Cleaning up
It’s Spring cleaning time, yay?
I must be truthful: Since January 21, I’ve been absolutely, completely unmotivated to do anything except go to my Ceramics class and associated open studio time at college. I do not feel inspired by anything happening in the world right now and sadly, I know am not alone. Like so many of my artist buddies, I too have been as creatively unproductive as H, E, double toothpicks. I haven’t been completely useless, just mostly completely useless. If it weren’t for the clay and my daily sketchbook, I’d have nothing to show for myself at all this past winter. I’ve only managed little things to keep on going, and I am doing my best to snap out of it. But, it ain’t easy.
On Inauguration day, I committed to not spending or shopping at any large/mega/national/online/billionaire-owed entity. I am all-in on a no-buy year (or four). No Amazon, WowMart, Fast “food,” Restaurants, Travel, Books, TarJay, no nothing non-essential except when purchased from small, local, second-hand or personally-connected businesses run by family, friends, and long-term acquaintances, unless I am forced to source materials for teaching a workshop with no other option.. So far, this has been working out great. I am only paying bills, and buying real food that I cook or gas to get to work/school. Lucky for me, I have plenty of art materials on hand – I just don’t feel like using them right now.
Three weeks ago, I deleted my decade-old Twitter account. And the same day, I killed the Linked-In profile, too. Small but controllable acts of resistance against the consumptive greed and evil, mean-spirited and downright corrupt disinformation machine.
Earlier today, I deleted Facebook. This brought about an unexpected wave of elation, because I was never into it anyway. You see, that stupid Facebook account of mine was a fossil remnant of a directive from the old Interweave job (Thou shalt promote thy company daily through thine own personal social media channels and thou shalt like it, damn it!) I have outgrown and left behind that period of my life, thank you very much. Sorting out current real-life priorities seems to be working a little to combat the pervasive spell of creative ennui, Now, there’s just the Instagram, but that’s in my crosshairs, too.
Anyway, back to the Spring cleaning. In addition to deleting unneeded online distractions, I have begun to force myself to do one, just one, physically productive thing per day: Sweep. Scrub. Weed. Wash. Dump. Organize. Clean. Edit. Just. One. Thing. Strangely, this has proved to be quite difficult. Granted, I am currently working one near full-time, plus two part-time gigs while also attending the aforementioned college class for credit and diligently trying to conquer the amazingly inspiring and challenging syllabus. I thrive on hard work, but, except for my Ceramics class, my heart just isn’t in the rest of it. Most of the time spent earning the money to pay for my life seems so utterly futile. There is never enough to get on top of the bills no matter how hard you try because every time you get it sorted out, something gets more expensive. Unlike my college work, those 3 jobs are just not much fun. They mostly drain the life from me and I don’t feel like what I am doing is making any positive difference in the world. That’s bad news for an artist, my friends. Really bad news. Unlike my college work, the jobs very often feel like “marking” a choreography to me: I get in on time, I run through the dance, try to get the constantly changing steps right, check off the rehearsal boxes, fill out the forms and get the heck out of Dodge as soon as I possibly can with my hair on fire. Hate that. What’s worse? Can’t fix it. Yet.
But if you know anything about me, you know I won’t give up. There’s a way to work at my work, I know it. I am looking forward to some upcoming workshops during the summer and fall, plus a wonderful Fellowship in the city starting very soon. Best of all, I can practically taste the absolute end of daily Public school teaching forever. Hopefully I will enjoy a peaceful/restful summer and have a chance to refuel my creative spirit to do what really matters to me, instead of what I must do to pay for this life. I have some promising irons in the fire and I hope they will begin to glow in the near future.
One can only hope.
In the spirit of spring cleaning, keep an eye on my workshops and classes pages here –. I will be doing a massive revamping of my content shortly, so please stay tuned. Keep the faith, and may the kiln and metal gods grace you with their favors.