Above: some delightful little purple flowers I found on my way home recently! Spring is coming...
Merry meet, friends!
Wow... has it really been almost a month since I last posted? I mean, I know I'm continually amazed by how time flies, but... it's a little worrisome!
Part of the reason I've been too busy to write a blog post is a daily art challenge I'm participating in for this month of February. My local art store chain is putting on this challenge of drawing or practicing art every day, and I decided to participate to give myself a little kick in the butt. I've missed three days so far (yesterday being one of them) due to extreme busy-ness, but that means I've also achieved 18 days, so that's pretty good I suppose. Mostly I've been doing pencil sketches because that's what I have time for on work days, but I've done a little fox painting as well (which turned out so well that I'm getting a couple of prints made and I'm going to try to sell them online).
I'm pretty excited about the prints, actually. I posted the image in a Facebook group called something like "Homemade Buy and Sell in BC" just to gauge the interest of the audience there, and it got a lot of favourable comments and several people saying they would buy a print if it were available. Yay! So, I'm getting a sheet of 4 prints done. After a little research I found out that the aforementioned art store (which is putting on this daily challenge) also does printing, so I decided to try them out. The only downside of their printing service (so far anyway, haven't got the actual prints yet) is that it's slow. I placed my order on Thursday and they won't be done until next Friday, so more than a week. But if the quality is good, it'll be worth it, because the price was pretty reasonable as well, and the staff are very friendly and helpful. In my experience, sometimes print shops can be a little snobby, but I guess because this is part of an art store, they have a wider variety of amateur clients and are more used to dealing with many different kinds of people (rather than, say, a print shop that does mainly photography and graphic design stuff).
Anyway, so my hope is that if my initial test run goes well, I can start working on setting up an Etsy shop or some other kind of online store. I've looked at services like Society6 (where the artist simply uploads their art and the company takes care of everything else -- printing, shipping, payment, etc.), but I don't like that they take such a huge cut of the profit. I know that's how they stay in business, but I want to be able to have more control over my profit margin. Also this way I can see the print quality for myself and apply my own quality control to my prints before mailing them out. It's a lot more work, but at this point I haven't even sold a print yet so I can handle it right now. If I start selling hundreds of prints (one day!), maybe I'll have to have an assistant or something. Anyway! Right now, this is a good method for me.
So already the daily challenge has spurred me to create something that I might be able to turn a profit from! Hurray. And I've also done quite a few sketches that I'm pretty proud of and that have helped me gain new followers on my Facebook art page, so yay.
I'm still kind of working on narrowing down my subject matter... one day I'll draw a bird, the next a dragon, and the next a self-portrait. I'm a little worried that it's too much variety. I know that some of my Tumblr followers are only interested in my scientific illustration (detailed wildlife drawings) and not so much in the fantasy stuff, but I really like the fantasy stuff. I know of a few artists who have successfully combined the focuses of wildlife and fantasy -- Jennifer Miller for example -- so it's not impossible! Just need to keep creating and allow myself to naturally gravitate towards the subjects that most interest me, because that's the way I will be satisfied with my art.
So anyway, I guess the art front is moving along nicely -- better than it has in recent years anyway, so I have something to be pleased about there.
I've been struggling with one of the seven deadly sins, though, friends (and it's not gluttony, which is usually my vice, heh)... envy!
See, I have this friend. She's my art buddy, meaning that we do art together sometimes and talk about art and stuff like that. She is just learning, having started to do art about a year or so ago I think, after deciding that it's what she really wants to do (rather than the scientific subject she went to school for). I know her through the Fox, as she is the partner of his best friend.
Sounds fine, right? And it should be. Except... well, her partner supports her financially and she doesn't have a job at all, which means she can do art all the time. And that triggers my envy response!
So many things run through my head when I think about it. Things like, "I would never mooch off my partner like that," "how can she be ok with not contributing to expenses," "there's no reason she can't have a simple part-time job and still make progress on her art." Bitter, jealous responses.
There may be some validity to my responses, based on the bizarre things she's said, such as "I want to help out financially but art takes up all my time." (Um...? To me that translates as "I want to help out financially but not if it means doing something I don't want to do." Which just rubs me the wrong way, as you can imagine... I really don't have the luxury of art taking up all my time, seeing as how I have to pay rent! In fact, I would say that most artists don't have that luxury when they're just starting out. Even my university teachers, who were professional artists and illustrators, said that many, if not most, professional artists have to have some other reliable source of income like a day job or something, because art is just a hard way to make a living.)
In a way, it feels like our situations are strangely inverted. In both of our situations, one partner is unemployed and the other pays the bills, and one partner is an artist trying to establish some sort of artistic success... however, in my situation, I am both the bill-payer and the artist, which really limits my time for art. Also in my situation, the unemployed one is not unemployed by choice, but by medical issues and lack of ability. The Fox feels horrible about not being able to contribute to finances, and I know he would work any job if he was physically able. That's what we were doing before the vertigo started, anyhow -- we both worked and shared the expenses equally.
