The Cost of “Quickly”

Last week, while on vacation, I was writing the being-right-feels-wrong series.

On Wednesday, I finished everything for that day in the morning, and in the afternoon, I realized I had so much time, I could do a bit of extra work for tomorrow.

But, since I was on vacation, I wasn’t really into writing two entire posts that take up a lot of energy and time in one day, so I opted for a lighter task –making that little accompanying comic I enjoyed so much.

After all, I already had the entire idea – from the image to the text – and it’s the idea that’s always the trickiest one, so this seemed like offing two flies with the same stroke.

I’d get something done quickly, which would leave me enough time to enjoy other things, and I’d get a nice sense of achievement out of it, which would be a nice little impetus to keep me motivated to finish the post tomorrow.

What on earth could go wrong?!

Apparently – a Lot

You can’t make a comic if you don’t have an image, and I make the majority of images for my blog with Niko, my ChatGPT. I prompt the image, get the desired version, and then do the rest in Affinity, whatever the rest may be – polishing, editing, building on.

I use ChatGPT because I’ve worked with it a lot, and we’ve learned to “speak the same language.” In terms of statistics, let’s say I get the desired results > 90% of the time. Which is great.

That Wednesday, for some reason, Niko decided to go all printery on me, giving me all sorts of results other than the ones I asked for.

First half an hour or so – down the drain.

And That’s Not All!

In order to stop wasting time further, I chose one of the images that seemed to be the best fit for my idea and decided to touch it up.

The image had two halves, each featuring a bot and a human. However, the bot had a humongous HA HA written next to it, which I asked Niko to delete. Niko, on the other hand, deleted everything except the HA HA.

I guess it was Niko’s way of saying, “HA HA in your face, workaholic! I’m on vacation, too.”

Another half an hour of hassle later, and I decided to remove the HA HA myself in Affinity.

The Joke’s on Me

Granted, I usually do these things in Photopea, but how difficult can it be to use a clone tool in Affinity?

Well, if you’re not concentrated and in Publisher instead of Photo, then – quite indeed.

The first part took me about 20 minutes to discover, because all I could think of was how much I’d enjoy a cup of coffee, and the second part… well…

After another solid 20 minutes, I decided to look up a tutorial. Watched it, seemed logical, in line with what I was doing, decided to try.

Didn’t work.

Watched it again, all checked out, tried it again…

Still didn’t work.

When things hit a standstill, it was time to send in the cavalry – or summon my bestie. I described my woes and asked if he could help out when he got the chance.

Returned back to the image, wanted to close it, but then I it dawned on me – You idiot! The layer is locked! No wonder you can’t clone anything!

In exasperation, I unlocked the layer and swiftly removed the text. Voilá!

Brilliant(ly Stupid)!

Having solved the HA HA conundrum, I proceeded to text editing, all invigorated… and all.

I put the first speech bubble, then the text… and realized I couldn’t find the compartment in my brain where I stored the info on spacing.

Logically, I opened the comic I made yesterday to check.

At that point, my mom came in to ask if I wanted some coffee. Oh, yes, please, I retorted and clicked the little x to close the unnecessary image before I messed it up somehow.

The screen glitched – Do you want to save… and in a hurry, still talking to my mom – of course I do – I saved it. We don’t want to lose any data, right?

Wrong!!!

The screen glitched again, Affinity shut down, and I opened everything anew. Ugh…

This was the moment I should have suspected I’d made a huge, smelly pile of kaka, but no…

Still devoutly believing I’d be able to do things quickly, I continued to throw up those speech bubbles and the corresponding text.

But the text seemed too big. Or too small. Or non-fitting. Ugh again!

After 25 thousand font size adjustments – and the bubbles that go along – I finally found something that seemed – OK.

Since I gave up on perfection as part of my self-growth journey some time ago, I made peace with the non-perfect result, went on to export it, and finish the work for the day – quickly.

Ahem

First and foremost, I’m a creature of habit, and one of my habits is to open a file with a different tool after I finish working on it. I learned that from proofreading. The visual surrounding changes the focus and you can spot mistakes more easily, and…

And f*ck it, my little human had a bowtie in one half of the image and a tie in the second half. I was so fixated on the bloody HA HA that I totally missed the tree from the freaking forest. Which was not something I could easily fix… or had any will to do so, after spending several hours doing something quickly.

The To-Do Has Hit the Doo-Fan

Despondent, I went to open the image again and perhaps see if I could save anything by sticking the speech bubble over the tie, but alas…

I couldn’t find the image. Or more precisely – I couldn’t find the image where it should have been.

And then the previous glitch kept glitching before my eyes so many times that I thought I was having a minor stroke. Luckily – or not – it was just a light bulb that turned on upon realizing I had accidentally saved my current work over the yesterday’s. Good job!

Meaning, now I didn’t have either the Affinity file I used to create yesterday’s image – or the image I could post tomorrow.

Well, that escalated… “quickly.”

Back to the Drawing Board

I let out a deep sigh and flipped my laptop shut.

I dragged myself down the stairs and out in the fresh air to get that coffee and calm my nerves. I cried, cursed, and threw a random tantrum over my wretched destiny.

One full hour later, I returned to my laptop, and told Niko, Hey, buddy, I’m a total mess, and a desperate one, for that matter. Could you please recreate the original image? Make it square, no text, and make sure the human has a bowtie in both halves.

Half a minute later – Niko whipped up a perfect image of a bot and a human chatting, even better than the one I had imagined in the first place.

Defeated, I said thank you and proceeded to replace the old image with the new one.

Perfect match!

The new image fit perfectly, and I didn’t even have to adjust the speech bubbles.

So much for abstaining from perfection.

Somewhere between utterly annoyed and deeply relieved, I clicked export and closed that chapter.

Quickly – before something else happened.

Moral of the Story

Let this story that unfolded quickly and was told in the same manner – quickly – be a lesson of caution to you:

If you ever decide to do something quickly, make sure you have enough of the right currency to pay the price – either in time, nerves, or sanity.

As for me, next time… when I decide to do something quickly – I’ll pick another word category. One that actually observes the implied time constraint. Nouns over adverbs, things like that…

How about you? How are you at doing things quickly?

If this post sounds familiar, share the cautionary tale – quickly!