Here we have the before and after office pictures.

It isn't that impressive, is it?

I did some measuring and research and thinking at the beginning of the process, and discovered that I could easily put a 47.5" desk (that seems to be one of the standard sizes) and a 36" cabinet with lateral file into the space currently occupied by my ragtag assortment of office furniture.

With tuition, however, I decided that doing that will have to be a future goal, and kept the Early Thrift Store look. I moved things around a bit (one priority was making the trundle bed accessible for the girls' visits) and added a whimsical touch with Dragon furniture stickers.

A whimsical touch doesn't necessarily improve the Early Thrift shop look. It can make it look not as though you have a goal to buy some furniture some day, but as though you did it on purpose.

The new bookshelf is pretty cute, though. That's an electronic picture frame up there, not a blank one.
 

The workspace is cleaner, tidier, and more practical.

And I did spend hours filing. I should probably just have shown you the inside of the filing cabinet. So there is definitely a net improvement from the point of view of work, even if it doesn't look any more like a place where Success would like to hang out.

Last weekend I finished up the two-part dress for my SWAP. This weekend I may finish up the jacket that goes with this. I made a simple linen blouse just the color of the darkest flowers in this print, so I'm currently at 2 tops, 1 bottom, and almost 1 jacket.

If I were going to get in plenty of sewing this weekend, I could also make some pants -- I have a nice beige linen and a khaki twill, both of which will fit perfectly into this SWAP.

However, there are other things I ought to do this weekend.

For one thing, I updated FreshPlans (my lovely educational website) to 3.0, and now I can't put thumbnails in for my posts. I have asked The Computer Guy to have a look, but I'm a bit alarmed about this.

The Computer Guy owes me one, because I spent two unbillable hours, plus travel time, soothing down one of his clients yesterday. I don't mind doing this, but it does make me feel better about asking him to restore my thumbnails.

Which actually sounds like a surgical procedure, doesn't it? Or a job for a manicurist. 

I also need to do some domestic stuff. A proper grocery shopping is a must. Cleaning has to be done, since I no longer have a cleaner. And I plan to do something for my office.

My office is my younger son's bedroom, but he is away at college, so I moved in. This has tax advantages, improves the look of my living room, and prevents my having to listen to sports on TV while I work. It's an all-round good thing for me to have a separate office.

As you can see, this office is set up in a practical way, but perhaps not the most attractive way. It is furnished with an assortment of shabby, battered hand-me-downs, and while I don't think it's excessively untidy for an office, there may be ways to organize it for a better workflow. Or it may be excessively untidy, since I had to put "for an office" in there.
 
I saw a TV program the other day, while I was doing Free Step on the Wii Fit, in which a group of dementedly cheerful people turned a thrown-together room like this one into a chic and usable workspace for a handbag designer with $50 and some creativity.

Doubtless they also had a work crew of 12 and lots of tools. But still, I might be able to do a makeover for this room with what I have around.

I have at least provided some "before" pictures in case I get around to doing that.

I have some work to do, and grading, which is also work. But as far as I know, I haven't committed to any events of any kind this weekend (besides church of course), so I have a full 48 hours in which to do all this stuff.

I've been reading Wellbeing: the Five Essential Elements, by the guys who wrote Strengthfinders. The authors, using Gallup's profound resources to research wellbeing around the world, identified five elements that everyone has to have to achieve optimum wellbeing.

Having moved through Career, Social, Financial, and Physical wellbeing chapters, I finished up last night with Community.

Part of Community wellbeing is about living in a safe, clean place where you can drink the water. But part is about being active in your community. People who do volunteer work are happier than those who don't. Those who actively participate in the life of their community are better off from the standpoint of wellbeing.

And, again, this element of wellbeing is integrated with the others. People who are happy at work are more likely to volunteer than those who aren't. People who are active in their community are more likely to be healthy.

There's more to the book. The first half of the book reported on the research results and what factors are predictive of a sense of wellbeing. The second half hones in on the specific things you can do to improve wellbeing.

I've only just begun that part, but I can tell you something interesting. The authors studied the levels of stress and enjoyment (using both physiological signs and self-reporting) people felt when doing various activities. The top two, tied for first place, were listening to music and playing with children.

Clearly, all our weekend plans should involve those two things.

I may not have roses this year, but I do have hydrangeas. 

They're very pretty. They're growing by my front porch, so I can sit out there in the peacock blue rocking chair my parents gave me and read while admiring the flowers.

It's not quite the same as sitting with the roses and herbs; for one thing, it doesn't smell as good. For another, there is no reclining lawn chair involved.  For another, my porch still has tubs of soil sitting on it, which sort of spoil the effect.

