Changes

Changes. That's what has been going on. 

My blog looks a but different these days. It's probably just a temporary change since I'm permanently dissatisfied with the look, but never committed enough to really fix what I want. Life goes on.

I'm a college graduate now, and have been living with my parents for nearly a month. I've returned to the house I grew up in, cats & few selected possessions in tow, to figure out where to go. To use this as an opportunity to be a floater, to be without a lease and rent to hold me down, to let the right job be an anchor. Find a job, then plant some roots.

This all sounds like a splendid plan, except for the fact that I am  impatient. Three weeks has felt like an eternity. I know I'm being dramatic, but I will continue to hope that every single day will be the day that the perfect job and the new apartment will all fall into place. So, fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Charlie and I spent a couple days in Milwaukee, walking around, pondering if it is a place we could call home. We stayed with Charlie's brother Jeremy and his girlfriend Vanessa. I wish I would have taken more photos during the visit. The above photo of Charlie was taken in their home. There is a comforting and all around pleasant feeling I get whenever we spend time with those two. Though I'm not sure if Milwaukee will be our future home, I sure do like spending time with the people I know there.

So for now I am spending my days working a few hours here and there, helping a friend decorate her apartment (living vicariously), doing odd chores around my parents home, and job & apartment hunting like it is my job.

On that note, I am done with college now, so send your design and/or photographic projects over to me. My doors are open for business. You can even see my website by clicking the portfolio link on the right side bar.

Love,

Lu

P.S. fun fact: it's a saturday night. I'm watching You've Got Mail, and am making serious plans to take a bath. Welcome to my life.

Bits & Pieces

Ahhhh, it's been so long since I've taken anytime to blog, which kind of bums me out, because I would really love to grow this blog into something more than it has been, but for various reasons, I just haven't been devoting the time.

SO, lets talk about these reasons (read: listen to me talk about my life lately).
It is my last semester, and graduation is in five weeks! Despite my light course load of only 12 credits I still find myself completely busy, overwhelmed, and beat by this semester! A lot of this has to do with my anxiousness to end this semester, so any and every task related to school pretty much seems like the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life. 

One of my classes actually made us finger paint a 24"x33" poster sized recreation of a painting with cattle markers. Yes, cattle markers, oily sticks intended for writing/drawing farmer things onto cows. Though some of my peers seem to enjoy working with these sloppy oversized oil pastels, I am not fan. Drawing/painting/messy media in general are not really my thing which is why I stick to graphic design and photography for my artistic fulfillment. 

Another part of my frantic life lately is the impending deadline of getting my portfolio printed! I will not lie, I slacked off a bit during a class or two throughout my student career, which is becoming a pain now as I realize that I don't feel that a lot of my design student work really showcases my ability and talents. I devised a plan to fix this, but it means creating and completing a design project a day for almost two weeks to build a new body of work to show off! It's time to send this baby to press at the end of the week, and I am certainly feeling the stress, since this will be my job getting tool.

The photo pictured above is a screenshot of a bizarre and hilarious error message photoshop gave me last week. I panicked briefly, then then googled, and learned that it is more or less a joke and accident that it even made it through to the finished product. All issues were resolved by restarting the program.

OH! I got a new camera. I sold my panasonic lumix lx-5 and promptly purchased a used sony alpha nex-5 for about the same price! So far I am enjoying this mutant camera. I call it that because it has a skinny, portable body like a point & shoot, but features large interchangeable lenses, so it looks a little different than most cameras. I love it, because it's a nice purse companion, and allows me to have the convenience of digital photography with me all the time. I also appreciate the easy manual controls and focusing via lens ring that makes it feel real. It also can take some nice photos.

That's the first picture I took while I was playing around with it the day I got it. Yes, I do have a basset hound mug, and yes, that's an iFixit sticker proudly displayed on my coffee table, earned after a time when i fixed it (it being a broken inverter cable on my laptop, and when I say "I" I mean I investigated, purchased, and gave directions while Charlie did most of the fixing). 

I got to test the camera out a bit while working on a photo class assignment with my friend and beloved photo-subject Sarah. I haven't really looked at, or edited her photos much, but here's a picture of some worn out, but cute/charming shoes that were in her room.

There's just something I love about a beat up pair of shoes!

So in other news, I have given up pants for the spring/summer season starting now. I just need the beautiful weather to come back fully and embrace my pale, pale legs.

My apartment and job search in the Fox Valley presses on, and I am still sitting with fingers crossed over one particularly great photo-job opportunity that had a promising interview. I am eagerly looking forward to a change of scenery, living affordably, and seeing my family more (especially the baby nephew) and feeling good about graduating college/summer/life.

I would love it if we all talked a bit more, what's new with you, my dear readers?

Lu

These Days

Hey friends,

Something wild happened today, in the blink of an eye my life suddenly became very very busy. I woke up and began my day disconnected with the reality of my life. I thought this week would breeze by and I would float through my three day school week, and find my pleasantly eventful weekend at the end.

Well, what a joke those thoughts were.

