On the Move

I really dislike moving.

That's a bit of an understatement, really.  I hate moving.  The packing, the scrubbing, the boxes full of books that are heavy and awkward to hold and carry.  Then the lugging of the boxes just to do more scrubbing and unpacking.  It just isn't fun at all.

It doesn't help that I have problems packing things up.  My husband can pack 3 boxes in the time it takes me to fill half of one.  I get distracted by all of the interesting things I have, stopping to inspect them, flip through comics and notebooks and examining scraps of paper I have saved.  Then once I have stopped examining them I'm torn between just dumping everything into the box and arranging the inside of the box so that everything fits neatly with as little empty space as possible (to save on having to buy more boxes-despite the fact that this often adds to their weight and awkwardness).

However, moving has its benefits as well.

In the case of the current move?  I am moving from an apartment into a house!  I'll have a yard, with a big back porch, a fire pit and grass and dirt to play in.  In the back yard is possibly the most magnificent and monstrous gardenia I have ever seen - the thing is huge and smells like happiness.

But the best part - the absolutely best thing ever is that for the first time I will have my own studio space!  Yes, that's right - 'Reta's getting a studio!  The basement of the house will be my domain, my sanctum, my own work area where I can escape reality and create art all over the place.

No more heat exhaustion in mom's garage making glass beads all day.  No more drawings rolled up into bundles because there's no room for them to be out.  No more beads and bits of wire all over the living room floor.  No more dismantling my easel that Khris's Grampy made for me.  No more searching through an overcrowded apartment looking for that tube of superglue that could be in one of four rooms I have things scattered in.  No more fear of reconstituting clay because of the crap that will get blown into it by the lawn maintenance crew.  All of my projects and supplies will be in one cool, comfortable, tile floored room!

It's gonna be crazy hectic for the next 10 days (longer, really because my life always is crazy and hectic), but totally worth it.  I can't wait.  :)

Whoo Boy!

So it's been awhile... life is still crazy and makes no sense.  Or maybe, it's not that it makes no sense, it just doesn't make the kind of good organized sense that appeals to me.  Life has some kind of weird backward logic of it's own that I am incapable of following.

I have begun to realize I have an unhealthy relationship with time.  Thankfully, it's not the terrible curse of bad timing that my dear Reverend Doctor Jones is afflicted with, but I'm gonna complain about it anyway.  You see, I think time hates me.  For months now, I have been really busy.  I have felt like I had no time.  No time to myself, no time to do things I wanted to do, just a big whopping, "I'm too busy, I have no time."

The reason for this lack of time was that I could find no single source of employment and had to create my own.  As a skilled, capable overachiever this was okay.  I didn't make very much money (or even enough to pay my bills), but I was building a business.  I filled my days with applying for jobs, making jewelry and pottery, experimenting and learning to make paper mache masks, researching steampunk things for ideas for paintings and whatnots, and shopping for low cost art supplies.

I had some money making work during this time, I did a makeup job that may lead to some work for a movie, I had a sale, my pottery classes were about to start up again, things weren't quite as bleak as they had been in my mind, but they still weren't good in the "how am I going to maintain my pesky food habit?" kind of way.

And then, lo and behold, I landed an art job.  A production art job.   Getting paid to make art - everything I have always wanted in a job.  I was super happy about it.  Still am, really.  But this brings me back to the relationship with time thing. 

I'm in training 5 days a week for my super cool new job.  I'm teaching pottery classes on Saturdays.  When my training is over, I'll be able to work from home and set my own schedule again.  Everything is great.  Except for time.  I don't have enough time.

I have a couple of really great art opportunities on my plate that I worked really hard to get (all that "I'm too busy creating my own job, so I have no time" stuff I've been doing).  Some of these opportunities have deadlines, others are just an ASAP thing.  I need to submit work for a show by April 1st, I need to prep for a movie makeup opportunity, I need to prep for a photoshoot makeup thing next week, I have mostly finished paper mache masks that are watching me with their hollow eyes saying "please finish me".  I haven't updated my websites in months, despite the fact that I wrote it in my calendar to do so.

