My Life is like a...

No, sorry, nothing. The analogy pumps are dry today.

Life has been especially taxing lately. Work has been ridiculously busy. I have some jobs that are months behind schedule. That notion makes me feel ill. I hate being behind in anything. I'd almost say I'm starting to get borderline workaholic in that I wish the day had an extra three hours so I could finish things up.

My co-worker has evolved beyond simply annoying and is seriously beginning to grate on my nerves to the point that I'd estimate a week or two or her current attitude before I blow up.

I don't like to go into depth about people I dislike, because I don't like being a gossip.
But on the other hand I need to vent:

She will never answer the phone. Well, that's not fair, hardly answers the phone. This in and of itself is no problem at all. The problem stems from the fact that I get more projects for myself because I answer the phones all day. I get more work. Hurray.

Its a struggle to get her to help customers who come to the counter. It basically becomes a contest to see who will budge first. She'll sit at her computer and tick tack away with someone looking right at her. Sometime for several minutes. It just irritates me that she expects me to handle all the customers and phonecalls. Then on top of that do work for her when it involves more than point and click on the PC. Anything involving photoshop is suddenly "A job Braden would like to do". When in actuality its a job Braden only wants to do because he likes to see quality results come out of the shop and he knows he is the only one who can do such. I've taken over several projects just because I don't want to see them bunged up. Good on me for being ambitious and results driven, but its taking its toll on my sanity.

Sigh, oh well, complaining isn't going to get me anywhere, I'll stop here.

In Good News:

I bought a really nice pair of New Balance running shoes and have embarked on that wonderfully difficult to commit to path we call physical activity. I went for an hour long run on Monday, which put enormous strain on my lazy muscles. But I felt great afterwards, and had far more energy in the morning than I did on days without a run. Of course though, the universe can't leave well enough alone and it is now snowing. I like being healthy, but I don't want to be freezing while I'm at it.

Mentoring Photographers at Worth has been a fun experience. My mentee has come quite a ways, I feel. The recent photo she took for the Soft contest looks great! Loads of improvement over her older photos. Personally, though, I feel like I haven't been the best of mentors. Doing things over email has just been...so disjointed and difficult. I feel most of what she has improved upon has been her own self exploration, rather than my instruction or guidance. Our month is almost up, sadly, but I'll throw my name down again to help another person.

because helping is fun!

I have an online portfolio now!

The URL is rather ungainly and I still have some bugs to work out, but I now have a nicely composed place where I can send people to when they are interested in my art and photography. It isn't very full right now, but that will change as I track down all the paintings I've moved or given away to friends and find other good photos hidden deep in my hard drive. This is really quite fun because a) it will give me something to obsess over for hours, tweaking this and that, b) I won't have to go into the tedious and unaesthetical process of logging on to worth or artalyst to show people my work.

Oh and free is a lot cheaper than smugmug, (also much faster loading, since I can control thumbnail quality).

For the interested, you can hop over to my site, Images Missing an Audience
I hope to have all the bugs worked out and soon add small articles and guides that I'm working on for the photography beginners at worth1000

I break promises almost as fast as I can make them...

Well, promises to myself anyways.

I didn't blog as much as I wanted to last week, mostly because I spent three days being sick and feeling generally miserable. And the weekend was mostly crap too, so we won't go in to my week.

But this week should be better! I started working on my online portfolio again last night. A completely new design than what I started with 6 months ago. If I work on it for a few hours tonight, and if everything goes according to plan, namely I don't bugger things up to an incredible degree, I should have something halfways functional to show for by the end of the night. Yay me.

In other news, I'm thinking of spending a couple weeks living with my dad. Kind of a getaway from real-life. Not that there is anything wrong per se with my home, it will just be a change of scenery and probably really beneficial to my mental health :) . Plus I hardly see him anymore, and that really hit home this weekend when we celebrated my sister's birthday.

And that has absolutly nothing to do with the fact he has a trampoline, either.

none . . . whatsoever . . .

I am blogging way past my bedtime...

Why? Because we went bowling on a Monday at precisely 11:00 pm. I was hesitant at first because I am usually eight miles to dreamland by then. Well I went and had loads of fun. Two guys wanted lifts to the bar, we fixed their wagon.

This isn't an spcially interesting update, I'm just holding up my end of the bargain. Perhaps tomorrow will bring new tales of dizzying heights and swashbuckling adventure! Or perhaps I'll go walk the dogs in the thanks-to-DST-sunny after work hours.

Spring forward indeed!

I realized tonight....

That I blog far too much about work. This may be partly in fact due my lack of a social life. Coupled with a tendency to come home and hunker down infront of various monitors and screens, or books if I'm feeling intellectual.

That said, this week I will try my durndest to

a) blog shortly every night
b) NOT blogwhine about how abhorrent work is
c) Blog instead about the things I do at night that will differ from computer screens and playstation games.

wish me luck in my carpe diem-esque endeavours.

Everytime I read something my writing style changes...

From the early days of my childhood, weaned on Full House, Bill Cosby and the low-brow antics of Family Matters, I had always imagined what life would be like if it more closely bared a semblance to sitcoms and Friday night television. As I progressed in age, my tastes in comedic stylings matured. In school years the warm glow of the Simpsons, Drew Carrey and the odd British comedy (Keeping up appearances, for example) were oft reflected in my vibrant youthful, albeit naive eyes.
With somewhat of a quiet moment of surprise, I realized today my life, or at least the occupational portion of it, is rather harmonious with the decades old tenets of prime-time comedy. Would you like to know what I have discovered?

