Hello! It’s been awhile since I posted a blog about nothing, so I figured it was time to throw some new (and entirely pointless) content at you. This is like going to a party just to make small-talk, except that I don’t have to have a coronary over how long I should look someone in the face, and which eye I should stare at when I’m talking to them*, or whether I ought to just split the difference and look right between their eyes. I’m not actually always borderline Asperger’s when I socialize, but once you start wondering these things in the middle of a conversation, it’s hard to stop. The best part is that no one has any idea that I’m a socially shy introvert by nature because, like my mother before me, I know how to fake sincerity.
(It’s all about asking questions. Once you figure out what interests a person, you can talk for ages with a stranger just by inserting “uh-huh” at appropriate intervals.)
(Also, confession: per usual exaggeration is playing its part here. While I do find interaction with people – especially strangers – exhausting after awhile, at the end of the day human beings are basically walking, talking stories, intricately pieced together. If you pull the right thread they’ll unravel enough to tell you who they are, whether or not they mean to. It’s almost a game trying to figure out how to get them going, especially when they’re shyer than you are.)
And now upward and onward to an announcement. A have a new folder on my website: Art Portfolio. I would’ve just called it “Art” but it’s such a small word that it looked way too lonely up on the tab by itself. Thus I added the pompous noun to dress it up. My decision-making is rarely motivated by any truly deep thinking.
Anyways, this is entirely an excuse to post my art online, now that I’ve abandoned my old DeviantArt account. Back when I was in college, DeviantArt was one of my backup time-wasters when I had nothing else to keep me from getting a full-night’s sleep, a website where I’d spend hours perusing other peoples’ art, admiring their techniques and talent, and then weeping over the lack of my own. Honestly, I think it helped my own art more than I realized (people talk about “studying” the arts to get better at them, and I think a lot of that can be translated into “staring at” because there’s nothing like using your eyes to improve at a visual medium), but I’m still no master drawer. Frankly, I won’t ever be. I don’t care enough. You can expect me to squeak by on the fact that I’m good enough for government work (and picture books).
In fact, I was able to talk my boss into allowing me to create the graphics for the handouts we created for her clients. I work as a legal assistant in a family law office (we also do estate planning and business, but the family law lawyer utilizes my skill-set more than my other boss, so that feels like our primary function), and creating visuals for different types of divorce was an interesting challenge. So far these are what I’ve come up with:
Kitchen Table Negotiations
Mediation
Collaborative Law
Our office specializes in non-traditional divorce (meaning we never go to court; we do a lot of mediation and collaborative negotiations, the purpose of which is to keep the divorce from ending with both parties screaming at each other over a judge), so I’m actually allowed to make traditional divorce look like the option you don’t want to choose. Right now it’s just a picture of a gavel, borrowed from Microsoft Word’s clip-art options, but I’ll probably create something subtly ominous looking later this week, like a judge peering over his desk at an unhappy looking couple. Ah yiss, I can’t say I mind getting paid an hourly wage to draw while I listen/watch YouTube. Art doesn’t take the concentration that I lot of my other projects require, so I can pour some of my unused mental capacity into mindless internet videos.
So that’s it for today. I’ve already spent more time on this blog post than I planned, and it’s back to the grindstone for me. I’m taking a break from “Small Town Super Nobody” to work on the art for my picture book, but I’ll get back to it either tonight or tomorrow. I’m still planning to have chapter 7 written and uploaded by Thursday**.
*The left is my go-to eye, for some reason. I have no idea why I realized this when I was visiting my grandmother this weekend; at least I can claim to have accomplished something.
**Friday.
