First post

This blog has been a long time in the works. So long that I have started other blogs and forgotten their passwords. Will this one be different? I do hope so. I do enjoy the beginnings of things, we will have to see if this one sticks.

I like to start projects, in fact, I have probably 20 knitting projects in bags in my studio. There are folders full of word documents containing briefs for art projects, magazines, book ideas, several screenplays, etc. Some of these projects I have started, most of which I will never look at again. I have completed a few, I am not a lost cause. This blog is a place to flush out ideas, a space for me to reroute my current working patterns, and attempt to be more productive.

I recently read a blog post wherein the author laments her inability to respond to emails quick enough to not fret about what is written. She explains that if you write back immediately people will not expect a great email, but will be grateful for your expediency, but. . . if you wait too long, the stress of crafting the perfect email is overwhelming. There is so much expectation for greatness. This is how I feel about the emails that get left in my draft folder; this is how I feel about blogging: incapacitated.

There is always an expectation for greatness if you grew up in the era of self-esteem. Now I am thirty and well, not so great. But I am optimistic, and according to the woman I sometimes work for, once I choose a path to follow I will find that I am much further along than I previously could have imagined. It is the deciding on the path that gets me. I have commitment issues. Well, not those type of commitment issues, I am getting married in June and feel perfectly fine in that department, thank you very much. It is that commitment of career, of defining myself by something. It used to be easy. I could say I was a photographer and people would just nod their heads, but now. . . Not so easy. I think of myself as an artist who makes art that intersects with photography. But I am also someone who takes pictures, just as a matter of being myself. I thought I would be teaching, but it is not the easiest field to break into when I have absolutely no connections in that field. And I don't know if I want to pursue work in commercial photography, because that would take away from my ability to make art. (Currently I am working in that field, but in a weird subset position, freelance assisting a stylist.) BUT indecision is taking away my ability to make art. So does it really matter what I focus on? I am way way too old to be caught up in these decisions. I definitely thought I'd have a career by now, but then again, I didn't plan on spending three and a half years in grad school. My friend Heather asked me if I could not make art, and I said no, I would always have to make art, or I wouldn't be me.

Last December I graduated from an MFA program and am creeping out of my hibernation. Thesis just took it all out of me. The adjustment from working in a building surrounded by people who were readily available to talk about anything, to having a studio in my apartment is an extreme shock to my creative system. I am slowly working my way towards production mode, but mostly am still in the absorbing stages of research. . . hoping to digest it all and remember how to create again. This blog is going to be the place to work through the process of re-identifying as myself again.

First task. . . clean my studio.