Today, I am shipping off my first ever commissioned Fascinator. A college acquaintance requested an item from me, and I am super happy to say I'm proud of how it turned out. Hopefully this is the first of many.



hurray!

I am terrible at blogging.

I'm terrible at blogging. There. It's out. The big secret. I cannot self-promote if my life depends on it.

And I'm coming to a point where I realize that that's kind of important. I work primarily in the arts. I'm looking to promote an Etsy site. (Provided I ever actually begin regularly producing pieces for said Etsy site) I... aspire to be as well-known a burlesque dancer as Dita VonTeese.
(Again, this would be great, provided I was actually *dancing* burlesque)


I am a collection of half-finished projects, stalled at the gate by some unknown apathy. My dreams are immense, and yet I cannot find it in myself to GET OUT THERE AND DO.

I know that, inside me, somewhere, there *has* to be a well, a font of inspiration and beauty and energy and drive. There has to be. How else have I survived these nearly 24 years?


The irony is, if I make a to-do list for the day, I get everything accomplished. But at this point, I'm too lazy even to make those lists.



...On the bright side, I'm awaiting a shipment of very high-quality feathers, so I can kick myself into gear with the fascinators. If I'm not mistaken, I'll be getting them any day now. ^_^

One step forward...

Not quite two steps back.

I'm so horribly unmotivated.

...I suffer from a chronic lack of motivation, really. It's a terrible attitude to have where, if activities require any sort of effort, they aren't worth doing. Because they *are* worth doing. Plain and simple.

And yet something keeps me glued to one spot and unable to get up and do anything else. Some secret unhappiness, some hidden insecurity, concealed self-loathing holds me.


And that's that.

*headdesk*

Well... So much for accountability, right?

Maybe I just need the right amount of fits and starts before I get puttering along for real.

I've been thinking a lot about Etsy. I started a shop. At this point, I'm not going to even bother linking, as there's really nothing in it. You can either sit in suspense, or stalk me and find it yourself, if you really want to know. ^_^ I'll give you a hint, it's called The Raven's Nest, due to my perpetual obsession with feathers and shiny objects.

I have a "garden" out back of the house. Just two big rubbermaid tubs growing potatoes and green beans. The one bean plant that survived half-drowning and being eaten by neighborhood rabbits has beans already. I'm kind of proud of it for succeeding, after I had basically given up on everything. I need a more focused plan for gardening... and I need a house and an environment that I'm really invested in.

After four months of unemployment, I finally cashed in on a job. I work in a high-end men's salon downtown. I go to work in a penthouse every day. It's... interesting. Not where I thought I'd end up, and not among people I ever thought I'd be around, but it's teaching me a little. A little about good customer service, and a little about business. Which is a good thing, since I know almost nothing about business.

I often think of myself in terms of Thomas Edison. Edison was a brilliant inventor, but when it came to marketing himself and his inventions, he was a total failure. Electricity would never have taken off, if he hadn't let Henry Ford take care of his marketing. Now that's something to think about.

I feel like I have all sorts of ideas swimming around in me, all sorts of creative endeavors waiting to burst through the surface. And I've been holding myself back. I'm afraid to make that leap. Afraid of being rejected. So paralyzed, I can't even look at the bags of feathers I own.

Part of it is an utter lack of inspiration. The materials I currently have to work with are cheap, and so the end product becomes cheap. I've been saving via PayPal for awhile, to come up with an investment in some nice quality feathers, but the real issue is me just jumping in head first, and to hell with everything else.




...In completely unrelated news, if anyone knows a fairly quick way to cut the shank off a button (or multiple buttons), I'd be super grateful. I tried hacking at one with an X-acto, but I was probably more likely to take off a finger than ever get the shank off the button. I use buttons quite frequently in my designs, and the ones with larger shanks really become difficult to place.

So... I just haven't been posting lately.
I've been inordinately busy. My newest show opened last Saturday, and so if I wasn't in the theatre, I was shopping for props, or printing paperwork at the kinkos, or eating garbage fast food, or sleeping.

I am still without the coveted day-job, which puts me in a precarious place anymore. I have about a month's worth of money left, and if I don't get a job in the next three weeks or so, then I think I'll have to pack up and leave here for good.

I've had a good feeling about some of the interviews I've been on lately, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, I've had probably fifty first interviews, only one second interview (though I have another scheduled for this week) and obviously nothing further than that. I'm trying not to think about it too much, because I don't think I could deal with it if I did think about it.

