I’m going to be showing my rocking chairs illustrations at Atomic Cafe in Beverly, MA! Atomic is one of my favorite places and I am very excited! When I lived in Beverly I would go to Atomic at the very least once a week. Usually more. Like 2 or 3 times a week. No wonder I was broke when I graduated.
I’ll post more details when I know them.
I have something to admit. I am really hesitant about breaking the status quo that has been established as of late. the status quo being living with my parents and working in retail. and that hesitation, my dislike of change, is prohibiting me from making art, moving forward. why am I hesitating? nothing original. I am scared. terrified that once someone gives me a chance I’ll blow it and no one will give me a second thought. I’m scared that I’m not good enough to be a real artist. I can be an art student at a small liberal art school with a very supportive team of professors surrounded by friends and people in the same situation. that is easy. this is hard.
stores are not appropriate places to have personal conversations. a quick conversation is okay, but other than that, just don’t. please.
a customer today was talking on her phone while she was walking towards the fitting rooms, hoping to try on her selected apparel. she did not stop talking to politely ask me if she could try on said items. instead, with hardly a look in my direction, she pointed towards me and then towards the fitting rooms, ordering me to tend to her needs. there was already a room unlocked. I just pointed her towards the open door.
another customer was on her phone for the entire length of her visit to my little place of employment. she did not interact with any of the employees, she continued to talk while trying on things (I don’t know how this is done. I need to hands to get dressed. maybe she was hiding a third and that’s why she avoided human interaction), and even continued her conversation while returning one shirt and purchasing another (while talking to her phone companion about said returned shirt). even at the register she didn’t pause once in her conversation to address us employees. there were four of us just looking at her while she avoided eye contact. then she left, still on the phone. the whole experience lasted at least a half an hour. and I can tell you, based on the one side of the conversation that I did hear, it did not sound urgent.
both of these women left messes in the fitting rooms for me to clean up, but that is another point that I may or may not address at another time.
is it too much to ask, as a retail employee, to be treated like a human being? before I was one of these under-appreciated and hard-working individuals I would have said no. but now my opinion has changed. you may have noticed that I just wrote that retail employees are hard-working. don’t ever let anyone tell you anything different. we are on our feet all day. those of us who do not ring walk back and forth (always at a brisk pace) countless times throughout the day. some of us do things like set up shelving, put together visual displays, unpack shipment, etc. it can get pretty labor intensive. and for me at least, this is all done in work appropriate clothing.
so please, respect the employees when you shop.
the store where I work has been playing christmas music since november 1st. at first it was just one song every 5 or so non-christmas songs. but now that is over. for a whole week it has been the opposite, only instead of catching a break every 5 or so songs, I swear it is probably 10. and this is tough. to make it even worse, there is no variety. every day I hear “sleigh ride,” “let it snow,” “santa clause is coming to town,” “the man with the bag,” “rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,” “have yourself a merry little christmas,” white christmas,” “all I want for christmas is my two front teeth,” “so this is christmas,” and “santa baby” at least 5 times a day. and a number of those have different versions that play. sometimes one after another. and during my break if I choose to leave the store, which I usually do, there is christmas music playing on the loud speaker of the outdoor plaza. saturday night I felt like screaming because I thought my head was going to explode. but there were a lot of people walking by. I don’t think I can last another month. I will go crazy.
so my friend tim lewis is doing a not-so-dry-and boring retelling of the bible over on his blog and he asked me if I would like to contribute some illustrations. I said yes, so now you should go check out the first installment.
I got a job earlier this month. I’m working retail. It is interesting. One thing that is particularly interesting is how much more exhausting being on your feet for 5+ hours a day can be. I’ve been sleeping a lot more than I’m used to. I told my mom yesterday that I think I need more sleep working retail than I did being an art student. She told me that maybe I just have more opportunities to sleep than I did while in school. This makes sense.
At first I didn’t think the long hours on my feet would be a particularly new thing for me. After all, some of my studio classes required me to stand for long periods of time. But I’ve come to realize that I was able to sit down much more than I realized. Also, the tasks I was completely whilst standing - such as inking a plate and printing said plate in printmaking, or carving a block of limestone or alabaster - proved to distract my mind and body from the exhaustion that standing and walking around for long periods at a time seemed to be causing. Unfortunately, folding clothes and the like has not proved to be quite as stimulating. Also, I was spoiled my last semester, completing the majority of my thesis sitting down - albeit hunched over, resulting in different problems. But the most crucial discovery I have made is that I need to find better shoes.
On an unrelated note, the keyboard problems I mentioned have disappeared. It seems the problems arose because of my computer’s perception of the control key being engaged when it had not been. At the height of the problem my keyboard became utterly useless, as engaging the control key negates the ability to use the keyboard normally. However, I updated all my software - something I had been putting off as it required me to restart my computer - and everything seems to be behaving correctly. Except that the esc key still does not work, but that is very easy to work around.
Recently the keyboard of my macbook has been giving me great difficulty. Specifically, some of the keys have stopped working. The keys in question, chronologically as best as I can remember, are the “esc”, “p”, “;”, “:”, “/”, “?”, “-“, “_”, “" , “|”, and “return”.
All but “return” are refusing to work at all while “return” is still at the stage where it chooses when to work and malfunctions at its leisure. I’ve had to resort to copying and pasting whenever I’ve needed to use one of the keys in question. “esc”, or course, has simply fallen into extinction in terms of its usefulness. I wonder which keys will become defunct next?
Has anyone else been afflicted with similar frustrations? If so, how did you fix it? I haven’t found anything useful in my searches through the interwebs and I’m not really jumping at the chance to take my dilemma to the Apple Store as my warranty ran out.
This is a continuation of my first pattern. Here is an anecdote that I was thinking about while working on it.
I had a professor who never let us use a straight edge on any projects. Her reasoning was that the imperfections of our lines gave our work an element that was intrinsically human, that the imperfections were what made the work beautiful. I really like that idea.
That is not my way of saying that I think this pattern is beautiful. No, I only mention it because all of the patterns I am drawing are done by hand and are therefore greatly flawed. But I am okay with that.
