The essence of a reluctant designer’s Sunday.

12:27 (denial)
After failing to wake myself up at ten I am finally in school with my laptop, my cold fingers and my nowadays so present lack of inspiration. My tools are: half a glass of five-days-old water, a badly drawn sketch (but isn’t sort of the point of doing a sketch to draw badly?), my mouse peacefully resting on my home made mouse pad, and the distant music from the lap of my fellow workaholic cuddled up in his lair of a corner.
 
12:37 (stalling)
Ok, now I’ve read all of your recent blog posts. Designing, here I come!

12:40 (confused)
3D-programme started, but I don’t know what to do. Aaah, fcuk it.. let’s make a mockup model instead. Measurements, measurements..

13:07 (black out)
What? What am I doing in front of facebook? How did I get here? Come on, get a grip. Back to the cardboard, woman.

13:28 (baby steps)
One piece done! Amazing. What do I get as a reward? Gimme gimme gimme…

14:02 (exhausted)
Two.. pieces.. done..
Must.. have.. water..

14:07 (recovery)
Need more music.. hmm.. something energetic.. hmm..  Ah. Futuresex Lovesounds. I need to get.. um.. sexy back?

14:27 (distracted)
I can’t do it. I can’t listen to Justin Timberlake and still keep my pride. Coldplay.. hmm.. How come I spend more time pondering work music than the proportions of my mockup?

14:41 (self-esteem issues)
A classmate just came by and reflected on my work. He seems to like the little box better than the big box. Is the big box shit? Should I stop working with it? Am I a bad designer? Am I a bad person? Should I study something else instead? Everyone’s better than me.. I’m worthless.. I should go jump off a low cliff many times. *end of the regular, temporary personal and proffessional breakdown*

14:44 (counterreaction)
Back to work.

15:00 (pause)
Love that drying glue always gives me an excuse to take a break. Another glass of water perhaps? *indulging oneself*

15:08 (the real deal)
Plugging in the glue gun. Flexing my muscles.

15:34 (famished)
I forgot to eat lunch. Or I forgot to bring some, rather. This with water, chewing gum and the Killers is starting too feel like quite the diet.

15:57 (reluctant)
Finished gluing. No fingers burned this time, hooray! An sms? For mee? Who could this be? Let’s see.. Ah, foodclubbers hungry, come home soon. Sounds nice, let’s skype about the matter and avoid this with design for a moment.
Aha.. this with who is more busy. When I’m busy now and you’re busy later, when should we meet? Who should sacrifice their precious time? I take pleasure in sacrificing my time for you, it’s my way of saying I care, but in the end I get nothing done and give the impression  that I’m lazy or I have nothing important to do. That’s not so rewarding..
I get very defensive if people assume designers don’t work hard. The most ungrateful thing about design is that it is often all but visible. You can spend a whole day just walking around thinking about construction or proportions, and have nothing to show for it. It could still have been the hardest work of the whole process. It’s a constantly appearing coffee topic of fellow designers. Poor us, poor poor us.

16:18 (stressed)
The food date has been rearranged and I have all of a sudden a little less than an hour left of what was supposed to be my highly efficient Sunday in school. Enough with the endless reflecting and back to work.

16:27 (designing)
Bathroom break.

16:35 (fade out)
The model is done and it’s too big. Very good, that means I learned something about it. It’s fascinating how the difference between good proportions and.. well bad ones, can come down to just a centimeter either way. People seldom realize that a piece has a good proportions, simply because it has. Good propotions are hard to find, bad proportions are easy to spot.
I need to clean my space. Design is as much about cleaning and making a mess again as it is about form and function. I kid you not.

16:43 (reflection)
Now, today I’ve  spent four hours building a cardboard box just to realize that it doesn’t look good, which means I’ll build a new one tomorrow. I am, granted, a slow worker, but still.. No wonder it takes a real piece of furniture a year to evolve from prototype to sold product.

By the way..
This has been the best weekend. Pancakes, snowballfights, movienight, photography, christmas calendars, downhill.. ride.. ing.. with fantoft pillows, series, chocolate, guitar playing.. and tonight, a bonfire in the snow, in the woods, in the cold, with grilled sausages and bananas. I’m bringing my guitar just to see what happens to it when you take it out in the cold and place it in front of a fire. Poor thing.

16:54 (free)
I’m off, with my hunchback of 15 kg fire wood.

*end*