negatives) of tasks and assign different point weights to each of them. I'm currently using it to keep track of my blog posting activity as well as taking care of my teeth and taking my medications.

Today I went ahead and added some links to the social networking sites I am on to my personal professional site. I know that seems like an oxymoron, but it's more of a toned down personal site that wouldn't freak out potential customers if they were to stumble upon it. Also, my personal and small business clients like to get to know me first before working with me. I added about 9 links with logos, corrected an existing link, and deleted another link I had on there. Since this is design-related work and it is more of a resource for my clients, I'm going to give myself some points for it. But not a lot because it wasn't exactly wise use of my time since it was fairly low on my list of things to do. So 3 points will do.

I'm back to not being able to paint my shelves. I have to wait until the porch is dry again because my roommate wants me to paint them out there, but let them dry inside. Looks like Friday morning will be my best bet since it will stop raining Wednesday night and the porch needs a day to dry.

Oy, I hate waiting!

Back Problems

Oh, and I forgot to include in the last entry that my back has been bothering me. The chair I'm using at my desk isn't exactly comfortable (then again my posture is horrible) and it's causing some problems. If I get a new (more comfortable) chair, it'll definitely add some points to my business goal.

Sunlight? What's that?

It's funny to think I went to bed right before the sun rose this morning, and woke up right after the sun set. Actually, it's pretty bad. I woke up with a headache and an aching back.

This leads me to adding two more mini-resolutions:

• Develop some normal sleeping habits and
• Wear my retainers on a regular basis.

I'm sure you're wondering where that last one came from... pretty much my headache from this morning wasn't from my oversleeping but rather my jaw. I have a jaw disorder, and I had braces for 2 years to fix it. I haven't been wearing my retainers as religiously as I should, so my jaw is starting to pop and bother me again.

Well, there are my two new resolutions! I think it's important to not restrict yourself to the goals you've set at the beginning of the year... it's best to be as productive as possible.

As for today, well, I'm going to start painting my shelves once my roommate goes to work.

First Bad Day of '09

I had some family issues on my mind today, and I honestly wasn't in much of a mood to do anything.

I've been stuck on this one website design for months now, and it's really beginning to bother me. I went ahead and made some minor changes to the logo I was provided to make it easier to work with for a design, and then I went to trying to create a site design.

I got sidetracked for a few hours looking for design ideas, and ended up taking in excess of 255 screenshots for my design inspiration gallery >.< style="font-weight: bold;">25 points for me.

Once I was done with taking screenshots and I felt I had significant ideas to go ahead back to the drawing board, I was disappointed to discover that yet again the designs just weren't coming together.

Now at 3AM I've decided it might just be a good idea if I go to bed and clear my head.

Still Have That Momentum!

Today I:

• Vacuumed my bedroom/office
• Cleaned my bathroom
• Picked up some more in my room (put my favorite poster up!)
• Took a bunch of screenshots for my web design inspiration folder
• And uploaded 4 Javascript libraries to my server.

Not to mention in a few minutes I'll be heading off to bed and putting new sheets on my mattress. And don't forget sanding my shelves earlier this morning!

I realize I haven't mentioned my design inspirations folder yet. Basically I take screenshots of websites with creative designs or design elements to serve as inspiration for when I can't seem to come up with a good website design. I took about 11 screenshots today to add to the library. I'd have to say each of them are worth about a point each... so 11 points for me!

As for the javascript libraries, I decided it might be a good idea to have them at hand since I test a lot of scripts. Some free scripts you find require that a certain library be installed, and I often find myself limiting myself to scripts that don't require a library. Now I can expand my options! I've installed 4 libraries, and at 2 points each that equals another 8 points.

And great news: my roommate is going to allow me to paint my shelves indoors. Hopefully I'll be able to get to that within the next few days!

Well, it's time for me to go to bed. Night everyone... it's been a long day.