Ugh. Work today just felt like work, a yet-to-be-resolved scheduling conflict looms ever closer, an evening bike ride spent dodging runners and swarms of tiny flies left me more rather than less stressed, and my racing mind wasn’t listening to me when I told it that everything will be okay. Which it will, but sometimes that’s just not enough.

Today was a day that nearly put the “nearly” in “nearly daily doodles.” Instead, I decided to embrace the “doodles.” I may add some color to this at some point, but for now it’s here as a reminder that five minutes on the couch pen-in-hand can pay dividends.

Speaking of dividends, strange background story on the order of operations of this post: I wrote the first paragraph before sitting down to sketch, then sat down to sketch, then post-doodle, as I was writing the second paragraph, Madison came in to tell me that an email had come through resolving our unduly stressful scheduling conflict. And while I place my faith in “coincidence” over “signs” or “fate,” I would be remiss to skip the lesson in this rather tidy sequence of events.

On a related but opposite note, I should add that this upcoming week is fairly crazy (see aforementioned scheduling conflict), and may demand that I actually follow through with wielding the “nearly.” Pen-in-hand five-minutes-on-the-couch dividends aside, I did include the “nearly” for a reason, so, as I think I’ve said on this blog before, “sorry I’m not sorry.”

September 28, 2015.

When they’re not spent rushing off to some weekend commitment, eight o’clock to noon on Saturday mornings are my four favorite hours of the week, followed closely by the same four hours the next day.

There is something so liberating about waking up to two days of no plans. Admittedly, that is not how weekends have played out for me for the past six months or so, but the crazy summer has made me appreciate free weekends so much more.

Madison’s Sunday morning, crazy pre-shower hair and all.

Last weekend was spent organizing our apartment (finally, after living here for more than two months), sketching, running, biking, and casually ticking things off our joint and individual to-do lists. The whole weekend was perfect, a reminder of the joys of slowing down and relaxing, but the mornings were definitely the best part. If only every day started with a creative project, soft sunlight, a slow breakfast, laid-back productivity, and a warm cup of tea or coffee.

September 27, 2015.

I love sketching in cafes, bars, and restaurants. It’s the prefect place to draw people because they’re moving enough that you’re forced to keep the sketch loose but not so much that you can’t capture them. It also feels more natural than sketching people on the train, or at the airport, or in class – all of which I’ve done, but definitely with less confidence.

Plus it’s riskier than sketching something that’s not moving, which makes it more fun. Will he move? Will a group come in and block the woman I’m sketching? Will that girl notice I’m staring at her? Will someone ask to see my whole sketchbook? Will I accidentally give someone dark eyeliner?

The answer to the last question, unfortunately, is yes – the woman in my second sketch was not wearing dark eyeliner, I just got too aggressive with her eye. Although in the drawing she matches the guy she’s sitting with (the one with the mohawk) much better than she did in real life.

The first sketch is at the Cambridge Queen’s Head, the second at Grendel’s Den, one of our favorite spots in Harvard square.

September 25, 2015.

For the past few weeks to-do lists have been working really well for me. I think it’s because I’ve just adopted a ‘new day, new list’ policy. Usually I make rambling to-do lists with a mix of long-term and short-term goals, and hold onto them in various iterations for weeks or months. They really serve as a brain dump, and are hugely helpful because I’m fairly forgetful. At least I hope they’re helpful, because I continuously make and add to them.

However, they are not very helpful for actually guiding my daily activities. At least right now, a daily list seems to be filling the gap pretty effectively, although probably I’m still letting too many long-term goals sneak onto my daily list, masquerading as achievable agenda items.

I’m only a few weeks into the new practice of a daily list, so hopefully I’ll get better at filtering my goals into long-term and short-term tasks. Perhaps more importantly, I know that I also need to get a little (much?) more realistic about the number of short-term tasks that belong on a single daily list.

September 24, 2015.

Laundry is my least favorite household chore. Hands down. My preference for household chores can be roughly plotted according to ‘satisfaction upon completion’ versus ‘distaste for the actual task.” On both fronts, laundry scores at the losing end of the spectrum. Well, maybe cleaning the bathroom scores worse for the task itself, but its satisfaction score is high enough to bump it up above laundry day.

I don’t know why, but clean clothes neatly folded and tucked away in drawers is just not that exciting to me. Cupboards full of clean dishes (and a sink without any dirty ones), a fridge stocked with delicious food, a sparkling bathroom sink – these are things that bring me satisfaction. Left to my own devices, laundry would wait until absolutely necessary. And then it would probably wait another day or two.

Luckily, Madison’s household chores line up in a slightly different order. For him, the satisfaction of a stocked fridge does not outweigh the hassle of the grocery store, but clean clothes (and my undying gratitude) make laundry a far-from-thankless task, or at least, far-enough-from-thankless.

Unluckily (and luckily) grocery shopping, cooking, and washing dishes have all been largely removed from our list of household chores by our recent move to a college campus (long and different story). Of course the time back in our week is wonderful, but it puts my laundry avoidance in a rather precarious position.

I should clarify that I’m avoiding the commitment, not the chore. We don’t have our own washer and dryer, so laundry involves dropping clothes off, setting a timer, coming back, starting the dryer, hanging non-dryer items (i.e., all of my clothes because I don’t trust dryers), setting another timer, lugging clothes back, folding shirts and matching socks, and finally putting everything away. If I could just toss them in the wash and come back at my leisure to hang some up and toss the rest in the dryer, laundry would barely be a blip on my radar. Instead, I associate laundry with a lost weekend morning, and I am very attached to my weekend mornings.

Here’s another sketch from laundry day, just some random bedtime doodles.

September 23, 2015.