I think a domestic weekend may be called for.

I'm reviewing a book for the author. It's intended to be read one page per day for a year. Each day has a quotation to ponder, thoughts, and action steps. The object is that you set a goal or goals and after a year you'll be where you want to be, having been encouraged on the way by your daily readings.

Some of the readings are the usual sort of thing you might expect, about reaching for the stars and whatnot, but some are new to me. One that keeps returning to my mind asked whether your home or office is the kind of place where success would want to hang out.

I've honestly never contemplated this before.

Admittedly, I don't think of success as a visitor who checks out the surroundings before deciding whether or not to settle in.

But the question did make me look around a bit. My house right now isn't looking like the kind of place where I would want to hang out, let alone a symbolic embodiment of success. I'm meeting with a designer in my office this afternoon, and it looks fairly pitiful.

I think that matters. I think of the curtain rising on a play. The set is there, and we're intended to draw conclusions about the characters based on that set.
I think that my house generally -- if viewed as a stage set -- would make you think that a nice, creative, comfortable family lived there. I think it's a happy and pretty place overall.

But there's only so much neglect a place can take before it begins to look like a stage set about neglectful people.

My office has  a bare quilt frame standing on its end. My son took the quilt off while he was here but couldn't figure out how to fold up the frame, so he stood it up and hung jackets on it.

A bit of wallpaper is coming down -- I've been meaning to fix it but haven't yet. One of the closet doors is off its track, and we haven't fixed that yet, either. The desk is a hand me down from my son, who got it as a hand me down from a friends, and then I stuck the top part of another ancient desk onto it to hold books and discs. There's a bed in here, too -- I actually don't mind that, but it ought to be made to look more sofa-like.

Sounds like a good project for the weekend.

I'm also meeting with a client (a client of The Computer Guy's firm) in her office this afternoon. I'll look around and see whether it seems like the kind of place where success would want to hang out.

Once again my horrible dog kept me awake all night. I had been reading Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, on the subject of physical wellbeing, and was therefore quite thoroughly up on the consequences of inadequate sleep. Not sleeping enough makes you gain weight, get sick more often, and think less clearly.

I very frequently don't get enough sleep, but I'm trying to improve.

You should also eat right and exercise, and I think we are not amazed by this news. However, there were some new pieces of info in this chapter for me. For example, I was startled to read that roughly a quarter of the people in the world, and nearly that high a percentage in the U.S., are in pain much of the time. That genetic markers for things like prostate cancer can be suppressed by eating things like broccoli, meaning that a genetic predisposition to something doesn't mean you have no choice. And that a large percentage of the money spent in the U.S. on healthcare is for preventable stuff -- enough that we could probably take really good care of the people with unpreventable stuff if we became a little more responsible about those other things.

When you buy the book, you get a secret code so you can go to the associated website and take a wellbeing test and plan how to improve, and you get to use that website for a month. I went and took the test (I needed to improve on financial and physical wellbeing) but haven't yet returned to the website. Today, maybe. It might be stuffed with useful resources.

Yesterday after class I walked out to the parking lot with one of my students. She's a really chirpy, chatty girl, very sweet, and she was telling me to come watch her in the play she's in, and then I could interview her and write about it for my magazine.

We got to our vehicles, which were parked next to each other, parted, and got in. As I started my car, I looked over and saw the student slumped over her steering wheel, with her head on the wheel. Her hair fell down across her face, her arms hung down, and she wasn't moving.

I watched her for a moment. I was a bit worried that she seemed to be not merely resting but actually flinging herself down in despair. She had been so chatty a moment before!

I continued to watch and she continued not to move. I stepped up my worry from fear that she was upset to fear that she had had a heart attack. A freak drug-related accident, perhaps, or one of those sudden heart things people get in movies.

I jumped out of the car and ran over to her vehicle -- where I could see that she was, below the edge of the window, briskly texting somebody.

Fortunately, I hadn't yet done the whole pounding on the window shouting, "Ashley!" thing that I had been planning on.

I crept away unnoticed and drove home. It was quite a relief.

Last night I read the section on Financial Wellbeing. I'm thriving, according to the test, in social and career wellbeing, the first two sections, but need to improve my score on financial wellbeing, so I read the section closely.

There really weren't any new conclusions. We know that people who don't have enough money to meet their basic needs aren't as happy as those who do, and that people who worry about money are less happy than those who don't, regardless of how much they actually have. People who "poor mouth," or feel as though they're underpaid, don't have enough to do what they want to do, or compare themselves with others and think they have less are also less happy. I'm inclined to worry.

