Frustration

I know that I should always be happy when I have paying projects to work on. I know that I should look at them as padding for my portfolio and money towards a new car. But right now I have four projects in the works and I have to say it's just burning me out. I should just learn to say no or to be more accurate let them know that my services are available but there is a queue and I would be more then happy to create something amazing for you but it might not happen for a while. This never happens of course because I think I can take it all on and then find myself either sick or screaming into a pillow.

This isn't where the frustration comes in though, because at some point between the sickness and the screaming pillow moments I realize that although I might have taken on too many jobs the fact is that there are four people out there willing to pay me to create something for them. There are four people out there that looked at my stuff and said "I love it and I want something of my own from you." The frustration comes from the fact that it has been at least 3 or 4 months since I have worked on anything that is truly mine and mine alone.

It has been keeping me up at nights having ideas in black and white with red in the middle. Wanting to just sketch these things to get them out of my head. To plop myself down throw on Philadelphia Grand Jury and zone out into that little piece of heaven. But when I get home I find myself throwing little artist hissy fits knowing that I need to work on the paying stuff but also dreading it because it's not filling up that little part of me that art projects usually fill up.
So in an attempt to fill up that part of me I'm going to attempt to create a little challenge for myself. The idea is to work on one of my projects in conjunction with the others. To have a one month deadline starting on the 28th of this month because that's when I will be back home from the holidays and have access to my computer again. I'm going to give it till December 31st right before the New Year to finish it and post it up here and hopefully in the meantime post on my progress with it as well. My hope with this project is that it will make me stop feeling so down and out of it when it comes to art. Because I do get to that point when working on projects that aren't my own where I want to throw up my hands and say screw it I'm going to go watch TV instead and I slowly start to hate my art and myself. I really would like to not get to that point and get past it and I want this to be the way I do that.

It's a bit strange the way this all came about. In a way it was my idea and in a way it really wasn't. So many years ago someone from my Russian History class recommended I read a blog that was on live journal. They suggested I check it out after comments were made outside of class about a certain part in Russian history that I won't repeat here. They steered me to this blog and one story in particular to get my interest peaked. It was about, what can only be described as by far the most shady booty call ever. They said I would either laugh so hard I would cry or I throw up depending on my choice of humor. Although it was a bit sick I ended up laughing so hard I did cry. After that I wanted more but it turned out that not everything on there was shady and torrid but actually smart and insightful. It ended up being about this guy who dropped his nice paying job to write books and tour and possibly become homeless. I found myself obsessed with stalking this blog and reading it everyday just to hear him rant. In the beginning I did just want to hear shady hook up stories because it was a major guilty pleasure but the other stuff he wrote about, life and just being a part of it that hit a chord somewhere. Eventually I did stop reading it due to switching to a different college and just forgetting about it all together like only a true A.D.D. person can.

But last week when I was sick and laying in my bed reading stuff on my phone I thought about that blog again and was overwhelmed with curiosity to see if this guy was still around if he actually followed through with anything that he would rant about. Turns out he is and I spent the better part of the day falling in and out of sleep reading his blog. I couldn't believe how far he came from when I first started reading this to the present. There's a bit more sadness in the rants then I remember but he's still there and still ranting to people about living their life. So my thinking was if this guy could do all this and still be around still be ranting and raving then I should be able to turn out one simple art project in a month. My ambitions are low but I figure it's at least a step in the right direction.

Thus begins the experiment to see what I come up with. And if you are feeling overwhemed with curiosity about that blog I would recomend reading about Christopher Gutierrez and maybe getting a little something out of it.