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A Short Nap in the Texas Springtime…

…in which I talk about my day off and what’s still plaguing my mind.

I took a “sick” day yesterday. To be honest, I’d call it a sanity day. I tried to make a four day weekend out of it, but Friday I came in in the morning to meet with a faculty who requested we talk about some problems she’s been having with her computer. As it turned out, she left her laptop at home anyway and I could have just taken the day off after all. No great loss, though, I like the faculty member, and I think just showing up to help her out made her feel good and we talked about what the problems could be anyway. I did take the rest of Friday off, however, and while I don’t remember exactly what I did, I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it. I’ve just been really stressed lately and I needed a break.

The weekend was good, but as always, far too short. Which leads me to my taking Monday off as well. It was a beautiful day and I just lazed around the house for the most part. I did a couple loads of laundry to make Heather happy, I read my book in my hanging chair out back, I bought a new game for my xbox and played the crap out of it. When Heather and Ansel came home, we went out and had Panera for dinner and then I got to eat some of Angela’s cake for desert. In brief, it was a day I really needed. I also did some thinking about how stressed I’ve been lately, and how much pressure life is putting on me and how good that one day felt.

Aside from the obvious statement of “I need more days like that” I thought that I need to find a way to remove some stressors in my life. And while I hate thinking about it, I always come back to school. I’ve got so much going on, that I just can’t seem to concentrate on school. For nearly two semesters now (from the week Ansel was born) I haven’t done anything at all in the way of schoolwork aside from my one trip down to Houston for FotoFest and that was something I should have done whether I was in school or not. The only time school factors into my current state of life is when I all of a sudden realize that I haven’t been doing any photo projects or research or anything, and that I really should be or I’m going to get further and further behind.

Am I really unhappy with my life as it is? Do I really need my MFA to change my current state? I realize I’m underpaid and that I could be making more money either at another job like this one, or in a teaching position that could be garnered with my MFA, but do I want or need that much change? I realize I ask this question a lot and its going to come up frequently in my blogging. Get used to it. When I was sitting in my chair, hanging from the tree in my back yard yesterday, a book in my lap and the wind gently twisting me around, I had to wonder why I was going to school?

I need to work. Its an unfortunate requirement of this modern life. Unless you are remarkably blessed, or were extremely pro-active at some point in your life (or are willing to live a very substandard existence), you must submit yourself to work. I know there are people out there who have jobs that aren’t “work,” and that they do what they love and get paid for it, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t that many jobs out there to sit under a tree and read a book.


Originally posted at K. Close III
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LiveJournal Archives

Finding My Voice…

…in which I talk about blogging, writing, and allowing myself to make misteaks.

So I’ve got a new website, which currently has nothing on it, and a new blog, upon which I haven’t fully decided what I’m going to write. Way back when, when I started my LiveJournal, I was a pretty avid blogger, but I can’t say that there was that much introspection on those early posts. Most just served to keep people up to date on what I was doing. While I see the value in that, I’m not sure that’s the kind of blog I really want to have. Internet fame shouldn’t mean anything to me, but I do have a deep seated need for recognition and if writing something on the internet to get people to see it serves that purpose, then so be it. My problem is that I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to write. I know what I don’t want to write however, and its a struggle to write around that.


I don’t want a blog that’s all ranting and bemoaning. I don’t want a blog that tries to draw pity or illicit any kind of consolation. I don’t want to fill my blog with memes, I’ll leave those to LiveJournal. I don’t want my blog to be just endless babble with no thought or entertainment value. This is not to say that every entry should make the reader take pause and think about their lives or anything, but I at least want to try to do some thinking on my own as I write these entries. I want to feel like I’m growing as a person as I type up these entries of self discovery.


Part of what keeps me from writing is that I’m afraid of bad writing. That’s a fair fear, but it takes bad writing to create good writing. The same is true of all art, and its something I have a hard time with. It’s one of the things that I struggle with regularly in my photography and why I’m afraid to draw. I don’t want to do anything badly, so I don’t do anything at all. We learn to do things by making mistakes and doing things wrong, but I’ve grown up to be such an anal retentive perfectionist, it goes against my core nature to allow myself to screw things up. To that end, the book “Bird By Bird” has been suggested to me and I plan to read it next (I’d be reading it now, but it was hiding in my studio and I’d forgotten about it completely). I need to break out of this armor of perfection and allow myself to screw up more. So prepare yourself for a barrage of badly thought out, poorly constructed blogging entries as I attempt to find my voice and in as much, find my self, again.


Just as a point of clarity, I will be using this blog as a place to really focus on myself and try to get some real thinking and writing done. My LiveJournal will be a comprehensive blog, containing not only crossposted entries from here, but also including the silly memes, quizzes, photos, and other random rants and whines that I don’t wish to share here.


Originally posted at K. Close III
You can comment at kclose3.com