The last three weeks have been almost nothing but work. During that time I have worked on 4 magazines—one regular issue and three specials. I was in house for nearly all of that time, so the house has been slowly going down hill. Of the specials, I was helping on 2 and the only designer on 1. The only that I did myself was 112 pages, 106 of them edit. Anyone in magazines knows that this is bat-shit crazy. Usually a magazine will have a 40/60 ad-edit ratio, sometimes 50/50. It’s really insane when you have signed off on 99 pages and know that you still have 7 pages left to ship.

On one of the specials I was helping with the freelancer that wrote the 12 page strategy I was designing was over a week late—it came in Thursday morning after the Friday when the pages were due to the printer. And it was impossibly long. The editor had other pages drop out, so he extended the story to 18 pages, but it was still so long that there is almost no art and he had to cut out entire sections of the story.

During this time, Dangerous Curves—the burlesque group I founded—had a show in Oakland, where we debuted two new group pieces. My good friend Bryn had her first appearance with us, and our guest artist Ruby Lippz. It went really well, although we had to rework the numbers at the last minute because one of the girls hurt her back. Complete bummer. I really am looking forward to having all the girls healthy and in a show together.

I decided that I needed a bit of pampering, so Thursday I had a wonderful massage by Bryn. So heavenly!

Now I am getting ready for my brother Ian’s wedding. That seems so low stress now.

Comments