Byrdie Babbles
Here's where I blog about whatever!
Latest Babble:
06/10/2025
Be More Deliberate
Hey y'all, been a while! I've been very busy with work. My contract will be up soon though so I'll have some time to update this site! It's been such a great year - I've recovered from some serious financial hardship, been able to work on a great production with an amazing studio, and I feel pretty fulfilled when I look back at the work I've done. I even have some casual and freelance work lined up while I go scouring for more full-time roles!
I've been feeling very reflective lately - might just be the changing of the seasons, or my contract ending (or something I ate :P). While I'm very happy with how things are for me right now, I have a little voice in the back of my head telling me I could've done better. Some days the little voice is a lot louder and meaner than I'd like it to be. When it gets too loud, that's when I start doing things that are detrimental to myself. Now that I have time to think and reflect on how my contract went, it's lead me to the conclusion that I need to be kinder to myself.
I've always struggled with time management and focus, and that's been reflected in my output at work. I tried very hard to stick to a schedule, and it did work and did keep me energised, but I was still coming to work very tired or very squirrelly some days. On the days when I worked from home, I would wake up as late as possible and log onto my computer in the nick of time. When I would wrap up for the day, I would sometime stay up a lot later than my bedtime thinking it was a reward for getting through the day. Some days I would forget to eat lunch or skip out on breakfast so I could get just one more thing done, and subsidise those meals by snacking throughout the day. Sometimes I would say yes to commitments on autopilot, which lead to me burning myself out a lot.The worst offender is opening social media at the times when I should be working - I lost a lot of time giving into the endless scroll. I would justify these actions by telling myself "I'm being kind to myself. I'm rewarding myself by feeding into these habits". But if I face the music, it sounds more like I'm being self-destructive.
In the interest of being kinder to myself, actually kinder, I am going to be more deliberate about my actions. So much of my self-destructive behaviors can be attributed to being passive about how I spend my time and energy - not because I don't care about the task I'm supposed to be doing, but because it's comfortable to do the thing that feels good, or its comfortable to 'just finish off this one thing really quickly'. So, here's how I'm gonna be more deliberate.
This is a big one. I've had a smartphone since I was 13 years old, and as much as I love having access to the internet at all times, it's been a huge time sink for me in the 12 years I've had it. I'm intending to swap out my current phone (a Motorola Razr Ultra 40) for a normal cell phone. Hopefully something that still plays music and has a calendar and clock/timer. I will have a separate device for my mobile gaming desires (mostly Pokemon titles) and I'll need to think about a solution to any of my GPS or Public Transport needs, but if I want to be on social media, I will have to deliberately visit the desktop site.
I've always found it difficult to use planners - I've just never found a system that works for me. But about a week ago, I rediscovered my love of bookbinding, and made a little sketchbook that I'm hoping to use once per day over the course of October (6 days strong so far!). The size and shape of it remind me of these little A7 sketchbooks I used to keep with me in high school, which were a lifesaver for me (saved me from getting told off for doodling in the margins of my assignments...) My plan is to make on for each month of the year, with two pages dedicated to each day (one lined, one blank for sketching or additional space). I'm hoping that the act of making the planner, customising it to how I need it, will make me more likely to use it. I had a lot of fun getting back into bookbinding, and I'll post a tutorial about it sometime soon!
I want to achieve this in two ways. Firstly, the suburb I'm currently living in seems to have a nice local community - I've join the official facebook page and seen some activity, but there's also a notice board that has a lot of information about local events. Since it seems unlikely I'll be moving anytime soon, I want to check it out, give back to the community. Secondly, I want to make more active time for my friends, specifically the ones I'm not living with at the moment. Historically I've been terrible at keeping in touch with people - I don't forget about them, there's just this irrational thought that I'm always too late to get back in touch, or that I'll say the wrong thing, or that if I try to reconnect, the other person will be too busy for me. I want to have a more active role in my relationships with others - I will start going to more game nights, start getting lunches with people, and keep those connections strong, even while I'm busy. If I am more deliberate with how I communicate, I won't fall back into the hole of lonesomeness that I tend to fall into.
Sticking to a schedule is really good for me - I have a big A2 fortnightly planner that sits over my desk right now. While I'm self-managing my time, I usually section my day into 3 hour "blocks", with breaks between to cool off or eat something before moving to the next task. I really enjoyed this schedule - having clear-cut times for my work is easier on my brain, I prefer it to a full work day. Working to this sort of schedule also means I can alot time for my passion projects alongside doing chores or studying or catching up with friends - 3 hours is a nice hunk of time to dedicate to something, and in the times I've trialed this kind of schedule, I'm usually ready to move on once the timer is up. I've also been trying to make sure I get a walk in every morning (I was going strong for a while but have dipped back into not doing it again...), which also does wonders for my energy during the day. I'm still gunning to get my bike back from my parents place, so some mornings I might go bike riding instead (I'm blesssed to live in an area with lots of nice trails!).
