this morning i had my third job interview in a week, not for jobs that i really want, but for good jobs, jobs that would support me and lead to a more stable career than my museum dream. two bank teller positions, one of which they won't be hiring after all but they will "keep my information on file" so i will be "pre-screened and ready to go" if a job does open up and i apply again.
the third is working in mortgage collections department of a bank, i have absolutely no experience and i really hope i don't get it, its lots of calling people who are late on their mortgage payment. scary. but i had to apply, my aunt works there in a different department (which is the only reason i got an interview i'm sure) and it pays well and... i don't know, i just managed to talk myself into thinking it would be something i could do. if on the off chance i do get the job i would have to commit to staying there for some time, i couldn't just up and leave if i get hired at a museum. and that scares me more that calling people who are late on their payments.
i don't know what to do, i don't know if i'm ready to give up on my dream job
there is a museum job i do have a chance at, its not the best, just a temporary museum aid job at a historic site i used to volunteer at, but it would be a good foot in the door/stepping stone for other, better, more permanent federal museum jobs, and i would so much rather do that that get hung up on and yelled at for being the big bad bank that is going to foreclose on someone's house because they got laid off and can't make their payments.
*sigh* but i have to grow up and get a real job, a job that may not be my ideal, i just hope i don't get this one, i just want my family to know i tried, that i AM trying...
now i have the rest of the day off, which is good, i really need to paint after that :/
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
projects
so i've been sketching in preparation for a painting of b and me, it will be one year for us next month, so i thought that would be a good present. he's been so encouraging during my recent artting surge that it seems most appropriate, and he'll love it. a couple of sketches turned out rather well, so i got some frames and hung them up in lieu of the painting until its finished.
(i should have scanned them but i didn't think of it til i already had them in the frames, my good camera broke and the old one is terrible, so its out of focus and the color is a little off, but you get the idea)
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The Extraordinary
12/19/09
Frustration. Wrapped in her little world, that’s all she came to think of. All the promises the world made to her and didn’t keep. She’d done everything, played by the rules and had little to show for it but a couple of useless degrees and growing debt.
In the quiet moments, Art called to her: music for the unusual voice given to her, writing for her ever active mind, fabric, textiles of all kinds, yarn, thread, anything was in her reach. Design and lace work, past and present, with a little thought she could see it, do it all. Think her way through the hat, as the saying went.
Yet she had done nothing with this, with any of it, lost in the daily bog of dead-end retail jobs she slowly forgot all that she could do, wanted to do. It would reappear again briefly in the form of an application for a slightly better shitty job. With each form rejection letter, with each bog day, she became more and more frustrated.
She wrote scraps of moments in spare seconds at the register, crocheted hats, sang to herself in the car and felt it all slipping. The promise of youth fading in the face of rent, groceries, oil changes, until it was all washed to bland and disfigured in the haze of frustration.
The Extraordinary beckoned from the periphery
Making her flesh pull and writhe at
The commonplace path she plodded
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
and it begins...
as all things in my life seem to, this begins out of frustration.
i, like many many other people, cannot get hired for a job that i want, or that i'm qualified for.
right now i have two jobs, both retail, one at a clothing store and the other at a craft store. the craft store is by far my favorite. i work in the custom frame shop of this particular craft store, and my inner decorator revels in it. today i had a customer who was looking to have a family portrait framed, it was a cute collage pic with kids and father, and the kids were both wearing red and the background was done in white and black. so i pull out a nice muted gray for the top mat, a bright red underneath that perfectly matched the kids' sweaters, and a back for the third mat. it really looked nice, just the right pop of color to accent the pic. but no, she hated it "there is no red in the room, its painted grey and grey-blue, lets try to match that". sounds like the most boring room i can imagine, so we spent the next half an hour looking at different shades of grey to go with this picture that would also "match" the room, cause you just have to match the room. gag. and then she still couldn't decide so her son is going to paint a swatch with the wall color to bring in so we can match it, i mean come on, its not Sherwin Williams, we only have so many mat colors to work with... this after i explained the concept of contrasting colors, and accent colors. sigh.
