Like any designer, I have a penchant for the retro designs. I like going to thrift stores and repurposing items I find there. My home is a collection of great patterns and mid-century modern aesthetics. I have one designer in particular that really fulfills my retro eye-candy – Orla Kiely. I swiped up as much merchandise of hers as I could when she did a line for Target. I absolutely love what she did for Heal’s of UK, though, and wish I could purchase her furniture here: Orla Keily’s collection

Especially this amazing chair: http://www.heals.co.uk/Armchairs/Orla-Kiely-Cork-Easy-Chair-Multi-Stem/invt/853783&bklist=icat,2,mycatref?htxt=5OPEGuIiRaww0m6ZvCBjIqYNE6qY4%2B%2FH5ZB4GjwsIK865clQGRStb9QsqQ44MsGqet1XbNKUAgc5%0A8NDOvNJwgA%3D%3D

But for those in the States and on a budget, I tend to like to buy items from this site: http://www.galison.com/GALISON-C34.aspx. I just ordered their Kitchen College recipe box, but I’ve been a fan of the Tulip pattern for a while.

Of course, I really enjoy owls. There’s this awesome owl plaque I have in my office that I found at a yard sale. Check it out:

Looking over me to give me wisom in my work

How can designers not love things from the past? They’re just too amazing.

I can’t believe how long I can let myself lapse between times of blogging. I know that I could just post little tidbits everyday, but sometimes I wonder if I want my blog to lose that much integrity. Maybe I do – it would be easier to get into the writing habit that way.

Life update then. I WANT TO MOVE. God, so badly. This winter has been longer, colder, and full of more snow than any other winter I’ve had. Not only have I been able to tell a difference with my mood, but I have been with my asthma. Unless I am exercising, I don’t notice my asthma. But with this cold my chest is just tight all the time. I’ve wondered if I need to get back to taking medicine for it. I already take so many pills, though, so I prefer to not go that route.

So this leaves me only one conclusion – move someplace warmer. I’ve considered moving to either a beach town or the Southwest, to live in a more arid climate. I’ve considered Miami, Charleston, Baltimore, and Albuquerque. Of all of those, the most practical one is Baltimore. My boyfriend owns a townhouse there that has plenty of space for us (the mortgage is something around $400), I have a good friend there, there’s a place where I’m pretty sure I could get a job, I have friends in DC, there’s a good soccer team in DC, and there’s an amazing grad school I would love to go to there. But, it’s where my boyfriend’s family lives – there would be a ton of baggage. I would have to deal with the drama all the time. Plus, it’s not the beach or less cold than here!

Other things are going well. I’ve been maintaining most of my new year’s resolutions well. I drink about 2.5 litres of water a day, take a multi-vitamin every day, work out about 5 times a week, on the off days I do tai chi.

Some of the resolutions are gonna take a while. My savings have dipped down because I lent about $1000 bucks to someone. Kinda puts a dent in my pocket. I haven’t been training for the competitions as much as I want. The practice area we do tai chi in has no room for weapons. Once the weather gets better so I can practice outside, I plan to vamp up this stuff a lot. I really am getting into hsing-yi as well.

As for a job to make me happier…well, that might come with moving. I’m hoping to make a decision soon. My lease to my apartment is up the middle of April, and I gotta decide where to move. LAME. Moving again.

One of my personal projects I’ll be doing this weekend – organizing the attic. I’m pretty much an organizational freak, but the place I’m in has the most awkward layout ever to prevent putting in extra storage. So, I’ve been swirling in a state of apathy. I’ll just put everything into freaking plastic containers, label them and put them in the attic. BAM.

Gonna order new glasses this weekend. Got a recommendation from a friend about zennioptical.com. I would skeptical about this site, except that someone I know showed me their pair. It beats paying $200! Plus, I can get one or two pairs to fit my many different moods, ha.

Trying to update this blog more. I swear. Trying.

Everyone has their emotional burdens. I realize that. No one can ever know the situation one person has gone through as well as the person who lived it. One thoroughly understands his needs beyond the basics of survival.

What I don’t understand is how unaware people can be of the impact their emotional burden has on other people. You haven’t solved your problems? That’s fine, because god knows I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean I completely ruin other people’s lives with my burden. I know what’s appropriate and what’s not.

I lost all my friends at school when we moved and because they all decided to stop talking to me. I had no one to turn to. I had to rely on myself for getting me through the tough times.

This leads to my emotional burden. I cannot trust anyone. Even the simple levels of trust, like in a group project, trusting someone to complete a part. Time and time again if I trust someone, it falls apart. I have never know the feeling of trusting someone so completely you would put your life in their hands and know that they would do what’s best for you. I cannot trust my mom. I shattered that bond years ago. I cannot trust my dad anymore, because he doesn’t do what is right, he does what will be easy because it’s on mom’s side. This moral fiber I’ve barely strung together quivers at the presence of my dad because he’s a man I deeply admire. We are so much alike and it kills me to see him throwing away his life so easily. I have no friends that I really trust to a deep level. My boyfriends have all suffered from my lack of trust and affection. It’s not that I get jealous, it’s just that I don’t let them into my soul. It’s because I keep the lesson of humanity and the lesson of mortality close to my heart–it is natural that humans close to you will leave, it’s either because of death or the human condition.

