General Update Log No. 12

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Somehow, the month both dragged on for way too long and was over way too quickly at the same time. But hey, at least the weather’s not trying to bake me alive anymore. Lowkey hoping it stays cold and rainy like this for the rest of summer.

So, as I mentioned in my previous update log, I’ve started my apprenticeship this month. Four weeks under my belt already, going into the fifth, and I’m only slowly getting used to the fact that working five days a week doesn’t leave you with a whole lot of time for other things. As exhausting as it is, though, I’d say it’s going quite well. My coworkers have had nothing but praise for me so far with how quickly and efficiently I’ve been getting my tasks done (once I have a clear idea of what needs to actually be done, anyway, and figuring that out tends to be the lion’s share of the work already).

That said, I was still off to a pretty rough start. 40 hours a week right out the gate isn’t something I was able to accustom myself to at all, and it kind of culminated in a mental breakdown towards the end of week 2. The week after, I had a talk with HR and they reduced my hours to 30 a week, but I intend to slowly work my way up towards a full 40 again over the next few months while I work out my work-life balance.

One step towards said balance happened to be a change in my sleep schedule, with me now waking up at 5am instead of 6am like I used to. The reasoning being that, after work, I’ll usually be too exhausted to want to do much of anything, so that time is kind of wasted, anyway. Better to have it early in the day where I could potentially put it to use for creative endeavors, once I’ve got a tight and consistent morning routine going again.

And on the topic of creativity... yeah, you can probably guess that I haven’t gotten much of anything done this month. Work leaving me with too little time or energy isn’t even the only reason, either — I’m actually once again finding myself with crippling anxiety at the very thought of working on music, and I’ve yet to break through that again. It’s not like there’s any such thing as an elaborate strategy to magically melt it away, either. It’s just gonna be a slow process of chipping away at it bit by bit until I’m back in the groove again.

As for drawing, honestly no dice there, either. Again, my motivation’s been kind of nonexistent for the past several weeks, although YouTube’s algorithm has ended up showing me some art YouTuber content that’s kind of made me wanna try my hand at it again. Maybe if I find the time and the weather’s good enough, I’ll go outside with a sketchpad and a pencil and do some life and nature sketches, seeing as most of what I’ve been doing this year so far was cold hard practice and study.

I may also consider refactoring my website again. Turns out that working with websites for a living gives you a lot of insight into best practices for all sorts of approaches, and I’d definitely like to make my own code cleaner and easier to maintain at some point. That’s a low priority compared to art and music, though.

And... that’s pretty much it already, actually. Apologies for the rather anemic update, but I suppose it’s to be expected that not much would happen this month. Well, lack of noteworthy updates plus having a sudden crunch period thrust upon me right after my lunch break, which you can imagine sapped me of just about all my energy reserves for the day. I almost didn’t think I’d even get this done before August.