There's nothing for me back in Michigan. Nothing. Here I have a social life, I have theatre, I have burlesque. I have people who want to take my picture. I have a feeling of significance. I have a garden that is just waiting for me to be able to take it outside and really let it grow.

And the best part of all of this is that since I've been doing all this theatre, I'm so rejuvinated. The days that I have free, I just want to do EVERYTHING. I want to knit, I want to read, I want to go out, I want to see things and do things. I'm not exhausted all the time anymore. I have a will to do, and I'm so frustrated that I can't go out and attack some job with this ferocity that I have inside me.

Just think. If they loved me at my last job, when I was an exhausted zombie all the time, whoever gets me next is going to be ecstatic. I just CAN'T WAIT to tackle something, to get something accomplished. To do something worthwhile. I just wish that someone, anyone could see that.




...On a separate note, I have some potatoes sprouting merrily in pots, waiting until I can get a big rubbermaid to transplant them into for the summer. One onion (it was the last one in a bag I bought, guilty.) some peas and some green beans are all started too. I'm experimenting. Testing my resolve. I want to see if I really have what it takes to actually tend to a garden by myself. I mean... I typically just ignore my plants and whatever happens, happens. But I'd like to take a more active role in raising them, as well as getting something that I think is tasty out of it. And nothing is quite as tasty as homegrown veggies.

Rough patch

I think, mostly, that this is just that time I come to every so often, where I can't help but look at my life and despair. Don't get me wrong, I've come a long way in a very short time. Since January, I've realized a lot of things I never would have dreamed possible for me, are in fact feasible. Once I got out of bed, dusted myself off, and looked around at what I could do with all this time I've been blessed with (due in no small part to my utter UNEMPLOYMENT...) I got straight to work making my life as awesome as possible. I went on two professional photoshoots, a dream of mine since High School, watching ANTM and being terribly jealous that I would never be model height.

I'm smack in the middle of rehearsals for my first-ever Equity production. I'm nabbing 12 weeks worth of work toward joining the union that I so desperately want to be a part of one day. And I'm making loads of friends/contacts/what-have-you in the process.

I've done a couple of burlesque shows... Which is something I would be doing anyways, but I really packed them in over the last two months, any time I had a free weekend. I really love being a part of the community.

And, last but not least, I went and reconnected with some folks who I had assumed wouldn't really want to reconnect with me... and to better results than I might have imagined!


And though reaffirming all this to myself here makes me feel a modicum of peace, the terror of my life still nags at the back of my brain. I have NO MONEY. and I have NO JOB. I've gone on three interviews over the course of the last ten days, and NO ONE HAS CALLED ME BACK.

I cannot express how useless, incompetent, and unwanted that makes me feel. I know, logically, that the economy is just in a terrible place, and that I'm lucky to even be getting interviews in the field I've been applying in, considering my experience is nil. But I feel like the Universe at large is just ignoring my plaintive cry. I'm HUNGRY. I buy groceries once a month, I've been cutting back on *what* I eat. I haven't had anything beyond basic staples for months.
I have *needs*. My printer died this month, which means I now have to go to Kinkos and shell out twenty bucks every few days, to print all the paperwork that I *have* to have for my show. My computer's getting older. I need to put gas in my car to even *get* to rehearsal.

And all of this just sounds like whining to me. I feel like I should buck up, tighten my belt, and soldier on, but the fact of the matter is, I get three hundred dollars a month from the state of Illinois, and my rent is twice that.

And I love this city. I don't want to pack up at the end of my show and move home. I don't want to say goodbye to Chicago at the dawn of June, when life is just filtering back into the world, when I can start going to the park again and sitting in the grass and reading. I don't want to go back home and live in the room in the back of my parents' house, and work in retail until I can scrape together enough cash to go somewhere else. This city is full of possibilities for me, and I'm not ready to have to leave them.


I just need the damn universe to throw me a bone.

Still alive

I've been flying rather under the radar lately. Not really intentionally, but I've been quite busy. The usual compliment of job interviews, coupled with some of my first professional photo shoots, a full-time rehearsal schedule, and just a little bit of MacGyver have monopolized my time lately.

Hopefully, the next several days will get me back to some sort of equilibrium, timewise, and I'll be able to fill you in a little more on what's been happening here.