As of today these things became parts of my life:

- I am a hostess to an out of town friend, who is visiting for us to tie up loose ends of some design work, which means trying to make my apartment look cleaner, and actually devoting some time to organizing this design project.

- Homework is real in my life. I've spent the last three weeks mainly ignoring it, and now it's here at my doorstep, needing to be worked on, and there's a lot of it. Naturally this is difficult to accept, since my mentality is three months ahead of my reality, waiting for graduation.

- I got a new job, that involves a commute to a neighboring city. I am very very thrilled by this opportunity, but for the next week or so it will be a bit complicated while I finish up my last shifts at my previous job, which usually takes over my weekend.

- A vet appointment snuck up on me, so I will be driving to a suburb to take my cat to a low-cost clinic for vaccine updates.

- I will also be making a day trip to Oshkosh on Sunday to meet with my favorite bride Dani to map out a design plan for invitations.

- Aside from these bigger things worth noting, there is also a never ending list of small tasks, chores, and errands that need to be taken care of this week. I won't list them all, because that would be annoying, but knowing they are hanging around each corner might be most stressful.

Ok now it's all out in words, and even that makes me feel a bit better, sort of like list making therapy I guess. Hopefully I make this week successful, and can stay more put together in weeks to come. 

Oh, happy Valentines Day! This is a small clipping from a digital collage type of shoe advertisement assignment I am working on for the Valentines Day season.

Lu

I Have A Nephew!

I have a nephew now, and his name is Levi, and he is beautiful!

This is very exciting for me, because I absolutely love babies, especially this one.

Lu

Reading for Leisure

Hey pals,


When I was a kiddo I was a total bookworm. I don't remember using the internet or computer much until age twelve, but I do remember lounging around in my room reading and weekly visits to the library. It's probably not surprising to hear that I wasn't exactly a social butterfly. 


Eventually my love for reading faded away after required readings for high school and college dominated my hours, and I just never felt like reading anymore. Now I'm a fourth year graphic design student, and hardly read for school, so reading for fun is making a comeback into my life.

I received It Chooses You by Miranda July as a Christmas gift from Charlie. I finished it in two sittings, and loved it so much! Her writing is so thoughtful and interesting and connected with my emotional nature.


Reading this book reminded me that I actually enjoy reading for leisure, so I quickly picked up a used copy of an earlier July book, No One Belongs Here More Than You, and so far I am enjoying.

Seriously though, you should all read It Chooses You. It was great, if I could give it as a gift to all of my friends I would.


Lu

Boots

Hey friends,


I need some opinions, PLEASE, help me.


I have always sort of dreamed about owning and wearing cream colored boots, I have no idea why, but if it's rooted like my red hair dreamz (thanks madeline & the little mermaid)it's probably because of a character I really liked as a kid. I almost bought a pair in the summer of 2008, but didn't because I was low on cash, and it was summer and at 18 I lacked the foresight to realize how great they would be for fall/winter.

Now, it's 2012 and I am getting a second chance, but am I just being silly? Do you think they are cute? Could I make them work? Do you think they are cute? I could use some thoughtful opinions.

Lu

A Question

Hey friends,


Lately I've had a question in my mind, and I'm really hoping that some of you anonymous, anti-comment, page viewers (i know you're there, my stats say so!) can give me some feedback and opinions on the matter.


You probably know that I am in the design field of work, and more and more recently I've started doing work for my friends who are all approaching the beginning of their own professional lives. For the most part this work is unpaid, because 1. they're my friends 2. they're just as poor as I am 3. I'm bad at telling people who I've only spoken with on a casual, friend level, that the work I'm doing for them should cost money. I'm getting better with the last one, and to be completely honest, I enjoy design, so when they are a for real friend, I really don't mind doing the small jobs for free, but here is the "but". 


When you're doing work for free (or even not for free for the sake of discussion and conversation) how much creative license do you give yourself? In a lot of situations these pals of mine give me all I want, they so do what you do, and I do exactly that, but what about if one of them gives you a clear plan? And what if that plan doesn't really seem like the best one to you? 


I keep finding myself tempted to ditch the friend-clients initial vision to do my own rendition. When I start to wander off from their ideas and create plenty of justifications. I tell myself it's ok, because I'm the expert on this, and since they're my friends, they should/will respect my professional opinion, go with me on it. I sometimes even try to justify my changes with the fact that this is work I am not being paid for, so I am sort of allowed to do it my way.


I know all of this is probably bad practice for when I work with paying clients, but I can't help it. Does this happen to anyone else?


Today a similar topic came up with a friend, in regards to hair cuts, and how we don't let friends or family cut our hair, since they usually ignore requests, and decide what they think is best. It made me think more about myself and how I handle the situation. I guess maybe this is just the status quo for creative service fields. 


Thoughts? I would really appreciate to hear what others have to say, and how they handle these sort of things.


Lu


P.S. I really hope this doesn't sound like I don't want to help out friends, because that's just not the case, I just find myself in this same creative dilemma most of the time.