However, my current work schedule, including my commute (which I think if it's over 30 minutes should be calculated into your work week, after all, it's time spent that you aren't doing something else because you're stuck in traffic).  I'm putting in 68+ hours per week just in training for my new job and teaching pottery classes.  Today is my only day off for the next 14 days.  I desperately need to respond to emails and facebook messages to maintain my contacts in the art scene.  If I don't get more time soon, I may lose the things I spent all that time working to get!  However, I'll still have the art job that I wanted so badly, I'll just inadvertently sacrifice these new awesome opportunities.

So my relationship with time goes like:

Me:   I'm so busy trying to establish myself as an artist who can make money, I wish I could just get an art job, then I'd have more time.

Time:  Oh, I'll show you, stupid woman.

Me:  I got an art job, and I'm establishing myself as an artist who can make money!  Oh, holy crap, how am I gonna keep up with both?  I don't have more time, I had more time before!  What happened?

Time: You're stupid.

Me:  How do I get more time?!?  Can I quit the useless sleep thing?

Time: Only if you're trying for an epic fail.

Me:  Curse you, time!  Where do you go when I need you most?!

Time:   Away-- because I don't like you.

Insult to Injury

I think I may have found an explanation for my recent lack of creativity (or at least extreme struggle with being creative).

This little chart here of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (thank you wiki!) seems to break it down pretty well.  Creativity is at the top of the pyramid, to be reached when there are supports underneath it.  My supports under the top level have been playing a high stakes game of Jenga for too long.

I was moving along pretty well for a while there, things were looking up, and then they weren't again.  Still, even path, no biggie, keep walking.  Keep working.  Keep trying.

It's been a bad week.  I can take a lot of bad news and disappointment.  But this week it's just seemed like too much.  I can't seem to be productive and get any reasonable amount of work done.  It's hard to focus or organize my thoughts.  Old wounds that I thought had finally healed feel ripped open again.  Old fears and unhealthy thought patterns that I believed defeated are rising up.  And I can't talk to the people that I think it would be most helpful to talk to, because this REALLY isn't the time.

I think if it weren't for all the empty holes on the lower levels of the pyramid, this week would not have prompted such a response, it would have still been upsetting, but not to this degree of feeling crazy.  And I feel crazy, and it's not in the "oh, how funny, isn't she crazy?" kind of way.  It's more in the paranoid, in need of a padded room kind of crazy. 

But here's the really unfortunate thing:  I depend on the things in the top level (creativity, problem solving, acceptance of the facts) to secure the things at the lower levels (employment, resources, property, food, water...).  The current crazy is just scrambling the esteem and love/belonging sections entirely.  It's like juggling chainsaws at the best of times, but right now at least one has been dropped and is spinning around slicing up what remains.  And I can't do anything to fix it because you can't fix it from the top down.

I feel betrayed by my own life.

Boo hiss!



Sleep? Where are you tonight?

     I wish I was a better storyteller.  I'm sure that I must have some amusing stories to share with people, I have stories that I find amusing.  However, when sharing entertaining stories with others I always seem to fall flat.

     I can write stories.  Or perhaps, I should say, I can start writing stories.  Fiction, that is.  I'm not too good at finishing them.  Somehow I always get stuck, not knowing how to get from point A (which is an awesome premise) to point B (which is a great ending).  Everything I can come up with for the middle is crap.

     But I digress.  What I was referring to is my inability to tell a good story about an event that I witnessed, participated in or heard about.  I can't even properly convey someone else's awesome story.

     I had hoped that this blog would be entertaining in some way, although all I really wanted was a place to get some of the crap out of my head, it was a hope that it would be enjoyable.  I will endeavor to make it more enjoyable in the future (note - expect failure at first).

