Month: January 2017

Advice that was useful for me

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Since the election, holidays, finished project, and with the sense of impending doom and general panic that has set in, (in my mind and therefore also muscles) I was finding it really hard to work.

It’s never easy, to just sit at home and work, but I’d gotten so much better at it. And then it disappeared.

But I have found a useful tip (from a guy called Jack Cheng, article here: http://alistapart.com/article/habit-fields ) and it is to have different spaces for different activities.

In the lead up to the election, during the holidays, and during the transition, I had obviously been checking Twitter somewhat non stop and it became a huge problem. So what I have done is this:

– my computer is not to be used for social media (other than uploading) or to read the news or read essays or read fanfic or really for anything other than work
– I can still check social media and read the news as often as I want, without beating myself up, I just have to go into another room, pick up my phone and do it from there

It’s working really well for me because I don’t feel anxiously disconnected, and also I’m getting lots more done. The first day was super hard, I kept clicking on extra tabs, opening the internet as a reflex, but honestly my computer has now quite quickly become a much more peaceful place for me.

Anyway, I recommend the essay, and if you’re having concentration problems too, trying it out 🙂

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Daily sketchbook – Week 3

Well… this went badly. Honestly I was so tempted to just not post it, but instead decided that I would make today’s page so fun I’d want to post it.

It wasn’t a good week, for me or the world, but the reality of a daily sketchbook is you gotta learn to use it even on days that are busy and/or stressful, so I guess I’ll work on that. On the plus side, I feel I made good use of the sketchbook on the days I did use it, so that’s nice.

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I went to the John Olsen exhibition at NGV with @waitingforturnips yesterday and we saw lots of cool things. 

The first John Olsen I ever saw was at the SA Art Gallery, and I loved it so much that I had to go home and look for more of his work online. But then when we got into the exhibition yesterday, I was suddenly nervous. They organised somewhat chronologically, which is normal and fine, but his early work was so filled with brown and grey, and it was so much bolder – without the delicate detail I love – that I had a few moments of “this is the guy, right? i haven’t just mixed two artists up???” But then he suddenly seemed to discover colours, and over the course of the exhibition the work felt more ~right~ to me and I found a whole lot more pieces I love. Some of them are here, others I only took atrocious photos of and so they are not….

1. Pied Beauty (1969)

2. Lake Hindmarsh, the Wimmera (1970), Lake Eyre (1975), The Murray running into Lake Alexandrina (1975), Dark void (1976), The Simpson Desert approaching the void (1976)

3. Bathurst Butter (1999), Cooper’s Creek in flood (1975-76), River passing through a plain (1982)

4. Nightfall, when wattle stains the doubting heart (1980)

5. Golden Summer, Clarendon (1983)

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Australian Women in History:

  1. Dame Jean Macnamara, who did important polio research, was awarded her damehood (is that the term?) for her work in orthopaedics, and convinced the Australian Government to introduce the myxoma virus to curb wild rabbit populations.
  2. Elizabeth Kenny, an unaccredited (somewhat self-taught) nurse, who transformed polio treatment.
  3. Fanny Cochrane Smith, whose recordings of songs in her own language are the only recordings of any Indigenous Tasmanian languages. (Link to further info on Indigenous Tasmanian languages.)
  4. Florence Violet McKenzie, who ran her own electrical contracting business, co-founded Australia’s first weekly radio magazine, and got women into the (previously all-male) Australian Navy.