My intention for today, in order of priority, is to:

• add and publish Studio Log 01 on my website
• continue creating design concepts for the remaining leaves
• paint some abstract landscapes on canvas (vertical orientation)
• publish the 11″ x 14″ abstract landscape painting that’s ready to go

I did complete resizing my droplet yesterday, however only resized the disk storage and not the memory or number of vCPUs it uses. But as I attempt to create Studio Log 01 I’m finding that it’s extremely slow to save to the database. I also know that I am very short on available space on my laptop, so I might try another computer, just to rule out it being my laptop, and indeed WordPress itself.

Instead of adding the design variations as individual images, I thought I might add a tall image in the form of a collage instead. I want to play around with this idea and see whether it looks right to include in the blog post.

Okay so I’ve realised that including the design concepts in a layout is going to unintentionally imply that the layout is the product I’m offerring. 

This is what I mean…

This looks like it might be entire layout that’s being offered as an art print. That’s going to confuse matters. In this case, I think I might just put that idea aside and see if I can use a carousel or gallery layout instead. 

Two hours into this entire process and I think I’ve reached my limit with the speed of making edits in the blog post and waiting for it to save. So I’ve decided I might actually resize the droplet again but add another vCPU – however, this does mean I will probably wait around 15 minutes for this process to complete but that seems worth it for my sanity. Waiting 5 minutes to process each click is driving me mad.

I have to admit things are way more snappy. I am tempted to add another vCPU again… but I’m trying to hold off on that idea… for no other reason other than it being the third time I would have adjusted the hardware on my droplet in the last two days. But who cares right?! Clearly, my choices have been uneducated if I’m arriving at my solution by trial and error. And on that note, I’ve added another one and we’re operating with 3 vCPUs. This is now starting to feel like an unhealthy addiction…

Okay so more vCPUs at the cost of less memory (whilst trying to keep it at the same price point) wasn’t the right call as I now have a
-bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
error on my droplet, even when I’m trying to run a command to simply power off the machine. So obviously we are going to reverse that last change. Seems like the ideal droplet specs right now is 2 vCPUs, 2GB of memory and 60GB of storage.

The entire process of customising my website storage, editing and adding the previous studio log as well all the related tasks that come with it like adding links, creating image tags, scheduling social media posts to various social platforms, recycling the images in the blog post to serve as future social media posts, updating my Youtube channel art, pinning all images to Pinterest, tagging products on Instagram etc. have meant that several hours have elapsed, and the only item from my original list that I can now tick off is publishing the Studio Log 01 entry on my blog.

That sounds a little negative, so let’s reframe that. Yes that’s (currently) the only item I can tick off, however, I’ve still completed a whole heap of more items that are going to serve me in the long run.

I am going to end this Studio Log here because I feel the need to switch to an entirely creative task given that I have been at the desk for hours. I am also going to start a fresh Studio Log once I decide what that creative pursuit will be.

Until then,
Charlie x