getting work done, living like a high roller

No meeting this week, but I came to the office anyway so my keycard wouldn’t reset. Also I needed to get work done. Fact: If I’m fully in-office, I’m not any more productive than fully working from home. (Possibly worse, since I’m sleepy during the day and don’t work during the evening. They say driving sleepy is as bad as driving drunk. Is it the same for my job?) But if I occasionally come to the office, the break in routine does wonders to help me get my head in gear.

Also I get to live like a high roller getting Starbucks twice a day.

Another reason to leave the house: it might help fix my wack sense of time. My brain is stuck on summer. I get surprised every time I see signs of fall, e.g. cooler weather, leaves starting to turn, dusk coming earlier. So I figure spending more time outside will help my brain catch up. Today I had the classic fall conundrum—it was 48 degrees when I left the house, but the high was 74, so do I wear a jacket? I opted to just wear a vest over my shirt. It was fine.

I did some figure sketching at the train station, at Starbucks, and at the food court. It was incredibly mid. I’m reminded why I don’t do this more often: I like the idea of being a figure sketch artist way more than the results. I do much better with structures and objects than with people. But hey, there’s no improvement without practice.

I recently found my old travel sketchbook from 2017-18. I was surprised at how quintessentially me it was. Not like “wow I’ve improved” or “wow I’ve backslid”; it was just me. I had an extremely scuffed sketch of brother at his standing desk at work, and a better sketch of the view from the upstairs window of his new condo (the same condo he sold earlier this year). I had doodles of newbie at a tech conference (not very interesting) and goobbues at a goobbue conference (VERY interesting). I had the classic drawing of the blob museum ft. big comfy bed. And of course, lots of sketches of R at the pizza place (the main thing I remember this sketchbook for).