- had a bowl of cereal and cup of white tea with soy milk for breakfast
- had a banana for Second Breakfast
- scarfed down a bean and rice burrito and a bag of Fritos for lunch
- have had a lot of coffee
- just want to go home and knit
I have a huge line-up of Things To Knit in my head, tangled up with What The Hell Am I Doing With My Life and concerns about the infinite quality of my dirty laundry pile. (That thing will never be cleared away, I know it.)
What the hell am I doing with my life? I'm still interested in architecture. Unfortunately, going to school while working full time doesn't work for me. Neither does office work. If I could be an architect without ever entering a cubicle or cow-towing to a boss, I'd do it in a heartbeat, provided I could finish up my degree as a full-time student.
What are the odds of this? Take a look around. See many architects like that? I mean, plenty of people have had their educations paid for in full by someone or something, either reaping the cost of it afterwards in exorbitant loan payments, or (for the lucky few) not all because Daddy paid for it. (Does that sound bitter? It is.) But the cubicle. The boss. You would think that in architecture - a field traditionally aligned with Fine Arts since the Renaissance - individualism, creativity, and independence would prevail. It's design; it's art. And everybody knows what artists are like.
Well, I wish that was how it really is, or ever really was. I feel like Sherlock Holmes - not in the brilliant, acute sense, but in that I am attempting to invent a career to suit my skills and interests - yet I have neither the funding nor the concrete direction that good ol' Sherlock had. If he wasn't fiction, I'd be pissed.
What are my current goals?
I'm going to finish the Fugly socks (I am already past the heel on the second sock) , then knit the front of my FLAK sweater. Early in March I will begin a pair of socks for my mom and try to weasel back into a fine woodworking workshop. After that, things get hazy. There are a lot of projects to choose from, but I know I am going to try to take more woodworking courses. Fine furnituremakers are closer to artists than architects, at least in the areas that I think count.
Yesterday, I:
- blocked Fulgy Sock #1
- had a coffee and a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast
- ate two bean and rice burritos for lunch
- chopped my hair
- had a tuna fish sandwich, an artichoke, and sauteed mushrooms for dinner
- drank a vodka-soy milk
- watched Four Brothers
Edit: And wouldn't you know it, the moment I posted this, a piece of spam slipped through the word verification. Sorry, folks, but I'm switching to moderated comments.
3 comments:
I understand a bit of what your going through. This searching thing can be exhausting and frustrating. I have spent a lot of time not being happy because I have wanted to be somewhere else doing who knows what else, only whatever it is its creative, artsy, not in Boston, and I'm happy. I think we just have to take a deep breath, take one step at a time, and enjoy ourselves. Ya know like knitting and woodworking.
Mara
You sound like a Boston Architectural Center student struggling to balance work-life-school. I too attended the BAC and ended up in the same dilema but also throwing in a marriage and a child. Don't give up as I did. I did get my licence the hard way but regret never being able to finish school.
I'm happy, and it happened in the weirdest way. I got sick with a devastating illness, got clinical depression, became unemployable for a couple of years, and was definitely not on speaking terms with God. Then my mind slipped sideways and realized that maybe I was swimming upstream just a bit too hard and should see where I was being taken by the flow instead. That's is. Not very profound. And now, for a commercial. SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM!
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