jeffrey + upstairsloft

On a vain note. I graduated high school and college at the same weight. The difference is I was much more athletic and lean in high school. I will say this. My freshman 15 was a freshman 30. Why is it already Wednesday?! Spring Show was a week ago but it feels like two days ago. Damn you time.

I’m concerned that I’ll never learn when to stop and take a breather. I can care less about what it does to my body. My body is serously shrinking and my eyes are hollowed in but what concerns me more is that I won’t have enough time with the lady. I need a change of routine and I need it now. I just graduated. School work is all finished. After my graduation weekend, here I am in the routine as if I were still in school and not because it’s the routine I’m so used to, but because I have to finish out several jobs.

It’s my last summer and I’m trying to keep it a summer—while finishing out these projects, aligning myself to myself, finding a job, staying sharp, entertaining guests from the Philippines, spending time with family, spending time with friends, traveling and all that. Of the whole summer ahead of me, I have only two weekend opportunities to travel down with my friends. The weeks are seriously all planned out and you know what that means. Things that are this planned out make months seem like days and days seem like minutes.

I don’t think I need a drastic change of speed. I don’t need to slow down. Surely enough, my pace needs to shift a bit but more importantly I need a change of scenery. I need new characters, new experiences, new routines, surprises and I need them with Kate.

And while I appreciate the generous offers to work on projects with faculty and freelancing with friends, I owe a lot to myself and Kate to catch up with myself. I spent the last three years completely absorbed and immersed into formally learning design and I lost track of time, my body is screwed up, my biology is out of whack and I lost two family members in the process. It sounds corny but I have a lot of soul-searching to do and I think I can balance that with work with a change of scenery. It just feels too wrong to deny myself of that. If I were a woman and I had periods, my biological clock would be all bad.

I love this schedule. Sleep from 6pm to 7pm and 6:30am to 11:30am. All-nighters work best this way. I’m still a zombie, but I’m a happy zombie. Good night. Err. Morning.

[x]Sample Portfolio 05.16
[x]Website 05.21
[x]Portfolio Book 05.22
[ ]Spring Show installation

My self id system is almost complete

www.upstairsloft.com finally launches. Hopefully the end of this week puts my anxiety to rest. Spring Show is this Wednesday and a load of people from home are commuting up to Sac to attend the event. I’m stoked. This is my personal graduation. Walking on Saturday is for my parents.

Quoting Kate’s blog:
“If jeff and I were really crazy we would rummage through that fucking trash to look for mail so we can dump this shit all over their lawn, but then we’d probably get hepatitis or tuberculosis or syphallis or herpes from the fuckers.”

All I have to say is, 2365 Bayless Way made the shit list.

Apparently, these morons have no sense of decency and intelligence. In 5 minutes—problem solved. Forget calling Waste Management and asking for our trash bin serial number and hopping over neighbors’ fence to find a match. Forget waiting until Thursday to see if there are two large bins instead of one large bin on our court. Dig through sucker’s trash. Find mail. Bam. I’m sure we broke a law or two, but they broke more. Plus, don’t steal people’s trash bins. That’s just… that’s just plain stupid.

Some idiot was too lazy to take their trash out on time and ends up swapping their trash bin with ours. I got up at 6:30am to take out the trash like a trooper, it was emptied an hour later. We came back to a trash bin that’s 80% full and way smaller than ours. They’re gonna find their trash laid out on their doorstep and their pet cat’s head. Maybe not the cat’s head thing, but that would be kinda creepy for them. Damn people and their lack of being, not just good citizens, but citizens at that.

It’s the first time in a long time I woke up at 6:30 in the morning and felt alive. Not alive like I’m going to save the world and cure aids. I have to take care of myself first. For the past year, the routine has been to sleep at 4am and wake up at 6:30am, with power naps scattered in between the day.

Today, I woke up at 6:30, without an alarm, after going to sleep at 4—4pm. I slept 14 hours which is highly unusual. If I slept more than 6 hours, you might as well have pronounced me dead. But this was a complete different story.

Yesterday, the peak of mental instability and mental exhaustion hit hard—it hits hards when it begins to affect our bodies in ways we could no longer control or even predict.

During our final presentations yesterday, after slaving months of work and managing the load of other projects we have going on, our bodies departed our minds. A close friend of mine passed out during his group’s presentation. He murmured something, hit the ground and instantly regained consciousness. He’s alright, but the big deal is that it happened.

While all this is happening, I woke up disoriented, standing in the front of the class where all the commotion was; I looked down and saw Becca pillowing his head.

I’ve been in zombie mode countlessly this past year, but I was able to manage it—not yesterday. I was in and out (mostly out) yesterday. He’s had moments where he felt he was about to pass out and yesterday he finally did. Thankfully he didn’t hit his head on the counter and thank you for Beckie H.’s foot for breaking his head’s fall from the ground.

Anyhow, today was a fresh breath of air from scuba diving without an oxygen tank. It’s the exact remedy I need to finish off the rest of the semester. Yesterday concluded one project—the big one. Now, I have to finish off strong with all the other projects.

I cannot tell you how emotionally, mentally and physically unstable I am. Do I blame the 3 hour sleeps a day? Somewhat. I think it only amplifies it a bit—kinda like how alcohol amplifies people’s true feelings. So what is it? I’ll just go out and say it. I am tired as hell of working my ass off for not even a pat on the back from the loved ones. No matter what opportunities come my way and no matter how hard I work, I don’t feel their genuine support. Sure, I graduate in 2 weeks. That’s something to be proud of—but only on a slight scale.

Honestly, any moron can graduate. Try taking classes with a diverse group of people. That’ll only prove it. I know a bunch of people who decided not to go to college. My thoughts on this is that they’re far too advanced for institutionalized education. That’s another story.

I am grateful to have been presented great opportunities in the design field from my internship at the School of the Arts, developing a close-knit relationship with my instructors, being the second most annoying person in class while still gaining the respect of my peers and my instructors sending Rob and me to Dallas to attend a national design conference. But that just doesn’t seem to soak in with them. I need to learn to detach my design life from them—otherwise I’ll be stuck waiting from the genuine, heartfelt “I’m proud of you” that I’ve been waiting for far too long. What sucks is, my personal life and my design life—as with many designers—cross-pollinate.

I need to move on.

God, I’m beat.

My parents got me these cool Bose In-Ear headphones I’ve been jocking for a while. I love em. I hear nothing but music, they’re comfy and the sound quality is dope. My first birthday in 24 years without the family. Crazy. So I feel a bit awkward today about that. But I’m sure I will also be distracted with a ton of work and I got Kate with me so that helps. This should be the last hell week. Health patterns, shitty sleep and eating habits and mental stability have been a far too familiar feeling in the past few weeks straight.

I also gained two pounds over the weekend. But that’s cool. I lost over 5 lbs in the course of two weeks. I came home being accused of being malnourished. That’s always fun. So yes, they stuffed me like I was adopted from Botswana.

Almost there.