The problem with being an artist, an introvert, and a philosopher is that when you think and feel you think and feel more deeply than the majority of humanity. You realize the agonies of human life and yet feel helpless. Your heart sinks into a pit not of pity or despair, just heaviness. And what happens to you then? My mom says that my sister and I are much mentally older than our ages, which is too true. I’ve never felt I had a childhood, and try to clutch onto the vague resemblence of one by buying myself action figures and getting giddy at the sight of cute things. But this is superficial nonsense. I am old mentally but young in body. I do not fit in with adults and do not fit in with young people. I sit in limbo trying to figure out which one I want to be. Mature, virtuous, with responsibility, or rebellious, vicious, and playful? Do I have to choose? To integrate with society, it seems I must.

I at least realize this egregious flaw of mine. As such, until it is resolved, I should not be in a relationship. I am determined not to let the same thing happen another generation. If it means the bloodline stops here, so be it.

People have asked me if I had a happy childhood. I honestly cannot remember. Sure, there were good times, and very bad times, but for the most part, my memory is erased. I remember being scared a great deal when I was a kid. My parents had horrible fights, and with my asthma attacks/sickness I knew I was afraid of death. I hated to go to sleep at night because I was so uncertain whether or not I should awake the next morning.

Nowadays I usually sleep to avoid waking up.

Ok, so my boss is the owner of our small agency. She was a broadcast major, worked at a newspaper, etc. so she’s been basically a writer and producer. Nothing to do with graphic or web design. She told me she brought me on because I could not only do these things, but could advise her on them.

However, it has become a constant battle for my integrity. I tell her and sell her on the best options, and she goes for the one I disapprove of the most because her cousin’s sister’s boyfriend uses it. Or, as lovely as this is, I’ll do an email newsletter with a text wrap on the right side of an image, and she labels it in all caps “BAD DESIGN.” Unfortunately, what she considers bad design one week she changes her mind on in the next. It’s hard to really understand how she works.

And she does everything half-assed. She thinks she has to micro-manage every aspect so she doesn’t really put forth a quality effort to any particular field. It really bothers me that she thinks she’s so stretched thin. We have a rotating window of about 5-6 clients in a month, needing different things. As only one designer exists in the office, me, I can handle this workload fine as long as I have the proper project manager to take care of it. Unfortunately the new project manager wants to be a designer instead, so she slacks off on the managing part. Why do I always need to remind her of due dates and projects and her responsibilities?

Back to my boss. So she things programming in PHP or ActionScript is a cinch. I tell her I can do things, but I’m not sure what errors will occur because of things like web configurations (we don’t use the same hosting servers for each website we do). She says ok. I barely get to spend a good chunk of the day on the code (about 6 hours) and she says that if I can’t do something about it then she’ll get someone who can. Then she’ll give me talks about how I have to learn too much. I just want to be like, “Please go look at the 150 lines of code I wrote today. You try to figure out what’s going on.” It’s even better when it’s code from a website that I’ve inherit that’s broken. I have to spend some goddamn time figuring out how the code works, woman.

It’s just ridiculous that people can’t appreciate others for what they bring to the table. My boss has tons of connections and we end up getting to do cool clients because of it. I’ve worked with corporations and small businesses side by side and am happy with that experience. However, I would like to work in a shop that appreciates the time coding takes, good design can take, that sometimes you can’t rush creativity, and you learn of deadlines before the day of. I have so many instances of her running in and being like, “I’ve completely forgotten about this one project, I need you to do in one hour.” Occasional instances of this are fine, I do like challenges, but not every day. That just shows poor planning, and shouldn’t that be the project manager’s job?

Since I haven’t posted a specifically design post for a bit, here’s one for you. Forgot where I once found this, but thought I would share. Even though the year has sucked personally, and I have no idea what the future holds, I still can’t help but be hBolded are the ones I think really apply to myself!

1 You’ve almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.
2 You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
3 You’d rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend’s shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.
4 You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can’t type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard. (I actually can type really fast, too)
5 You’ve had “Software Nightmares,” when you’ve been working way too much.
6 You consider meals interruptions. (Probably my biggest pet peeve!)
7 You’ve learned your lesson and stopped using the word “final” in any file name when saving.
8 You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.
9 You’ve intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers.
10 You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.
11 You’d rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.
12 When you heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm.
13 When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)
14 You’ve Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.
15 You’ve actually $paid for a font.
16 You’ve totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)
17 The amount of words you’ve written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you’ve read in novels.
18 You’ve had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn’t part of the deal.
19 You’ve kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.
20 You’ve nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)
21 You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.
22 You’ve intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.
23 You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
24 You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper

Which ones are yours?