but that was put to right later by another, more spunky lady, who wanted to order the most colorful things she could, ended up with orange and purple for one and red and purple for another, those are the fun ones, the people who are willing to take a chance and have something that really becomes art on their walls :)
the other thing about the craft store, i have the most awful time not just buying everything. from soap making to knit and crochet, oil painting to glass etching. i want to do it all. i've knitted, tatted, and crocheted for years, there is just something about string, yarn things like that, it just makes sense to me. my grandmother taught me how to knit before i was in school, i picked up tatting while doing living history at a local historic site in high school, and i picked up crochet in college as a quicker alternative to both when one needed an emergency gift. i got to a point where i could sit down and watch a movie and have a scarf at the end of it. so needless to say all of my friends have scarves now and its time to move on. i really need to get back to knitting, you can do so much more with it.
i had some great ideas in grad school (where i studied museology, or museum studies), a whole clothing line designed and never made, i still want to learn bobbin lace, tapestry weaving, spinning, Victorian hair wreaths, and basically anything fiber i can get my hands on, but right now, my current distraction/obsession is oil painting. i have decided to learn. i have some little drawing background, a single class in fashion illustration in undergrad (where i studied fashion design some 8 years ago now...) but i have always wanted to paint, never thought i really could, but after having access to all the art supplies i could ever want i have decided to try. i have one painting almost complete, will post when its done.
my other pursuit is writing, much encouraged by my constant companion and sounding board- b, who is a writer in his own right. i have outlined a story, well a book really.
as i pass my days manning a register or matting and framing art, i am constantly shifting between painting: how to make a field of dead sunflowers in a slightly snowy, hilly great plains setting look interesting, and writing: how to move my characters from distrust and fear to love all without speaking... this is me, right now.
i, like many many other people, cannot get hired for a job that i want, or that i'm qualified for.
right now i have two jobs, both retail, one at a clothing store and the other at a craft store. the craft store is by far my favorite. i work in the custom frame shop of this particular craft store, and my inner decorator revels in it. today i had a customer who was looking to have a family portrait framed, it was a cute collage pic with kids and father, and the kids were both wearing red and the background was done in white and black. so i pull out a nice muted gray for the top mat, a bright red underneath that perfectly matched the kids' sweaters, and a back for the third mat. it really looked nice, just the right pop of color to accent the pic. but no, she hated it "there is no red in the room, its painted grey and grey-blue, lets try to match that". sounds like the most boring room i can imagine, so we spent the next half an hour looking at different shades of grey to go with this picture that would also "match" the room, cause you just have to match the room. gag. and then she still couldn't decide so her son is going to paint a swatch with the wall color to bring in so we can match it, i mean come on, its not Sherwin Williams, we only have so many mat colors to work with... this after i explained the concept of contrasting colors, and accent colors. sigh.
but that was put to right later by another, more spunky lady, who wanted to order the most colorful things she could, ended up with orange and purple for one and red and purple for another, those are the fun ones, the people who are willing to take a chance and have something that really becomes art on their walls :)
the other thing about the craft store, i have the most awful time not just buying everything. from soap making to knit and crochet, oil painting to glass etching. i want to do it all. i've knitted, tatted, and crocheted for years, there is just something about string, yarn things like that, it just makes sense to me. my grandmother taught me how to knit before i was in school, i picked up tatting while doing living history at a local historic site in high school, and i picked up crochet in college as a quicker alternative to both when one needed an emergency gift. i got to a point where i could sit down and watch a movie and have a scarf at the end of it. so needless to say all of my friends have scarves now and its time to move on. i really need to get back to knitting, you can do so much more with it.
i had some great ideas in grad school (where i studied museology, or museum studies), a whole clothing line designed and never made, i still want to learn bobbin lace, tapestry weaving, spinning, Victorian hair wreaths, and basically anything fiber i can get my hands on, but right now, my current distraction/obsession is oil painting. i have decided to learn. i have some little drawing background, a single class in fashion illustration in undergrad (where i studied fashion design some 8 years ago now...) but i have always wanted to paint, never thought i really could, but after having access to all the art supplies i could ever want i have decided to try. i have one painting almost complete, will post when its done.
my other pursuit is writing, much encouraged by my constant companion and sounding board- b, who is a writer in his own right. i have outlined a story, well a book really.
as i pass my days manning a register or matting and framing art, i am constantly shifting between painting: how to make a field of dead sunflowers in a slightly snowy, hilly great plains setting look interesting, and writing: how to move my characters from distrust and fear to love all without speaking... this is me, right now.
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