In her case, she is unemployed by choice, and I guess that it contrasts so weirdly with my own situation that it just really makes me feel baffled. Even if the Fox had some kind of amazing high-paying job, I would still have a job, even if only part-time, because I don't feel it would be fair to expect him to pay all the bills himself so that I can pursue my passion. I wouldn't be accepting of it if my partner did that -- the Fox can't work, but if he was unemployed by choice and expected me to support him while he cultivated his passion? I would not be ok with that at all. I'm all for following your passions and interests, but come on... think about your partner who has to do all of the work so that you can live your dream. It's just not the choice I would make, which apparently makes me edgy about it.
I should be happy for her that she is able to do this; that she is able and willing to pursue her passion without anything getting in the way. But instead all I can feel is envy for the amount of time she has to put into her art.
Really, this speaks badly about myself. Why is it so hard to just be happy for her? Because she has made choices that I don't necessarily agree with? Because she has made choices that I wish I could make? Choices that I claim to be disapproving of but secretly wish for myself? It's not like she's a bad person. She's my friend, and has done nothing to deserve the negativity I feel. Of course, I don't say this stuff to her, because I know it's petty and envious.
I did say something a little bit bitter the other day, though. I was having a horrible day full of hormones (thanks, female organs!) and emotions, and she texted me with a link to her new Patreon page (a site which allows artists and musicians and other creative types to collect financial contributions from willing patrons so that they can create their art and lessen the need for day jobs). In the description for her page she wrote something like "as an artist, I spend 5-9 hours per day doing art, which leaves little time for a typical 9-5 job"... and that just set me right off.
"As an artist?!" I yelled to myself in my head. "What does that mean? That artists have to spend that much time every day on art or they're not artists?!" And also, "Little time for a job!? That's your own choice! Try not having a choice!" And even, "You've only been doing art for less than two years! How dare you offer tutorials when you're a newbie yourself? I've been drawing my whole life! How is this fair!?"
It boils down to the fact that I just don't think it's fair. But we all know that life isn't fair... good people die too young of random diseases and accidents while awful people die of old age, etc. And it's not up to us. "Awful people" is subjective anyways, and while we may have our own opinions, it matters little what we think sometimes.
So, really... it's a me problem, friends, and I'm ashamed to admit that I can't seem to get past it.
I should just concentrate on my own situation and how I can best achieve my goals within that situation. I should just stop comparing myself to others. I should just be happy and supportive without being disapproving and envious. I should only use myself as competition -- i.e., can I do even better than my last piece of art next time?
Should, should, should -- I'm beginning to sound like a chorus!
How do I change my natural response of envy? I feel like it's turning me into a bitter, spiteful person, and I don't want to go down that road. In the end, all it does is turn my focus away from my own art and shines it onto all the self-defined "unfairness" that I can do nothing about. I should be focusing on the things I can do something about.
I want to be a better person and a better friend, without having to hide away my secret dark envy that eats away at me like acid. (Dramatic metaphor, but come on, I'm in the heat of the moment here! When else can I use dramatic metaphors?!)
I want to be so confident in my own art that I don't worry about anyone else's. I want to be able to support other artists without worrying that they're more successful than me or will surpass me in terms of technical ability. I want all that to not matter because my art should be the important thing here, and my reasons behind me doing art should be for the passion of it, not so I can be the wealthiest or the most well-known or whatever. I want to be secure in the knowledge that this is what I am meant to do, that it's a part of me as much as my own hands are.
Phew.
So what do you think of that, readers? That was pretty much a couple months' worth of pent-up confusion and envy and ire!
How do you deal with things like this? How, exactly does one better oneself and change one's feelings? I mean, I think just writing it all down did help -- now I have to keep this blog even more secret, though, because I sure don't want my innocent friend to read all this, ha. But how can I stop feeling this way in the future? I know there are going to be many more similar situations in life, and I wish to avoid becoming a horrible old spiteful hag. Any tips, friends? How do you banish the deadly sins?
I think it's time to move on to a new topic for now. That was exhausting, ha.
So anyway. On the pagan front... we've had some restructuring in our pagan group recently, which is good.
Basically, one of the leaders (there are three ladies who sort of started up the group and have been leading it) no longer has time or energy to attend the group because of changes in her personal life, so we had a meeting to figure out where to go from here, like whether to go on hiatus or close the group or restructure it or what. We also addressed some concerns that have been building up for a while in terms of the group's focus and effort vs. fulfillment.
We all agreed that the amount of effort being put in didn't really match the fulfillment level. For example, the public rituals that we had been putting on for the Unitarian community at large. They seemed to require so much planning and practicing that by the time we actually did the ritual it almost didn't feel worth it.