     Maybe I'll start putting sections of fiction I have written on here.  Not tonight, obviously, as the title of this post should indicate my current state of mind, but soon.  Don't expect the fiction to be particularly amusing, as I'm not really funny, and tend toward dark melodrama in my writing, but I hope you'll be entertained at least.  Maybe it'll even push me toward completing a story.  Or maybe I'll create something new, and use this as a testing ground for my attempts to learn to write humor.

     I'd like to learn to write humor.  I even tried it a couple of times, but vampires, ghosties and corpses kept trying to fall out of the shadows.  My imagination is a creepy place.

     So, yes.  In the future expect creepy segments of short stories, and lame attempts at funny stories regarding my rather boring life.  We'll see how it goes.

Work Like You Don't Need the Money

     So I think I've mentioned before that I'm a geek.  As part of that, I play D&D with a group of close friends on a fairly regular basis.  The schedule is twice a month barring catastrophe that is all too common for us.  We're scheduled to play this Saturday, and I realized today that I have not prepared.

     Without going into all the geeky details, I'll say that a couple of weeks ago I agreed to type up my campaign notes before our next gaming session.  Needless to say, they are not yet completed and are on my screen even now calling out "Finish me, please!"

     I treat things like this as work.  The reason I am behind is that I have had so much work of late.  I've been working on some oil paintings that have to be finished and delivered no later than a week before Christmas.  I've been working on new ceramic projects at the ceramic center I belong to.  I've been working on creating some new jewelry for an upcoming sale next week, as well as some commissioned requests.  And in the evening when I've used up adequate daylight for painting and suchlike, I knit, working on some scarves that I'd like to have completed before the holiday.  I take breaks throughout the day, read some blogs and some webcomics, occasionally even writing a blog or two, I run errands and schedule in social time, I search for and apply for jobs, but on most days I work in some form or another from the time I get up until I go to bed.  And I don't have a "job".

     So I got a phone call from my friend Tracy earlier today while I was furiously typing away, and she mentioned that I'm a workaholic and posed the question, "how can someone without a job be a workaholic?"
I dunno.  I can't deny the accusation, reflecting on it she seems correct.  I work all the time.  And I don't have a "job". When faced with an absence of work, I create more work to do.  I take on extra projects, labeling things in my mind as work to do and then do my best to complete it.  I don't know how not to.  I like to feel productive, like I've accomplished something.  Perhaps the absence of a regular paycheck simply means that I must do even more work in order to feel that I've accomplished something.

     I think that's it, really.  Since I don't have a "job" with a regular work schedule, there is no set time for the work day to end.  So if I haven't scheduled in other activities, my natural state remains "at work."

Huh.  I learned something new today.

Christmas Blues

I really hate Christmas.  I enjoyed it as a child, but as an adult it is a time of year I truly dread.  People often ask me why; it seems strange to them that I should have such negative feelings about a holiday most people enjoy.  My dear friend, the Little Pecan, wrote a set of blogs recently that have clarified the foundation of my distaste.  You can read them here, here and here.  Interestingly enough, in them she explains why she celebrates and enjoys Christmas.  Though what she pointed out may be the foundation of my feelings about Christmas, there are also layers on top of that.

As stated, I enjoyed Christmas as a child.  It was fun, spending time with family, picking out presents for other people, receiving presents, eating too many special holiday goodies, getting time off from school.  It was great, all of the enjoyment, none of the responsibility.  Strangely enough, although my family claims to be Christian, the only nod to religion at Christmas was the nativity scene on the mantlepiece.

As I got older and started hearing more about the "keeping Christ in Christmas" thing and whatnot, I was like, sure, okay, Christmas is a time for celebrating family and friends.  That's Christian, isn't it?  Which probably shows that I was never particularly religious.  I'll explain a bit of my relationship with religion:

My family claimed to be Christian, but we never attended church regularly.  I was sent to a strict Christian school for my elementary years because they had a good academic curriculum and my mother wanted me to have a good education.  In school we had chapel service and everything, so I was more than exposed to religious beliefs.  Some people think that children believe wholeheartedly and without question, but I was not one of those children.  I was plagued with doubt at the inconsistencies of Christianity until I got older and realized that I had never truly believed in God. 

However, I respect that other people do.  Celebrating the birth of Christ is something that Christians like and that's cool.  But where is this celebration of Christ?  Hell, where is the celebration of friends and family?  What I see is more of a celebration of the shopping mall driven by the majority of people who claim to be shopping because of their love of Jesus?  What does rampant consumerism have to do with the birth of a baby in a barn a couple thousand years ago?  I don't get it.  However, not celebrating Christmas is treated as both un-Christian and un-American.

Religion aside, society still expects me to participate in the holiday season.  My loved ones, both religious and not, celebrate this time of year.  And I feel pressured to participate as well.  I normally don't cave to peer pressure, but in this case it overwhelms me from all sides.

I cave to the pressure, and go through the stress of frantic gift buying or gift making, frantic visits with everyone I can possibly make time to see, and generally never get a chance to actually relax and enjoy the holidays.  There is nothing fun about it for me.  I don't even really enjoy receiving gifts anymore, because they make me feel immense guilt that I am poor and cannot afford to purchase gifts for everyone.  I make gifts for people, and although I personally love handmade gifts, I am always worried that people will look at the things I make and give to them as "less than".  So it becomes a time of year that points out my lack of financial success as well.

But I do it year after year because I WANT to enjoy it.  I want to purchase gifts for my loved ones to show them how much I appreciate them.  I want to spend time with those loved ones, and celebrate the ending of one year and the beginning of another.  I really do, it's just Christmas never seems to work out that way.  I keep doing the same thing every year expecting a different result.  It exemplifies insanity that I cannot break or change.

And so I hate Christmas.

Yesterday -- I did nothing

     At least nothing productive.  And almost nothing at all.  I just bummed around online and read a lot of really bad fanfiction.

     At least, that's what it would have looked like to any observer, and indeed, how I would describe it if anyone asked.

     What I really did was process information.  From art education studies, I know that sometimes students will just stare into space or look like they're just goofing off when they are supposed to be working on a project.  And I know that this is part of the artistic process, sometimes a student gets stuck on a project and  just needs to let go of the problem consciously and let the rest of the brain sort out some things so he or she can get back to work and solve the problem.  However, for students this isn't an all day thing (if it is there may be something else going on - like truly goofing off).  Students generally only have one or two projects going on at once and so the down time is shorter.

    Right now, I have about 20 artistic problems to solve and I haven't been allowing myself any down time.  I guess I've thought that since I'm not a student anymore, I didn't need that time.  This was foolish of me.  Just because I'm not in a classroom doesn't mean that I'm suddenly not a student of art.  It doesn't mean that I don't go through the same processes of creation.  I've felt guilty about sitting and staring into space and not getting as much done as I feel I should have. 

   Until yesterday, that is.  Because I finally accepted that I have a backlog of information that my brain needs to sort out.  I'm not the kind of artist that just creates one thing.  I'm not a just a painter, a potter, a sculptor, or a jewelry maker.  I do a little bit of everything.  And right now I have commissions in every one of those areas and I work as a makeup artist.  My poor little gray cells couldn't keep up.

   So instead of taking just an hour or so to process, I needed all day due to the backlog.  And I let myself have the whole day.  It felt really great.  I slept well and soundly and woke up refreshed.  I think that today, finally, I can get a lot of work done again.  I'm excited about getting work done again. 

   Doing nothing yesterday means that I can do more today, without all the stops and pauses and getting angry and glaring at my materials.  This is good.  Maybe I need to let myself do nothing a little more often, maybe if I do this more often, it won't take a whole day to get sorted out.  I need to remember that what applies to an art student still applies to me, and try not to be so hard on myself.