I don't like it one bit.

The bitter reality of having numerous co-workers inconvenience me with trivial and utterly stupid matters is not something I've taken a shine to. Looking in my files for their work, asking me question about clients I don't associate with. They are very minor infractions against my sanity, but they tend to snowball to Olympian proportions quite speedily.

Most customers are also viewed in my mind as impediments to my work. But I'll write a discourse on them another day.

Aw crap...

Today is off to cracking start. And by cracking I don't mean the British colloquialism for great, I mean the desperate need to crack my head against concrete so as to render me incapable of work thereby absolving me of any and all design-related obligations. Everytime I claw my way to the top of my work pile, the nasty little buggers seem to clutch hold of my ankle and wrench me back down into the thick of it. Jerks.

In other news, my dad won a trip to Egypt!

EGYPT!

That would be really beyond amazing. I mean, after museums and all that great stuff, I'd probably be bored. But imagine photographing Egypt? That sort of stuff is my dream! Of course, I'd be terrified to walk around Cairo and...other places (they have other places right? :) ) by myself, but the opportunity to do travel photography would make me weak at the knees.

But, my father, being the ridiculously down-to-earth man that he is, has opted to take the cash payment instead. Which I don't find entirely surprising considering he is on workman's comp after having injured his shoulder. Still, a large red exclamation mark is the best the English language can do to display the excitement of such an opportunity.

!

(I don't know why I am so excited, its not like I would get to go anyways...)

A rather busy week

So, the last little bit has been pretty hopping for me.

At work we finished store wide inventory over the weekend. That wasn't a fun thing, however. Think "counting pens" for 4 hours.

Why, oh why, do I work in a stationery store!?!

However, it does make it fun when "Office Supplies" pops up for a photo contest. I'll have to rummage around on my lunch for things to take and photograph tonight. :)
Work is going swimmingly, the bulk of my major or very late projects are delt with, which makes coming to work and dealing with stress much much easier. Its nice when things just flow.
Co workers, however are, well, less than amicable. Besides being technically incapable of the job they have been given, my colleague/supervisor is now spending a couple hours with a sales rep for one of our giftware suppliers, leaving all the customers to my lonesome. Hurrah. I like all the various graphic work I get to do, but when three peoples work (There are only two of us, but we are quite understaffed for the volume we have) gets shovelled on to my shoulders because I "know how to do all that kinda stuff", I can very quickly get behind and burned out. Which makes for lots of malcontent when I get chewed out for being late on work from both customers, management and the very supervisor who is responsible for adding to my workload daily. Suddenly I can empathize with all those people who snap and cause random bodily harm at the work place.
Outside of work, things are hunky dorey. (/me makes a note to look up the etymology on that one). At church I got called to be an assistant primary teacher, basically sunday school for little tykes between 5-11. That'll be fun, I love kids. I was a substitute for a couple times and the kids are really nice, but jeeze, are they ever nuts! I plan out about a 45 minute lesson and wind up spending half an hour trying to calm them down. Like I said, I love kids, I just can't control them (but candy bribery can easily remedy that)

Later today I will try and finangle a raise. I going to email some other print shops in town and see what they would offer as a starting wage for someone with my experience and use that to put the hurt on management here. When you consider I make the same amount per hour as our cashiers, I don't think I'm being overly presumptious or greedy.

Wish me luck!

The $1300 mistake no one cared about.

So, I have been less than faithful in updating this page.

Sue me.

Or, if you would prefer to keep your toes out of legal whitewater, let me amuse you with tales of woe and misfortune. On Wednesday this week I got in paper for a big big order that was going to be delivered the next day. More correctly, the paper arrived a week ago, I didn't do anything with it untill Wednesday. Anyways, It is Wednesday and for whatever reason I am seriously sleep deprived (which is odd considering I went to bed at a quasi-reasonable hour) and this all makes for a very cranky and easily distracted Braden. Long story short, I spend about an hour cutting 6 cases of special order paper the completely wrong way. I don't know this untill I stumble back to my desk to write up an invoice and go over the order information. I'm not a swearing man, but the inside of my head was more colourful than a hippy commune in 1960's San Francisco.

At this point, I decide it would be a good idea to find out eactly how much all this paper has cost the store. A few computations reveals a total loss of $1330.

I am now in full on panic mode. The paper is cut, it can't be uncut. The cases were a special mill order and took nearly 3 weeks to come in. In 60 minutes I have single handedly (Actually because of safety locks on the cutter, it was technically double handedly) destroyed a months worth of work. It is late in the day and all managers have gone home or are leaving shortly. This means that I got ALL NIGHT to sit and stir over how angry my bosses would be, and how hard and how fast their foot would deliver my rear end to the curb. This did nothing to assuage my already hot temperment.

Morning comes, and I sheepishly drag myself to work, dreading the coming confrontation. I approach Lindy, my supervisor/co-worker. Our conversation went something like this:
Braden: "Ummm, Lindy, I made a really big mistake..."
Lindy: (Very cautiously) "What was that?"
Braden: "You know that paper for Glenwood? Yeah, I cut it the wrong way."
Lindy: "All of it?"
Braden: "Yeah..."
Lindy: "Hmmm...well, that's too bad."

and off she goes about her morning.

And once again, we have clear proof that I am a chronic worrier and am prone to making monumental mountains of eeetsy bitsy mole hills.

Besides, I mean, $1330 who cares right?
/sarcasm