Also, we often didn't have a focus for our meetings -- we would just sit around and talk about whatever came to mind, which can be fun and lead to some good conversations, but can also lead to the less experienced members (hi) being a bit left out, because they don't know what to add, if anything.
I suggested that to remedy this, we could have a focus or topic for each meeting that we decide upon at the previous meeting. That way, the newbies can go off and research the topic so that we have something to add to the conversation at the next meeting. I also suggested having different activities; like one meeting we could do a drum circle, one meeting we could make some ritual tools like wands or other objects for the altar, and so on. They seemed to like these suggestions, and now we've adopted the idea of having a topic for each meeting. So the next meeting is going to focus on Ostara (the spring equinox), the pagan equivalent of Easter. (Note the similarity of the words Ostara and Easter... they share the same root, which itself comes from a word for "dawn" or something similar. Ostara is also the name of a goddess. And eggs and hares, which are still symbols for Easter, come from ancient associations of these things with fertility, which is what the festival originally celebrated. So really, pagans did it first. Wink!)
We're each going to contribute something to the meeting, whether it's a bit of a poem, some kind of chant/song, a myth or story, or a bit of art. That way we'll all feel more engaged and included and hopefully we'll get more connection out of it.
So that's a good thing. I had been going to the pagan groups even when it was just ritual-planning, but those meetings weren't very exciting or fulfilling to me. Now I feel like that's been addressed and I'll be able to go deeper into the nature of it all.
In Fox news (ha), he's still not really improving in terms of the vertigo, but he's been working hard on trying to find work in the programming/video game industry. (When I said he couldn't work, I was referring to physical jobs. He is probably capable of non-physical work -- which usually tends to be skilled work that is hard to get without experience.) His old high school friend works in San Francisco in the industry and is really helping him with networking and advice. So we have hopes that something might happen there. Also, he's landed a bit of freelance work building a website for a friend of a friend, so that's good. I just hope it's something he can do. He says he can figure it out, but he's not really a web programmer. Oh well, I guess no harm will come of trying, anyway, and I think he will probably be able to figure it out and make some money in the process.
As far as my job goes, it's mostly the same as it was last time I posted. I have suspicions that they might make me a manager, but I really don't know. The past week my boss has been back in the store working alongside me instead of doing her behind-the-scenes stuff as has been the trend recently, so that's a bit weird. I haven't really asked what's going on there, but I'm assuming that her boss has been too busy to give her more training in the store-wide stuff.
Anyway, this is the first job I've had at which I would actually consider accepting a promotion to manager. At one of my previous jobs I ended up in a sort of administrative role, but it was so badly organized and there was such a lack of training for it that I felt immediately overwhelmed and ended up quitting in favour of going back to minimum wage coffee shop jobs. (You can tell how bad it must have been if making minimum wage at an entry-level retail job was a better option than trying to work there for a much better wage.) But at my current job, it's much more organized and I feel like if they did offer me a promotion, it would come with the appropriate training.
I also feel generally more confident about my skills these days. I think my current boss is really good at being a manager. She teaches me how to do things and doesn't get mad when I make mistakes, but patiently goes through it again. And she's always singing my praises, haha. I guess that helps!
And also, I feel like the skills I acquire here might actually serve me in the future. I still plan to go into medical science as my day job (yes, even if I become a successful artist, I want to have the option of having an unrelated job that is not in retail, even if it's part time, because like I said, art is a hard field to make a living in and I don't want to have to stress about it for my whole life). If the medical science thing works out for me, maybe one day I might even run a lab or something. There's no reason I can't be an artist and have an interesting unrelated job. I'm tired of the whole "artists working in retail" thing. If a day job is necessary, which is very often is, why not try to improve the day job too? There's no reason you have to work in retail forever to support yourself. I feel like society sort of expects us to devote everything to art, and looks down on us if we try and get jobs that are better than being a barista. As if someone can't really be an artist if they're also pursuing a "day career". Well, I'm going to try and disprove that. Wish me luck...
(I like the phrase "day career"... it explains what I'm trying to do. "Day job" implies something that you do because you have to, and something that you do solely to support your real passion. "Day career" to me feels like you can actually care about your "other" job while also keeping up with your passion.)
Anyway. I think I'd better stop typing; I'm out of tea and I'm starving!
Sorry for all the ranting, friends. I hope you will see my side of things and not judge me too harshly. I'm sure everyone has felt envy at some point in their lives. I do really want to overcome this personal struggle and emerge a better person. Feel free to leave me tips in that regard...
I feel better for even having written this, so that's a good sign!
I can sense the very first stirrings of spring outside these days, and it's very exciting. I'm looking forward to a day without rain and hearing the birds sing again! I never thought spring was a particularly great season, but I'm beginning to change my mind since getting into the paganism thing. Look at all the new life and possibility that is popping up around us.
Until next time, hail and farewell!
