I have been working. Well, not entirely true, but I've now worked one day as a teacher. Don't know how much I want or should say about that, except that I really, really enjoy it.
Also, finished some stuff. Started some stuff.
The remaining thoughts are somewhat connected, but only peripherally. In the last few days I've given a lot of thought to creative work and actively pursuing a passion that won't necessarily pay off for a long, long, looong time yet. Having gone to school for four year seems like such an incredibly long time, and I was getting increasingly more impatient as the end was drawing near. It was like this endless waiting-game where I couldn't enjoy most of my classes anymore; everything was a preparation for something else, and why do the preparation when you can simply go ahead and give it a go? That seems silly even now as I write about it, but it's somewhat been confirmed in the last few days since it became clear that I will have a part-time gig that allows me evenings and weekends "off" for working on art.
This might be a realization that I'm quite late for and others have already gotten, but it is tremendously strange not to be in school. All along we fear and anticipate what it's going to be like (all these "Life as an Artist"-lectures and classes about post-art school life... I never took any of them. Seems stupid now, though.), but we're never actually prepared for the reality of it until tried and tested. There was no way for me to seriously begin projects at home during vacations and breaks because I knew they would be temporary, and I knew I'd be going back to school. Now I don't. I mean, I have nothing now. It's not a bad thing. It's a really good thing. But it's also mind-numbingly strange to be a Regular Citizen after having gone to school CONTINUOUSLY since the age of 5. Most of my life I haven't done this! No wonder I'm so weird and semi-bad at it!
Well, I don't know the exact purpose of what I just outlined. Maybe the moral is something like this:
It is weird and scary and a little bit bad and very liberating not to be in school and to actually Work For Money Whilst Making Art During Free Time (Trying Not To Check Blogs) + Eat Well And Work Out Regularly (though I'm only on Day One). And I'm so unused to it, because School Life is by now the norm, while Regular Adult Life is the strange fiction that I'm sort of skipping through while thinking about where to apply for grad school.
I guess I'm late to the party. Work for me is not a luxury, and I feel incredibly privileged to even have a job and to live in a country like Norway that actually supports artist. At the same time, though, school is the norm. Being in school.
I don't know where to end this. Just ranty rant.