The book suggests improving your money management skills so that you can feel confident. It also points out that improving your career satisfaction (people who are happy at work are usually happier with their pay than those who aren't happy, regardless of actual pay) and social wellbeing (hang out with people who make you feel good rather than those of whom you're jealous) can improve your financial wellbeing.

They also report that spending money on other people and on experiences improves people's sense of wellbeing more than buying material goods does. So go to a movie, buy yarn and knit, or give to charity instead of buying a new pair of shoes.

I'm pretty good about all those things, actually. Today, having received a direct deposit from the school, I will be paying workers and making the first installment of #2 son's tuition. No shoes here.

Hard to believe I'm showing off my homework to you.

I think I'm beginning to get the idea of gradients, though. The website FreshPlans has a cool gallery, and The Computer Guy started it off with panels involving a photo blending into white space. I'm going to put his tiger here so you can see.

I've been trying to get that effect ever since.

Why, you may be wondering, don't I just ask him how to do it. It's because it would be the equivalent of saying, "I paid you once to do this, but now I want to do it myself and not have to pay you any more, so I'm going to copy you."

True, that's what I'm doing, but asking for help in doing it would be a little bit worse than merely doing it.

I told him I was taking the class and why, but that stays on this side of the line, or so I tell myself.

So what do you think: am I getting closer?

The Five Essential Elements of Wellbeing begins with job satisfaction, but then moves on to Social Wellbeing. Corss-cultural studies show that people who have six hours a day of interaction with people are happiest. Wellbeing increase with every hour of human contact -- including email and phone calls -- up to six. After that it doesn't continue improving.

What's more, people are more likely to be happy if the people they hang out with are happy. This gets a little complex and surprising here, but there was a Harvard study of 12,000 people who were interconnected in some way (six degrees, or pixels if you like, of separation) which found that happiness was highly contagious. If I hang out with you and a friend of yours is happy, I'm about 10% more likely to be happy than would be predicted by chance.

This could just be the well-known contagious mood -- if the boss yells at a man, he goes home and snarls at his wife, who snaps at the kid, who kicks the cat.... But it may be more than that, too, because it turns out that we're more likely to eat right if our friends do. We're more likely to exercise if our friends do. We're more likely to enjoy our work if we have a best friend there.

It begins to become clear why the authors say these elements are interdependent. Our social wellbeing can have an impact on our physical wellbeing, simply because our friends encourage us by example to take better care of ourselves. Our social wellbeing can have an effect on our work because those moments of social interaction during the day keep us engaged with our work, and therefore happier at work -- which lowers cholesterol.

The travelers to Bonnaroo are back. Looks like they had a good time.
 

I finished the two-piece dress last night. I also did my Photoshop class assignment, which you see right here.   True, I appear to be a dangerous creature baring my teeth at you, but it was the best picture of myself I had to work with.

I did other Photoshop assignments, too, but they mostly involved moving things from one place to another, so they aren't worth showing.

I do like that class, though. The instructor hasn't given me any comments of any kind. I get full points for the assignments, and perhaps she saves comments for people who've messed something up.

For me, it underscores the importance of giving feedback. I'm learning things, but I think I'd learn more if I got some suggestions of some kind.

So I had a fairly lazy weekend. Apart from church and a little bit of work, I spent the whole time hanging out reading, sewing, stuff like that. It was quite pleasant.

I finished Crimes Against Logic, a book  #1 daughter and I were planning to read and discuss. She'll be back from the rock festival today, so I guess we can discuss it a bit. It's a good reminder of the logical fallacies we so often commit, written in a snarky and entertaining style. I'm going to take it to class today, just in case I need a good example.

I also completed the section of Wellbeing that deals with career satisfaction. Here are some things these guys learned about work and happiness:

• People who are happy at work live longer, and have lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
• Having a bad boss is one of the worst things for people's sense of wellbeing, and can cause people to dislike their work.
• People who like their work often finds that it spills over into their non-work life, but they don't get burned out, while people who dislike their work usually can only tolerate 20 hours of work per week without feeling tired and overworked.

#1 son and #1 daughter will both be back from the rock festival today. They did not attend the Kiss and Hag Rockers' Carnival.

This means that they did not have the opportunity to Shake a Lady for Justice to the Romance, nor for an Evil Prayer.

I honestly can't imagine what this T-shirt was initially intended to convey.

However, I saw an ad yesterday for Gourmé salad dressing, which is essentially the same as Engrish, but in French. And I feel fairly sure that all the stuff you see around bedecked with Chinese or Japanese characters doesn't in fact make any sense at all.

