Vacationing, with Creative Intent
Ventura, CA
I recently got back from a 2-week vacation away from my own home, where I sheltered-in-place at a cute vacation condo in a random beach town called Carpinteria, CA, 20mins away from Ventura.
My intention for the trip was to take the first week off of work, and to have a vacation where I could explore my creative side !
I had signed up for the 3-day Adobe Max conference and planned to watch a bunch of talks and tutorial videos from there, and to get inspired while learning some new skills so I could discover what direction I could take my creative drawings efforts. I planned to do this for a whole month leading up to this trip, and had was somewhat excited about it. (Especially after they announced that Keanu Reeves would speak at the keynote!)
I did none of that.
The internet at the condo was pretty flakey, making the watching of any online videos frustrating. So I watched 0 Adobe videos. (turns out, Keanu couldn't make it anyway.) Guess I'll try to catch up on the rest of the videos when I get home. 😔
I also had a to-do list of other creative side projects to finally catch up on. Such as:
- Finally bundle up the Old Master Q messaging stickers that @ivanyip designed for me into sticker apps for iOS and Android and WhatsApp.
- Sketch out video storyboards for an introductory video about Playquity, a non-profit that my friends are run which is working in villages in India to teach girls to become strong capable leaders leaders and reversing gender roles in their communities through the sport of ultimate frisbee.
- Do a quick design for the Admin portion of the Owncast project, an easy-to-use, open source alternative to Twitch for hosting your own live streams.
- Find and setup a vendor, and make a design for OMQ face masks.
- Practice drawing OMQ and produce some fun Halloween graphics.
- Draw draw draw, practice practice practice.
I did none of those. 😭
Instead, I sat in front of a computer and worked on code-stuff for two weeks. The first week, I refactored a portion of my OMQ Admin in PHP. Gross. The next week, I went back to work.
BTW I had also chosen to stay in Carpinteria because it was close to Ventura where I had purchased tickets for an outdoor drive-in concert feature the frontmen of two of my favorite bands (from my younger, rage-ier days), doing an acoustic set together! I packed my fancy camera gear and tripods hoping to snap some interesting photos of this experience!
I also did none of that. 😫
The concert was mysteriously cancelled 3 days before it was supposed to happen. I still don't know why. My guess is that California is not a red enough state for these performers.
Aaron Lewis & Sully Erna
No creativity happened at all the past two weeks. Le sigh.
Welp, at least I got a refund for the concert.
#fail#OMQ