Ah goodness, no, it hasn't been a month already has it? Surely not. Where the bleep am I up to? Need sleep.

The freelance/contract medical illustration project is still on. It feels as though it's been going on forever. I'm tired of being tired. Ten hour days as standard is too much. Trying to remind myself that it will all be over by this time next month. Looking forward to being able to exclusively concentrate on the cookbook.

Despite constantly feeling that I have too much to do, the Official Art Store is up! Very-Limited-Edition prints available now of all artwork done so far. From now on, as each recipe is posted it's artwork is available immediately. Please note that the current viewing pics are fairly quick camera shots of each piece and these pics will slowly be replaced with ones of higher quality as I have them scanned for me. If there's an image you like and you want to see a better quality version of it, let me know and I'll prioritise its scanning for you.

Also this month managed to set up the template for the newsletter for collectors. If you've signed up to receive this, I may actually send out the first somewhat monthly mailing soon. If you've not signed up, the yellow box top left is where your email address goes :)

And I managed the scary asking for help. Yes! Got it. Then it disappeared. Ah well, the asking was the hard. Now to try that again.

The biggest learning for this month is that painting while upset or off centre is pretty much pointless. Either the ideas suck or the execution of a great concept goes pear shaped. So the painting something every day is an interesting idea, but not necessarily workable for me. The time when I'm unsettled is not the time to paint. That's the time to do other stuff such as coding, administrivia, PR etc. Figuring out ways to help get me back to centre FAST is a high priority.

A smaller learning for me is that I kinda think acrylic paints stink a bit. The colour shift, the too-fast drying time, the handling compared to oils. Part of this is unfamiliarity. Part of this is technical annoyances. So I've got me some drying inhibitor to see if my biggest gripe with this medium can be coaxed into a

A new approach to the PR campaign Collective Merrymaking. Do one of these a day (there are around 15 lined up), then send all these to my help as examples and get a bigger campaign done for me. Sounds like a plan. Nothing happened in this department last month and it really shows in the traffic stats.

Figuring out ways to help get me back to centre FAST. This is more than the 'take a walk', 'drink plenty of water', 'have a hot shower or bath' type of remedy. All of these are great, but I'm after the 'pressing issue needs attention and major soothing right now' kind of remedies. I suspect Havi's monster talking and Shivanautical dancing are the sorts of ideas I'm looking for. Just a hunch.