Deadlines
Jul23
on 07/23/2015
at 12:01 am
When someone you love has been gone and they are returned, you just want to follow them around like a puppy… and spend every waking moment with them… even if they have important work to do.
Randie and Ryan
Tripping through married life…
It does stink when people you want to be around are too busy to spend time with you for a while. Fortunately such things are often temporary, but they do make you seem like a pest, don’t they?
True. Cartoon idea … Randie as a giant fly … Oh, wait… I think Watterson did that already. Rats!
Bobby Fischer once made LeRoy Neiman stop sketching him at a chess match with a pencil; Neiman switched to a felt-tip, and Fischer promptly complained about the smell.
Haha! Artists … Always getting into trouble!
Given his rather long term secret Randy story, I think maybe he can suck it up. Though work deadlines do give him more wiggle room on the topic!
Speaking of, did Randy ever find out about that book?
Not as yet… It’s Ryan’s dirty little secret.
Speaking from the writer’s side; it’s not that easy, either. The temptation is ALWAYS there to “take a break” from writing and look for time with others. I applaud Ryan for having the will to go through with his assignment.
When I work from home, as I am now, it is even harder as there are dishes, laundry, cats with agendas, and fellas with circular saws. Sigh.
deadlines are the archenemy of everything that makes life worth living. the maddening thing is that more often than not, they’re completely arbitrary. how many things are buggier or shoddier or uglier than they could have been because some managerial control freak picked some date out of the air?
Agreed… It is a shame that we can’t have better relationships to deadlines… Pour moi, I have to have them so I can squeak in under them. But they do give me anxiety and stress… But that’s just me.
Wow…Ryan refusing pizza AND the presence of Randie? Jerkface.
Haha! As one who has trouble with distraction (me), I admire Ryan’s persistence … He is the breadwinner at present … And he’s being cruel to be kind. Bread is very important to Randie… How else will she make TOAST?!!!!
Or peanut butter and nutella sandwiches? 😉
That’d be like dessert… ya know, like a Peanut Butter Cup.
If Ryan can’t keep to his deadlines he’ll lose his job. If he loses his job he won’t be able to buy Randi coffee (and other things). Magazine editors love it when writers come in before deadline and with the right number of words. It makes them more willing to give said writers further assignments.
Now what Randi needs to do is find a way of bringing in money from art. Since she tends to paint pictures and often includes beauty in her artwork, she is going nowhere with that. What she needs to do is follow in Jimmy Chow’s footsteps and come out with horrible, edgy, avant garde, disgusting stuff. For example, she could come up with a picture of some sacred object, say a picture of the Buddha, plastered with sea lion poop, saying that is a traditional way the Mugwump Indians exhibited respect. It worked with elephant dung on a Madonna, why not for Randi?
Big ticket price art nowadays has to be ugly, gimmicky, tasteless, and offensive to normal people. That’s the key for Randi.
Ha! In my google news feed, a story kept popping up of a major museum buying a piece of art made entirely of condoms… It was a portrait of Pope Benedict. As for Randie, the mere mention of Jimmy Chow and his success would throw her into a mood. Randie does need to get motivated don’t she?
Brig,
Randie can choose to paint what her muse tells her to paint or break into high priced gimmicky, ugly art, art inspired not by love of beauty or the divine, but by hatred and a hostility to beauty.
I had an artist friend who told me that he worked at day jobs because there wasn’t enough money in doing art as he did it, that the prices of an artist’s work appreciated only when he kicked the bucket, and that he was in no hurry to see the prices of his paintings rise.
I have, through necessity, learned how to write while my little sister cuddles on my lap.
It is funny how adaptable we humans are… I have a similar situation with my cat. I draw propping books on her and such, and she doesn’t seem to mind so long as I don’t leave the couch.
Stupid stuff is the best way to spend a day.
I find that whatever is your bliss, whatever you lose track of time happily doing is the best way to spend your day in… For me, this is painting.
Meep. I understand the deadline I really do. Mentally. But emotionally, urg I’m with Randie. Maybe if there was a plan to do something specific afterwards. Then it wouldn’t feel so…cold.
Yes, I agree… Ryan should have said, “Let’s go out for fro yo” or something after he finished his article. Usually Ryan is better at coming up with solutions for things… maybe he was feeling overwhelmed.
I have come up with a pretty good solution for my friends while I work. I give them a fiver and send them out for coffee (or to pick up pizza or whatevever I can afford and want). You’d be AMAZED how much work you can cram into a twenty minute pause when you know the attention deficit wrecking ball is on a return trip!
Sneaky… now your secret is out! However, there is good method behind this… you are stealing time! I have observed how this works first hand, and it has always been a foreign concept to me… because I want to get projects done in one large chunk as opposed to lots of little chunks. But little chunks get things done… whereas waiting for the “right time to do a project” is not always a good solution.
Couldn’t agree more! I used to try waiting for the perfect time to get everything done. Sadly, I had missed the point of Aesop’s old favorite ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’….. and for that matter ‘The And and the Grasshopper’.
That said, you’re enjoying your work, and I hate my job. Maybe there’s something to be said about that perfect time thing. How very zen!