Paperless world fits into newsletter

Well, I got everything to fit into the newsletter, but there was a tiny square of space left! Well, I don't know yet if it will make the final cut, but my coworker A laughed a lot when i showed to him. It occurred to me as I was saving the image for this post that my character looks a little like Mr. SD.

You can tell that i was actually engaged in my work today because yesterday at the end of the day there were only 22 unread items in my Google Reader (and those were from the NYT). Today, 80. Perhaps I am meant to be a cartoon artist instead of a designer? It is certainly more fun than newsletters (or at least this newsletter), but despite tying for #1 on Dr. C's funny list, being funny is pretty hard work.

Blog Addiction

I can't help it. I am totally addicted to checking my email and reading every article in my GoogleReader. I suppose it might be more of a desire to avoid the mountains of work that are piling up in my inbox. I have a whole bunch of things to do, but find myself so discouraged by the whole process of approvals that every time I look at my to do list I think, "Why Bother?" and so I just check my email/reader again. Projects that I started almost 6 months ago are still not approved, so nothing can really by all that urgent, right?

Well, the decree that we publish the internal newsletter once a month is troubling, but at least I have one project that goes to the printer consistently, and so I spent my afternoon shuffling the stories to try and have every story and every photograph fit in the weird 6 page layout that the outside design firm gave us (which is pretty ugly in my opinion, but they spent a lot of money on it, so I can't change it too much). I miss J with her compulsive organization. I am going to try and set up a meeting and see if we can make it a little more formulaic... something like keeping to estimated word counts would be helpful! Of course when it doesn't all fit perfectly there is space for cartoons :)

All is not bad though. I designed and got approval on a brochure in English and Spanish in about 2 weeks, so nice when other departments are cooperative in the process. AND I walked home today for the first time in quite a while. It has been too hot and my feet were too blistered, but today there was a nice breeze and i had a nice walk while talking to A. Working in The City would mean no walking home, so my job does have a few advantages. Trying to adjust my attitude. Wish me luck.