I've moved my blog to WP: idefiningi.wordpress.com
May 6, 2011
patience (n.)
patience - a noun. Though it really should be a verb.
Over the last three months, I've been putting my design skills to work by offering my volunteer services to Mothership Stories Society, a non-profit organized by Marilyn Norry, which dedicates itself in collecting stories about mothers as written by their children in order to archive a valuable history of ordinary women, which otherwise may be forgotten. Without such efforts, legacies of interesting, perseverant women whose lives tell us about women's roles and experiences and the times in which they've lived, may never be recorded.
Today, after weeks of editing, typesetting, caption-collecting, resolution-fixing, exporting, merging, and flattening, we finally printed a final version of: My Mother's Story: the originals.
[Stay tuned for news on where to buy the book!]
The seven hour ordeal (made all the less chaotic and stressful by Oscar's Books' Adam and Barry), entailed changing margins last-minute for 120 minutes, fixing files to fit new printer specifications, and reformatting photos till we got them just right. We chose paper stock, grew impatient with the printer at times (oh cream paper why must you curl?!), but eventually came out with a breathtaking book that just made us all fuzzy inside.
During the process, I also just learned the importance of patience and how it helps to find the humour and joy in stressful situations so that you can stay functional. Find contentment through patience instead of making things worse by giving in to impatience, its evil sibling.
I also realized why, when saying patience, we're kind of saying "pay" "ssh" "sense".
Pay
Without patience, you pay the price. If you lose it, get hasty and decide "oh whoooo caaaares", it bites you in the ass. I thankfully didn't experience this today, but was nonetheless tempted to give in to this illogical bargain.
You also have to pay a certain amount of attention and find focus, energy, diligence, and good stamina in order to get patience to really work its magic.
Ssh
You have to keep that little voice in your head that's screaming "WTF %^&#@!!" and other such unhelpful and wasteful filth from clouding your mind. You must shush that angry, impatient voice so that you can keep your focus on what's really at hand - what really matters in the end. You don't want years of dedication and months of hard work to go to waste just because you lost your nerve right at the end.
Sense
This has a dual aspect. In one way, while impatient, your senses become a little crazy and over-irritated, for lack of a better word. You're waiting for the printer to print 234 pages at a time, the glue is heating up more slowly than you'd like, your stomach's grumbling, and you feel your blood sugar is plummeting because you just had to get those margins right before you deserved a break. (Yup, I'm referring to hangriness here again- I'm quite susceptible to it as you can see).
Your senses become a little crazy when you're impatient - the lights are too bright, and you lose sense of time. You start seeing page numbers where they shouldn't be (and really aren't).
(Thankfully, however, I also became hyper-aware and could still tell which "final version" was really the final version; I also somehow still retained a deft hand clicking through InDesign with super-alien precision.)
In another way, it also makes sense to be patient. It's always more efficient than impatience - and a whole lot more fun. Though we spent close to five hours at Oscar's today, waiting and printing, and proofing, and changing and printing again, we had a lot of laughs. I got to meet some new people, learn new things about distribution, eat a cookie and a mandarin, watch the Expresso machine in action, pose for pictures, and to our amazement and joy, finally see a pretty copy come out, with a smile on my face.
Here's to a job well done! And please let me know if you'd like a copy :)
And because it's so fitting:
Here's to all the mothers of the world for being the most patient people on the planet.
Over the last three months, I've been putting my design skills to work by offering my volunteer services to Mothership Stories Society, a non-profit organized by Marilyn Norry, which dedicates itself in collecting stories about mothers as written by their children in order to archive a valuable history of ordinary women, which otherwise may be forgotten. Without such efforts, legacies of interesting, perseverant women whose lives tell us about women's roles and experiences and the times in which they've lived, may never be recorded.Today, after weeks of editing, typesetting, caption-collecting, resolution-fixing, exporting, merging, and flattening, we finally printed a final version of: My Mother's Story: the originals.
[Stay tuned for news on where to buy the book!]
The seven hour ordeal (made all the less chaotic and stressful by Oscar's Books' Adam and Barry), entailed changing margins last-minute for 120 minutes, fixing files to fit new printer specifications, and reformatting photos till we got them just right. We chose paper stock, grew impatient with the printer at times (oh cream paper why must you curl?!), but eventually came out with a breathtaking book that just made us all fuzzy inside.During the process, I also just learned the importance of patience and how it helps to find the humour and joy in stressful situations so that you can stay functional. Find contentment through patience instead of making things worse by giving in to impatience, its evil sibling.
I also realized why, when saying patience, we're kind of saying "pay" "ssh" "sense".
Pay
Without patience, you pay the price. If you lose it, get hasty and decide "oh whoooo caaaares", it bites you in the ass. I thankfully didn't experience this today, but was nonetheless tempted to give in to this illogical bargain.
You also have to pay a certain amount of attention and find focus, energy, diligence, and good stamina in order to get patience to really work its magic.
Ssh
You have to keep that little voice in your head that's screaming "WTF %^&#@!!" and other such unhelpful and wasteful filth from clouding your mind. You must shush that angry, impatient voice so that you can keep your focus on what's really at hand - what really matters in the end. You don't want years of dedication and months of hard work to go to waste just because you lost your nerve right at the end.
Sense
 |
| paper, ink, glue to bind! |
Your senses become a little crazy when you're impatient - the lights are too bright, and you lose sense of time. You start seeing page numbers where they shouldn't be (and really aren't).
(Thankfully, however, I also became hyper-aware and could still tell which "final version" was really the final version; I also somehow still retained a deft hand clicking through InDesign with super-alien precision.)
 |
| "Pop! goes the weasel!" |
Here's to a job well done! And please let me know if you'd like a copy :)
And because it's so fitting:
Here's to all the mothers of the world for being the most patient people on the planet.
Happy early Mother's Day!
 |
| My mom and I. |
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