THINGS TO-DO

So it's been a few days, I'm not very good at this blog thing. Though in my defense it's been a fairly hectic few days, and it seems the more I do the longer my to-do list gets - Is that normal? Well on Monday my to-do list read as follows:

- Mail thank-you cards
- Work on business card design
- Finish Bartending resume/Schedule placement meeting
- Call landlord to fix heat
- Individualize design resumes
- Grocery shopping
- Work on print portfolio (find a printer)
- Register for class
- West side rentals/Email Landlords

Like you needed to know that, but my point is It's now wednesday, and i've mailed my thank you cards and gotten the heat fixed. Well okay, i've finished my bartending resume and plugged away on my business cards and print portfolio, but every time i sit down to be productive I get overwhelmed with ideas and new insight into what I have to do to get myself where I want to be and I end up going to bed mentally exhausted feeling like i've barely made a dent. Of course two nights ago I went into a benadryl induced stupor around 8pm, and last night I went out to dinner (i consider it a necessary part of experiencing LA). And today I've been cleaning the apartment to show it to someone who wants to move in for the 1st, and subsequently apartment HUNTING myself so I'm not forced to the streets and sigh, here i am. But that's beside the point.

So everyone's on facebook. After graduating I decided, while not quite ready to get rid of my facebook (how did people communicate before facebook again?), that I should focus on updating and developing my Linked In which seems a bit more mature that facebook, if you will. I joined the BU Alumni Group, along with Ad Club, Commnication Arts, and Students and Recent Grads, which in turn began flooding my inbox with posts and updates I would originally delete without second thought. One day, sitting on the patio of coffee bean contemplating changing my major, becoming a bum or moving to a more widely employed country, I decided to click on one of the emails and actually read it. The Recent Grad blog pretty much gave me a new lease on life at the moment (See previous post).

So, based on reading from forums and other blogs about recent college grads standing out and making their way in the big world, i decided to start my own blog. I've never been completely closed off to the idea, but also never really saw myself as a "blogger" either. Though, especially for my major of graphic design with a focus in advertising and communications, I do consider it a necessary piece of networking and getting my name out. Now i'll actually get to the point.

The thing is, I'll write out a list of goals I want to accomplish for that day/week/whatever, and I'll go online and check out the newest posts of the day, which will lead me to the blog's website where I find myself clicking around and soon I'm watching videos of how to answer tough questions in an interview. Then i'll catch myself, bookmark the good stuff and move on. Next i'll log on to Twitter, and see that someone has posted a link that they updated their website so of course I will check it out. Then that person has links off their website to other people's websites and I start clicking around and wishing that creating my own website was even slightly easier than rocket science. That gets me thinking that I should start looking for tutorials and youtube videos on how to create a site, in flash, which is what I want to do, but then how do you code it to show my work in a slideshow? So then i have to look up codes, which I think i find. So i go through all my work and take screenshots and organize them into a folder. But wait, how do you enter them into the right frame in flash? And how to you make it so you can click a thumbnail to preview the entire piece? Or do I have to do that in dreamweaver? Can they be combined?

At this point I begin feeling defeated and I'm thinking, "God, I really wish they taught us this in school." Then, lightbulb. - " That's an idea. I should look in to classes". So then I start an online search of reasonably priced short term Continuing Education programs in the LA area. While i'm reading the descriptions and comparing prices I get a call from the landlord who asks if we can be out by the 1st, which leads me back to the online apartment search.

A little while later I remember a post I had read about how impersonal things have become with the massive growth of the internet, and the lightbulb that had gone off (on?) when i read it about applying to jobs I really want in person. So i delve into my hard drive to find all my favorite work from semesters past to lay it out in InDesign and print off as a book to bring for a leave behind. (Oh, yeah, THIS was on my to-do list). I start doing that but then I figure I really should individualize all my cover letters and resumes first, but what design to put on them? I should use the one off my business cards so everything correlates. Wait, I still have to work on my business cards (This was on my to-do list TOO). So i'll do that first. But what URL should I put on them if I don't have my site up yet ? (My work is being hosted on carbonmade). That reminds me, I have to figure out how to build my website. And in the meantime, I should really update my photos of Flickr.

Now i'm a little stressed and it's probably getting late, I look back at my to-do list and realize though I've read it, and i've THOUGHT about everything. i FELT like i was working all day, what have I actually done?
All this social networking and internet traffic is certainly overwhelming. I need some human interaction - God i have not checked facebook all day.

Do you see where I'm going with this?