Today
I hoped to finish my project. Actually it’s our project.
Originally,
Chuck had something he wanted to print, and I was going to bind it in
a simple little booklet or pamphlet edition. It has been simmering for
a while, as things usually do around here.
We also
wanted to make a card this year for the holidays. Then I remembered
the piece he wanted to print and realized it might actually be appropriate
to use as the innards of a card. I could use an important element in
the story for an seasonal illustration, and the sentiment in the piece
was right. I thought it would work out well, and he agreed.
Agreement
is never enough, though, because we always have many great plans for
projects. Follow through is always the problem. Just as there is no
direct route from place to place in our daily life, there is also
no direct route from idea to execution. We get distracted, we forget,
or we get overwhelmed with everything else in our lives. But this time
I was determined. I made a plan, got my image ready, and we finally
got together working on the printing, sorting out the minor details.
While
we do work together every day, sometimes we don’t share well when
doing projects, as we each tend to have very strong opinions about the
aesthetics of a piece, and our egos get involved. But this time we were
doing great. We were on the same page and we had managed not to kill
each other yet. I’d Gocco printed 110 covers and we’d gotten
everything else finalized. It was actually fun. We were all set to print
the text pages so I could print another image inside.
Then his
computer suddenly refused to communicate with the printer. He shut the
computer down, and restarted. Nothing happened. Computer would not start
up and the hard drive was silent. Tried again, etc. Nothing. The computer
just friggin’ quit. Everything important is on that computer. Any
back up in my computer? Why, no. We had not gotten around to that.
Hoping
it wasn’t the hard drive, he took it out an connected it up in
my computer and fortunately it did open. So we’ve got the data.
And we’ve got another little iMac at home, which will have to be
hauled over to the studio and put to work until we can get a better
one up and running.
Needless
to say, it put a sad end to the project for today. Not that it can’t
be picked up again tomorrow after we get the computer stuff sorted out.
But it was such a let down getting stalled like that in the midst of
doing something we were actually enjoying.