{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:herchuckness","title":"more scandalous dandy","subtitle":"more scandalous dandy","author":{"name":"more scandalous dandy"},"link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/data\/atom"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"service.feed","type":"application\/x.atom+xml","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/data\/atom","title":"more scandalous dandy"}}],"updated":"2010-06-03T17:43:19Z","entry":[{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:herchuckness:190219","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/190219.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=190219"}}],"title":"dreamwidth codes","published":"2010-05-25T20:47:28Z","updated":"2010-06-03T17:43:19Z","content":"Anybody want Dreamwidth invite codes? I've got 7<\/del> 4 to give away. Comment with your email address and I'll send em to you."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:herchuckness:190159","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/190159.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=190159"}}],"title":"Final Fantasy cocktails","published":"2010-05-13T04:26:12Z","updated":"2010-05-13T04:26:12Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"gaming"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"drinks"}}],"content":"Cactuar cocktail<\/a>! Careful. Too many rounds of these and you're hit with the hangover of 10,000 Needles. (Nothing a little Phoenix Down<\/a> won't fix, I guess!)

I need to open a geeky bar and only serve drinks like these. Also, no sports playing on the TVs - all video games, all the time. Except on Anime Nights, when we play my favorite shows and serve drinks like these<\/a>. XD"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:herchuckness:189853","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/189853.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=189853"}}],"title":"so hey I'm in art school!","published":"2010-04-16T19:14:13Z","updated":"2010-04-16T19:14:13Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"art school"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"art"}}],"content":"I'm taking Analysis of Form this semester, which is mostly drawing with charcoal at 18\" x 24\" size. It's sorta like the Beginning Drawing class I took at my local university some years back, except faster paced and twice as hard! Which is good, because I'm a little better at it than I was back then. This is still pushing me without being overwhelmingly difficult, just right for my first class.

It's still overwhelmingly time-consuming, though. I spend a minimum of 20 hours per week on this class, and lately that number keeps creeping upwards. When you add in the full time job... yeah, I have no life these days. Each of these drawings were done over the course of two weeks.


Drapery<\/b>
This was confusing to work on, because I kept forgetting which fold I was doing and messing it up.




Torso<\/b>
Pardon the blurry pic, it was late at night and I suddenly realized I had three minutes left to photograph this one and turn it in or I'd get a zero.




Still Life<\/b>
THIS ONE OMG. The unit was on composition. If you include all the prep work of finding and arranging the right objects, I probably spent 50 hours on this over the course of two weeks. And I could spend at least another five doing minor fixes and darkening some of the values to make it really perfect.


<\/a>


This week we get a break from charcoal to work on line drawings in one and two point perspective. (Your post was quite timely, <\/a>telophase<\/b><\/a><\/a>ayonoi<\/b><\/a><\/span> and <\/a>admiral_yen<\/b><\/a><\/span>, yours went out today!

I can see I'll have to revise my shipping prices, I overestimated the size of the smaller flat-rate mailers. Good thing I haven't gotten around to posting this sale to any communities yet. I also neglected to factor Paypal fees into my prices, but I think I'll just eat that cost. First time selling stuff online, I'll get the hang of it eventually. :)"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:herchuckness:189034","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/189034.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/herchuckness.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=189034"}}],"title":"Gdocs killed my blog! Also, Clutter Busting by Brooks Palmer","published":"2010-03-25T19:36:11Z","updated":"2010-03-25T19:36:11Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"books"}},"content":"It's true! Google documents is part of the reason I stopped post here much. I've been using it since the beginning of 2008 for a wide variety of things, including private journaling. A lot of it's too boring or too personal to share, but getting into the habit of writing there kind of sucked up all the words I would have posted here in the past. Like this book review I wrote three weeks ago!


Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back<\/a> by Brooks Palmer

I've been enjoying Palmer's clutter busting blog<\/a> for a while now. I like how gentle and relentless he is, and how simply but powerfully he relates stories from his clutter busting clients. I find it a soothing and inspirational read (often in the literal sense - it frequently motivates me to go do another round of clearing stuff out).

The book is definitely in the same vein. It's full of his experiences with clients which serve to illustrate the various types of clutter and methods of dealing with it. Sprinkled throughout are simple tips and related exercises. It is not, however, one of those \"10 hacks to super-organize your kitchen\" or \"buy these nifty containers to store (aka hide) your stuff in\" type of book. Palmer makes a point of stating that you don't need to buy anything new, except perhaps a box of trash bags. He also asserts that organizing is something you only do after you get rid of all the stuff in your way.

I would have found this book most helpful four years ago (three years before it was written), when I was living in my large two bedroom apartment. I had an entire room full of stuff I wasn't using. It was ostensibly \"the art room\", but I never went in there. It was packed with things I'd been holding on to for years, some of it a decade or longer. I was also still collecting stuff at a furious pace, filling my bookshelves and sections of my floor with books and manga magazines that I barely flipped through. I liked looking at the spines all lined up next to each other, and appreciating my complete set - that is, until the next issue came out. I was spending hours every day consuming fandom, losing myself in anime and mmorpgs to the detriment of my health, and looking for more stuff to buy that I couldn't afford. I was severely depressed and doing anything I could to distract myself from that fact. It never worked for long, though.

I ended up working these things out on my own, first purging stuff in a quest to rent out my second bedroom and then doing it in preparation for moving to the attic apartment. I kept the habit after I moved, I've been slowly and steadily decluttering my life for the past two and a half years. Back when I started I didn't have any outside advice on the process, I was just bumbling along on my own. I did get better at it as time went on, and I noticed the positive effects of both having more open space and the actual act of letting things go. It probably would have gone faster, and easier, if I'd had a book like this to help me along back then.

Because I worked my own way through a lot of these same concepts, Palmer's book doesn't have quite the impact on me now that it would have had then. The tone of the book is definitely addressing people who are just starting out with decluttering, especially those who are overwhelmed by their stuff and unsure where or how to start. Since I've been doing it for two and a half years now, this isn't really a problem for me. A lot of the concepts and tips are things I've already discovered and internalized.

It was still a good read, though. I've gotten rid of probably 3\/4ths of the stuff I had in that big 2-bedroom apartment (a massive amount for a reformed pack-rat like me), but there are still some things I have trouble with. I found the stories and tips devoted to nostalgic clutter to be particularly useful. I've got a couple boxes of old letters, photos and unwearable clothes that I've been meaning to toss for a while, but keep unhappily hanging onto. Reading Palmer's book and blog helped me uncover and work through the reasons behind that, and to see how clinging to these artifacts of the past can negatively influence the present. The way he uses personal stories to illustrate his concepts makes for an enjoyable read, and they keep the book from being a too-specific list of tips & tricks.

I'd recommend this book if you: