So while this blog is called Work in Progress and I do try to write about that concept, and the art process, I don’t often reveal my own nitty gritty feelings(!). As a super special treat I present to you some of my true life work in progress thoughts/excerpts from other more private journal entries. I deliberately messed up the time frame in these because I am that paranoid, but the overall theme of anxiety and self-loathing remains classic and timeless.
A Sampling:
Am I internalizing my oppression by feeling obligated to stick with a post-modern/conceptual art minimalism? I am so confused!!! I’m serious. I am totally confused.
I am currently terrified of my studio. It’s very hard for me to want to do work. I keep blaming this on the fact that I don’t have embroidery software. Although I could suck it up and plot it out on graph paper or even figure something clever out in Illustrator.
Snnrrg. In my anxiety I have eaten far too many cadbury mini eggs. Now I have a stomachache that reminds me of my childhood. My anxiety stems from my creative projects…
The past week was spent hunched over my work table mostly on the computer finalizing digital images, on the interwebs trolling for quotes for the stuff I need made. Will this ever be over with? Its so boring to contact a million people over prices.
So I just got kicked in my art ballz again. I am trying to just allow myself wallow and feel all depleted and imagine how terrible my committee would feel if I suddenly got brain cancer and all.
The problem is that this project requires lots of computer time. And I am realizing the computer fucks me up. Mainly because of the dreaded internet. Oh my god its downright embarrassing how much time has been squandered reading tales of the service industry. In a way its like a drug addiction. I am evasive, moody, and lying about how much I spend online.
In the meantime I am learning a lot more about coffee…
In many ways approval does not really help me. But I hate feeling like a huge failure too. If I have a really shitty crit it can wreak havoc on my productivity for weeks. At this point I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself and just be a general pain in the ass artiste. Hopefully tomorrow I will be back in the swing of things. But tonight Izzie Stevens of Grey’s Anatomy is my pity party muse. Sadly I do not have her unexpected 8 million dollar inheritance check to keep me company. But I am very good and flopping about, eating a lot of butter and staring sadly into space.
This is not good and now I am behind and feeling INSANE.
I ran into a snag in my project that freaked me out enough to immediately strap on a sports bra, lace up some sneakers and go for a really inadvised run. I have not seriously worked out since August, and I have not gone on a run in the outdoors since high school…
…horrific anxiety leading one to eat spoonfuls of sour cream out of the carton.
Thank the good lord above Ugly Betty is not a re-run or clip show tonight.
Its fantastic out and I feel like a totally new person. Hell I even feel better about my artwork.
ARRRRG this week has NOT been awesome.
I can tell that they used the wrong weight. They are using LIGHT ALTERNATIVE when I told them to use ALTERNATIVE. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Seriously I am flipping out. I actually am wondering if I should let myself cry over this.
I feel like this whole process has been nothing but lesson in murphey’s law…I just feel like everyday I wake up and there is something wrong I have to fix or cannot be fixed and I have to let it go.
I feel burned out, exhausted out of ideas and depressed. And addicted to the internets.
I am cranky. I should be doing work. But instead I am lounging about depressed, uninspired, reading Daniel Clowes comics.
My projects are all in a dismal state of “in progress” which can also mean “you suck slacker”. I must pull myself together and finish something.
The good news is, I am enjoying the direction my artwork is going.
I thought I would have the time to think and really work on projects. But instead I feel so crazy busy and unthinking.
I am in my studio. I hate coming into my studio after a long absence. It fills me with total dread and hopelessness.
Week of hell. Eating comfort foods. Can of peas, quarter stick of butter lots of salt. But now I want chocolate. Broke into the Nestle tollhouse chips. Tempted to make cookie dough just for depressing and decadant consumption at 1am. Must resist and take shower and sleep. But raw cookie dough! waah!
I typically don’t really enjoy learning for learning’s sake. Which doesn’t mean I don’t like to learn. I in fact, love it. But I like to have a reason to do so. Which is why I never paid attention during math class. My instincts were right. I did not need that crap at 16. However I find myself interested in taking a few math classes these days because the skills would be valuable for me right now. To those High School math teachers with your gloating “I told you so’s” No you didn’t. I doubt that I would have retained anything during the last ten years or so. There is a time and place for everything and the time for three-dimensional geometry is actually closer to now than it was when I was in school. Unless I needed to calculate the angles between a boy and me, there was no need for me know this stuff. I think I would be able to learn math now more than ever. I have the desire and the actual need.
My artwork often drives my learning process. I have learned quite a few things simply because I needed to know how to do it. Machine shop skills, basic electronics, and sewing would be such examples. And now I find I really, really must learn to knit. Because of this:
Seriously adorable. The little blue button eyes for the owls are calling out to me. Back in college I did try joining a knitting group and learned to knit one, pearl one but had no real project goals so my learning never progressed beyond a very long, likely unfinished, acrylic (yech) scarf. But now I really must have this sweater. The sweet part is that the designer has the pattern up for free online here. I am also uh, “between jobs” So ostensibly I can devote time to learning to knit the damn thing. Despite my usual DIY approach to learning, I think I need to be mentored through this sweater because I really have no idea what I am doing. I need knitting friends.
OK, I just was about to go to bed but unfortunately ran into a project on the interwebs and felt compelled to blog. But after that to bed for real. I am very tired.
SO! Drop everything and go HERE
I love it because it basically just shows how in actuality, we are very boring. One of fashion’s myths that drives me crazy is the idea that you can wear different clothes and set yourself apart. But unless you have gobs of cash and are Bjork, you are not setting yourself apart at all!
When I was young and full of myself (i.e. in high school) I had convinced myself that I was so unique because I wore “crazy” outfits and had “weird” make-up. Then I went to a hippie college and I, and likely most of my entering class, had a mild identity crisis, whereby we realized that we weren’t particularly special. Oh well.
Fashion, daily dress for the most part is just a nice shorthand way to quickly figure out what bands a person is into without having to go through the trouble of actually talking to them. It’s very convenient. However, it would be nice to get on with the future already and invent those matching spandex outfits so we can all stop worrying about this nonsense.
