Day 147: Wednesday, March 10

Thank God it’s sunny today…

The past few days I’ve been kind of down and recently I have lost some steam trying to accomplish some things like making jewelry, building my website, searching for jobs, and (obviously) writing.

I think the decline started last week.

At the beginning of the week I had a phone interview which seemed promising.  Hopefully it will lead to a callback for an in-house interview.  This is terrible, but since then I haven’t really done much to look for other jobs.  And this is the time when I should be searching the most, since it’s getting towards the end of my unemployment compensation.

I guess part of the reason for my slacking is the hope that I already have my foot in the door somewhere, while the other part is frustration from other attempts that have proven futile. Not a good attitude to have, but I’m getting over it and plan to apply to some more positions once I’m done writing this.

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Last week Ryan and I also went to the art museum for the first time in years.  They are still in the midst of renovation, so you have to follow a convoluted hallway to access the open galleries.  But, surprisingly, they have a lot of work on display.  Even some current pieces, like this painting by Fred Tomaselli (one of my new favorites):

It’s a lot nicer in person…  The raven is made of collaged floral images, while the detailed “starbursts” in the upper left corner are made of hundreds of tiny dots and lines.  If you click on the image, you can see the site where I found the picture.

Anyway, I had a good time, but it was kind of hard to take it all in in the “short” amount of time (well, two hours…) we were there.  (Ryan wasn’t feeling well, and doesn’t have a great attention span for museum-related endeavors in the first place.  Though he went on his own accord.)

Because of our different senses of timing, I’m really better off doing art galleries/museums alone if I’m looking for an enriching experience vs. a social form of entertainment.

Maybe next time I’ll take my sketch book and give myself an entire day.

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Then we went to my folks’ house in Pennsylvania for the weekend.

Tried to go to the Lawrenceville neighborhood in Pittsburgh to take a look at their artsy stores on Saturday, but got stuck in some major traffic due to the letting out of a Penguins game.  So we gave up and went to the Waterfront (shopping plaza) for a bit, which isn’t so close to the congested downtown region.

Got to see my sister and brother-in-law, and their three dogs (who are “vacationing” with their “grandma and grandpap” while my sister and her husband are house-shopping).  Saw my one Grandma and Great Aunt, who stayed for dinner on Sunday.  It was a nice visit, but seemed very short and a little chaotic with the bountiful puppies.

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So that brings us to this week.  I made some jewelry on Monday, but moved kind of slowly all day.

Yesterday wasn’t one for the record books either.  To shake my somewhat-depressed mood, I did work-out a bit on the elliptical which helped me to be somewhat productive in the afternoon.  Ended up making some new price tags for my jewelry so I could label my new pieces and catalog them in my Excel spreadsheet.

Today my plan is to work out, apply for jobs, and run some errands.  Maybe revisit my web site.   I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday and need to make sure that I spend some time outside while the weather’s nice.