Aside from going to Target & Hope Depot, sanitizing everything I brought home, then going for a short run, I didn't really do shit today. 

I picked up another small graphic design job today! I met with my buddy, Adam, (socially distant, outdoors and with masks on) to discuss redesigning his bands logo. We talked about what he and his bandmates have been through over the years and their plans to release their first LP. I also talked about how I've been considering doing more graphic design work for clients now that Covid has taken away my DJ & vending gigs. His band logo, and the other design I've been working on, are good first jobs to help me get my feet wet doing freelance work, which has never been appealing to me before.

I hardly did anything productive today. I've been so frustrated lately building my new website on Wordpress and making little progress so I took some time away from the computer today. I have new items that I'll be adding to my store and the plan was to have them available when I rebuilt the new site but since that's taking me so long I'll probably have them available on my current (Weebly) site soon. I haven't been getting much exercise lately so tonight I forced myself to go out for some walking & running in the neighborhood. By the time I made it out it was already 11:22 PM but it's cool since I've been in vampire mode for a few weeks now, staying up till 4 or 5 AM and waking up around noon. Livin' la CoVida Loca

But I made a little bit of progress on the store.​ FYI: the website I'm working on is not FRANKIEMCFLY.COM. It's a dummy site that I'm learning to use before moving my domain name over.

Tonight was another one of those nights while working on the new website. I tried doing something that I thought was going to be super simple but instead got pushed back further down the rabbit hole and didn't accomplish shit.  One step forward, 328,752,309,456,723,476 steps back. 

I didn't get too artsy fartsy today but I did take a little time to think about how I want to build out the website. I currently have all my t-shirts and stickers on one page in my store and that's it. I plan on doing the same with the new one but I also want to create individual pages for each style of t-shirt that has more details and information about each design. I wish creating websites were as easy as sketching them.

I've been working on a design for a client for a couple weeks and it's almost done. I won't share till it's done-done but here's a little portion of it.

The trackpad on my laptop started acting up about a year ago. I think it's loose or something, you have to push really hard on it to click & drag things. I recently started using a mouse (2nd from left) that I bought years ago till it started bugging out last night. It would automatically double click instead of single clicking and would "let go" of things as I was dragging. I got super frustrated using it. Today I test drove an old Apple Bluetooth trackpad but I didn't like it so I went to Best Buy to buy a mouse I'd been eyeballing for a few days, the Logitech MX Master 3. It wasn't cheap but it's pretty nice and I appreciate the ergonomic design and all the extra buttons. It took a little while to get it synced up and programmed but it's been working fine all day. 

Wordpress is confusing as fuck but I made a little bit of progress. Tonight I played around with Themes, created some pages and played around with menu. There's still so much more to do before I can make it live.

I spent hours today trying to transfer the images from my old blog posts from Weebly to Wordpress and couldn't figure it out. All the videos I watched and pages I read didn't help at all. I was able to transfer all the text but, if I don't figure out how to copy the pictures, most of what I reference isn't gonna make sense. I've been frustrated with this all damn day.

I tried using a Weebly to Wordpress exporter to move my blog but got the error message below. The Wordpress dashboard shows that my old blog posts came over but the images did not.

That's what I paid for one extra month of Weebly, my current site host, so I can migrate my blog and everything else to Wordpress, my future host. Even though I was still able to write new blog posts, while my site was unpublished, I wasn't able to export all my old posts. I'm still figuring out Wordpress. It's a little bit confusing and I'm having a hard time staying focused on learning it but now I got an extra month to make the switch. 

And no one's even noticed...

They've finally booted my ass off the interwebs. I wonder if I can still pull all my old blog posts and move them to my new site without paying an extra month of Weebly. No one's buying shit from me right now so I'm not too worried about the store being down. I wonder what's gonna happen once I publish this post...

Here are a few more sketches I made today for the client project I've been working on. We figured out which path to go down so now I'm trying to expand on the original idea and to come up with my first round of variations. 

It's been a pretty busy week at home so far. Not so much much with art but with other projects. Tonight I rearranged & saved my workspace on Adobe Illustrator to match designer Aaron Draplin's workspace, as shown on one of his Skillshare videos. His course, "Design Like Draplin: 21 Tips for speedingUp Your Design Workflow," is what motivated to buy a larger external monitor. I've been using my 15" Macbook for years and never realized how cramped and cluttered my workspace was till I watched his course. 

My new monitor arrived today! Finally, I have more room to play with when using Adobe apps. I can even rotate it 90 degrees and fit my whole homepage on it. Weebly also sent me an eviction notice today. My website is still up and running as of now. I paid for a year of web hosting with a new host and installed Wordpress. Hopefully I can transfer my old blog posts over before Weebly shuts it down. Otherwise I'm gonna have to pay for an extra month just to copy it over. 

Messages have started showing up when I log onto Weebly asking me to pay for a plan or to remove some features from my site. I didn't renew Weebly's Business Plan when it expired last week. I thought they were going to close my site but it's still up and running. I can still post to my blog and I think as long as I don't edit the site and click Publish, I can keep using it as-is. I want to learn & switch to a Wordpress site, so now that I got the time, I've decided to watch tutorials and get educated. It seems complicated at first but looks easier once it's up and running. First things first, find a web host and pay for a hosting plan, so I'm figuring out how to go about that.

I sketched this out a few days ago and cleaned it up today. It was after a few days of constantly reading the news on my phone, mostly scrolling past headlines, and reading about all the fucked up shit going on with covid and racism. Apparently it's called doomscrolling. 

I thought I was going to pay taxes for 2019 so I set aside some money. Instead, I got a refund so now I have a little extra spending money to put towards my business. Tonight I pulled the trigger on a couple pricey items that I'd been thinking about buying for quite some time. The 1st item is a new 27" monitor to connect my 15" laptop to. I need the extra real estate to work comfortably in Adobe Illustrator and other apps. I'll share details about the 2nd item later. It's something I've wanted to buy for a few years and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I can't wait to share it with everyone.

Today I replaced the old front door knob and deadbolt at home then went to Home Depot to make key copies. Then I went to Costco and bought a new car cover canopy for my dad to replace his old one. When I got home I cleaned the shower head and fixed the shutoff valve that was seized shut. Later I then got to work vectorizing some designs in Adobe Illustrator for a project I'm working on. It was a very productive day. Up next is patching & painting holes in the drywall and helping my dad assemble the canopy after taking part the old one.

Today I bought a one-year subscription to Skillshare Premium. Skillshare.com is website with a bunch of online courses on all a bunch of different subjects. I heard about it when one of my favorite graphic designers, Aaron Draplin of Draplin Design Co., shared on his Instagram (@draplin) that he released a new course. He's taught 6 of them. Tonight I watched his 2-hour course on improving your Adobe Illustrator workflow and it alone is worth the $59 I paid for the whole year.

I started working on a new project. It's still in the early phases but here are some sketches I did tonight. I might share more as this progresses.

After hours & hours & hours & hours & hours preparing, I finally filed my taxes this evening. One day before the extended deadline. I was stoked to finally finish and learn I'm receiving a refund. The last few years I've had to pay the federal government so I'm happy to finally get some money back. After filing I celebrated with a short hike up to Eagle Rock at Alum Rock Park. 

My pre-paid year of Weebly's Business Plan ends tomorrow. (7/14) This was my first foray into building a professional website. Weebly was much better than the rinky-dink free online store I had from Square but I still had a few issues with it so I'm going to try another service. I thought about using Shopify to build my online store & website but I understand that Wordpress is more flexible and used my more people & businesses. Tomorrow, hopefully, after I finish prepping & filing my taxes I'll get to work building my new website.