The paragraph I just wrote reminds me of the section in Crimes Against Logic in which the author talks about how he would say someone was a jerk and his parents would come up with extenuating circumstances. Explaining the cause of something, he says, is not the same as disproving it. I think his parents were correcting not his logic but his unkindness. Just so, I'm looking at the Shake a Lady Evil Prayer T-shirt in all its incomprehensible glory and suggesting that its bizarreness is mitigated by our bad French or Chinese. That's irrelevant, isn't it?

I did some fancy sewing yesterday,but #1 son has my camera at the rock festival, so I can't show it to you.

These are the fabrics I was working with: a crinkled sheer print and a lining.

I hemmed the skirt and began making the top. I'll add a picture of the pattern so you can see it.

The lining and the fitting were both pretty challenging, but now I have just the sleeves and the hem for the top, and it's quite pretty.

I also worked on the homework for my Photoshop class. We've gotten to the chapter on blend and gradients, which I'm finding fairly thrilling.

So far we've been copying stuff and following instructions ( "Open PS4-4. Use the eyedropper tool to sample the color at x70 y154. Use the fill bucket to..."). It looks as though we're actually going to get to -- gasp -- choose a color or something on this assignment.

I also worked, actually. All morning. And cleaned house a bit. Not a lot, but enough to feel as though I had improved things slightly.

My cleaner has quit. I don't think it's my fault, since she has a ganglion cyst. She had to cut back, but of course she also had to choose whom to cut back. #1 son says it's because I never remembered when she was coming and therefore never cleaned up for her.

It's certainly true that it's easier to clean thoroughly if there isn't stuff in the way. You can't expect a person to dust surfaces if they all have books and sports gear on them. However, she was able to scrub the bathrooms and the kitchen floor and vacuum so that I felt that there was some maintenance being done.

Without her, I'll have to do those things myself. Sigh.

Church today, and I expect to finish the top, so my 2-piece dress will be completed. Possibly I will also finish the associated jacket. If so, I'll be 36% finished with the SWAP.

   I don't think I showed you this picture of the local university's garden before. I already told you the story that goes with it, though, so it can just sit here, showing off what a pretty place I live in.

Being happy with your community is one of the five essential elements of wellbeing. This includes liking and being proud of your town or neighborhood, being active in your community (whatever that means to you), and feeling valued in your community.

I have an 8 for Community Wellbeing. I have a 9 for Career Wellbeing, and a 7 for Social Wellbeing. All these are considered "thriving."

However, I have only 6 for health and for financial. I think I have a 6 for financial because the slowness of people's paying their invoices combined with the enormous tax bill I had to pay has left me feeling suspenseful about paying bills and a bit concerned about upcoming tuition expenses. I'm not exactly living hand to mouth, but it feels that way a bit. 

I think the 6 for health reflects my concern about still not being able to have my dental work done (that may also affect my financial score) and my knowledge that I need to make changes in order to avoid ending up like the guy on the right.

Because it seems to me that your score on their online test is all about how you feel things are going, more than about observable reality.

I haven't read much of the book. They give you a code so you can take an online measure of your wellbeing. Then you read the book and take action steps and re-measure. So far, I've read about their experimental methodology, and I've read their claim about the key error most people make when they focus on wellbeing.

We forget, the book says, that these five elements are interdependent.

I'll leave you with this cliff-hanger.

If you're a teacher, or know any teachers, you should run over to FreshPlans and get the gen on Carson-Dellosa's new sweepstakes. They're giving away $500 in goods and gift certificates to each of 25 lucky teachers. I want someone I know to win. I'd like to win myself, actually, but it's for k-12s, so go one and do it on my behalf, ok?

I stayed up late last night talking to #2 daughter. Talking to daughters is a good reason to stay up late. However, I have to admit that I am tired this morning.

Yesterday after class La Bella and I went to lunch, where we met the new pastors (a husband and wife team) of the church which I used to attend, and for which The Computer Guy and I are building a new website. We're meeting this afternoon.

They were encouraging me to return to the Presbyterian fold, now that they have all the problems ironed out.

After that I came home to work. It used to be that my work was about sitting at the computer writing, doing my two or three projects a day. Now it's like being at work -- phone calls, IMs, problems that arise and need to be dealt with. Stuff happens while I get my writing done.

I like that, actually. It's an adjustment, though. And yesterday we were discussing 21st Century Skills (my practice topic with the class before they begin their own research projects) and adaptability is one of the main ones.

We have to be prepared for constant change.