As much as I tend to waste my time on social media, I'm not very good at using it. I find user-built websites (like this one!) much nicer to use; more deliberate, more rewarding. I'm not making a post fleetingly and then scrolling to bury it, am making new webpages and thinking about it the whole time - active participation instead of passively following an algorithm. And then there's the cultures of each site - Twitter is crawling with Nazis, Instagram hurts me to use, TikTok's algorithm is way to predatory, Facebook is swarmed with LLM-generated content and links to articles designed to drive emgagement instead of display information, Youtube doesn't have communication features aside from the comments sections of videos (not that it would be a good idea to put DMs on youtube), and Tumblr, while I find it to be the easiest site to use, has lead to me spending far too much time doomscrolling. But I won't lie, these sites are a good tool for staying in touch with people - God knows I don't want to cut contact with anyone (as per point number 3). I'll still keep Discord around for instant messages, and I'll of course have call and text, but posting the same message in a million different servers really sucks. So instead, I'm gonna be turning Byrdie Babbles into a newsletter! This way I can keep looping in my friends, family, and anyone who wants to know about the big updates in my life, without falling into the feedback loop that Social Media has to offer. I'm still in the progress of setting it up, but as soon as it's done, I'll let everyone know!
Whew, I think that's all I've got for now. There's lots of work to be done. But y'know what? That's fine by me! It means I'll never be bored! I hope you, reading this right now, are well. I'll be back soon! Have fun and take care!
04/04/2025
On being a creative
It's been a while since I made a babble. Life's been a lot - I've been going through a lot of personal changes, and the world around me is changing too, and I've been working a ton. Work's been great though! I love what I do, even if I find focus difficult sometimes. Of course, working in animation, I'm under an NDA, so I can't really talk about what I'm doing, but it's been nice to work on. I even picked up some more work with another project recently! It fits nicely into my schedule, the role is something that will help me with my portfolio and where I want to go in my career, and it's in a software I'm very comfortable with! But ugh, I keep proving to myself that the best way for me to come up with new ideas for projects is to already have too much on my plate. And it wouldn't be too much of an issue, but the project told me its name, so now I guess I *have* to work on it! On top of all the other stuff I want to work on, and need to work on, and want and need to maintain, and want to help my friends with, and and and and.....
I had a dream last night. I don't remember all of it aside from this - I was climbing an enormous eucalyptus tree, in the middle of a white-out. It wasn't snowing, but there was thick powder snow covering everything. I came across the most beautiful birds - a pair of pale blue and white parrots, like lovebirds but larger, with black eyes and fluffy feathers. I wanted so badly to sit with them. I wanted so badly to keep climbing the tree and keep exploring the mindscape. But I couldn't shake the feeling that there were 10 other tasks I needed to be doing at that time. And yet, I couldn't tear myself away from the birds. I ended up waking up way earlier than I needed to as the stress overtoook me. I wish I'd stayed with the birds.
At my core, I am a person who wants to make. I want to create a life that is comfortable for myself and everyone dear to me. I want to sink my teeth into all the experiences life has to offer; the pleasure, the pain, the heartache, the joy, the mudanity, and everything in between. I so desperately want to do everything, always, flawlessly and efficiently. But I am prone to burning myself out, and I struggle to prioritise what I'm working on - I always have, and I think I always will. I just need to make sure all this doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. If I'm smart about how I spend my time, I think I can get it all done. And when my birthday rolls around next summer, I'll spend a nice long week at the beach.
19/01/2025
To the tune of about 38 mini quiches.
I have made a grave miscalculation. In my defence I was kinda winging parts of the recipe. So as well as 38 mini quiches, we also have some mix for scrambled eggs, since I ran out of crust and couldn't be bothered making more (I doubled every part of the recipe - big mistake, shouldn've just doubled the crust). The kitchen smells great tho so I recon they'll be tasty... We also had a bunch of old fruit and I have a fancy kinda food processor that can chill and mix at the same time, so I made some sorbet! Cooking is so much fun hehehe.
Sometimes I talk to my friends about this fantasy I have about what I might do if I retire (pretty slim, but maybe possible) - I wanna open up an american style diner somewhere near the beach, maybe Altona? It is a place that means a lot to me. Or maybe it would make more sense to find a place between cities, to get the truckers and interstate-travellers. Anyway, when I say american style, I mean a proper New Jersey Diner, with the black drip-brewed coffee and the case of pies in the front, and I wanna be open 24/7, but if I can't I'll settle for an 8-10 open hours. I call this a retirement fantasy cause I think I'd start to hate food if I had to cook for a living. I wanna keep the food cheap too - make enough to pay staff and buy what I need for the restaurant, but put more emphasis on feeding people. Actually tonight I figured out what I wanna call the place - Cecille's, after my grandma. She was a great cook back in the day and I still use some of her recipes. I'm still nailing down menu items, but among what I've figured out are silver-dollar pancakes (with maple syrup, turkey sausage and eggs - my favorite), club sandwiches, tomato soup (or lobster bisque, if I can source any lobster)... I might even attempt a cheesesteak! I also wanna put some aussie twists on stuff, and make sure everyone can eat.
Part of why I like doing lunches and dinners for my house is cause I wanna expand my repertoire with cooking. I like having it as a hobby - I don't want to go to culinary school (yet) cause again, if I started having to cook for a living, I would start to hate food. I'm trying hard to maintain a healthy relationship with food, to enjoy it, to have fun with it. And I like being able to take care of my friends - so far, the prepared lunches are a success, cause they're getting eaten, especially when the midday exhaustion hits. And y'know, if that day ever comes, that I'm able to spend my days enjoying my life, focus on making myself and others happy, and not have to worry about making a living - it means I'll know how to proceed. If in 40 years time, you come across a beachside diner named Cecille's, don't be a stranger - come on in; we have a menu the size of jupiter, but I recommend a cup of coffee, and a slice of cherry pie, and rest.
08/01/2025
Ababababababababababababa
