If life post-graduation can be anything similar to another state of mind, it’s being in love. The burst of anger at yourself and your own silly notions; the sudden plunging down into doubt and extreme self-consciousness and -criticism; the dizzying heights of inspiration where you think you’ve made the right choice in either ignoring your beloved (because they OBVIOUSLY can’t be interested) or committing one hundred per cent to the cause of Being The Person You Think They Will Fall In Love With. It’s an emotional roller coaster, or at least it is for me once I’ve decided that I Will Make Art And Make It Well. Not only do I have a thousand little voices in my head telling me it’s all been made before, you will be poor forever (this particular one is also echoed in my surroundings, from concerned members of the extended family and childhood friends), who will want to marry you… Well, not that one, actually.
Beading in progress and cont.
But it is true that the hardest thing—and excuse my cheesiness and being super late to the Self-Improvement Party and Accepting Yourself Maybelline L’Oreal—is to tell myself every single day that this is good enough although it isn’t measured in such regular terms such as resumes or seniority in a firm. There are those voices, naturally, that want me to become a doctor lawyer engineer, and the scariest thing about those ones is that they are so good, well at least being a doctor because you’re helping people, being unselfish &c &c.
Then there are the voices that are even more alluring and disquieting; those are remarkably similar to the Art-voices named Confidence and Courage, but they are not them, because they tell me that I should instead take up something equally impractical but radically different like becoming a conservationist or perhaps theologist, because you are interested in these topics, but you’ll have a fresh start and do you even like Art?
My favorite of the Voices of Discouragement is the voice I often employ myself when I meet someone I don’t particularly want to impress. It usually takes three forms, and I
have a special smile for each of them.
Art things.
Form number one is the option to go into the Army. Now, you might say, isn’t that quite normal for a strapping young Norwegian lass like yerself? Why yes, it is, but I want to go into the Danish division that patrols Greenland on dog sleds. I know it’s impossible. This voice appeals to the Man in me and is just as impractical as Art, though more impressive.
Form number two is sort of a half-option, because it’s always there (whereas the Army is not, there’s an age limit), and it consists in—can you guess what it is!—donning a large robe and a heavy wooden cross and lying sprawled on the floor when initiated! Becoming a nun seems very appealing almost all of the time. Maybe I’m just waiting to get older.
Form number three is the funniest, scariest and most likely, and it is basically me going on social welfare. Writing that out somehow wasn’t as comforting as I thought it’d be…
A desk of sorts.
In either case, I’ve begun making something, I have a desk where I work, and a precariously constructed schedule for the day until I hopefully begin part-time work as a replacement art teacher at the local middle school or as a privatized slave at the airport.
Updates to follow, alternatively funny selfies of me if no progress reported.