Giving Winehouse a run for her money
I’ve wanted to write a meaningful post for the last few days, I really have. But you know that life thing? Well, it gets in the way sometimes. The last couple of weeks have been really hectic because I’ve been busy doing the following:
1. Settling into my last semester as a college student. I browsed the campus bookstore for things I feel obligated to buy before my college life is over (a college sweatshirt, a laptop with my student discount, a college mug) but still, I have yet to feel the pang I’m sure will come long after I’ve walked the stage in my graduation robes. And I don’t mean “pang” as in the good-job-you-did-it kind, I mean “pang” as in, Hey Chelsi! This is me, Life. Now that you’ve graduated college I’m here to welcome you to the real world by punching you in the face!
2. Working on the finishing touches for my Internship’s newest gallery exhibit, which opened yesterday and was a huge success. This involved traveling to all corners of the Bay Area with our Program Director, including places like Ikea (which he had never been to), Target, various houses to pick up art, weird printing presses and post office on top of post office. Also, my eyes are tired from creating outlines in Illustrator for dozens of icons that needed to be resized for a zine, and after having spent several hours cutting six inch pieces of thread from a gigantic spool because the artist wanted to use them to represent clusters of ten people in a community of like, eight hundred thousand, I kind of wanted to die. I know that that’s boring talk and what you’re really wondering is how my Program Director had never been to Ikea, but what I’M wondering is how our trip to Target was only his SECOND time there.
3. Trying to make enough money to pay for bills, tuition, and the three fillings I need for the cavities that are causing my molars to rot out of my head. Whoever decided that getting your teeth fixed should cost so much money is a stupid, stupid person, and I’d like to relay the punch in the face that I’m anticipating from life over to them. The same goes for whoever decided we should have only seven days in a week. I need more like ten. That way instead of using the precious few minutes a day I have to lounge around on things like looking for a better paying job, I could work on my spiral into alcoholism, which brings me to:
4. Partying like a rock star, but not in the glamorous sense. Yes I know the promoters, owners, bartenders and DJs at my club of choice (meaning that basically everything is free) but the fact that I didn’t come home for four days because I was spending as much time on that side of the Bay Bridge as possible in order to go to said club and hang out with friends without feeling the rising costs of gasoline, and DIDN’T BRUSH MY TEETH OR SHOWER for three of those four days, heavily outweighs the free-shit benefit of Celebrity and highlights the disgusting crack-head part.
And while I could seriously write pages and pages about any of these four areas of activity, all I can really think about right now is how one of the chicks in my Thursday night writing workshop is perfectly nice and sweet and well groomed except for the three blonde inch-and-a-half long hairs that I spotted growing from the left side of her chin today. Why would a lovely brunette woman allow such an abomination on her face? Better yet, how does a brunette woman even manage to grow blonde hairs at all? She’s a little obsessed with Japanese culture and at first I considered the possibility that she might be experimenting with some sort of Japanese-man-gene-adopting project, but then I remembered that long hairs growing from moles in the face is more of a Chinese thing, so now I don’t know what to think, and I know nothing except for the fact that looking at her makes me insanely uncomfortable and I’ve never felt so compelled to take a razor to someone else’s face before.
Never been more sure
I entered my college institution as a declared Interior Design major. Can you believe that shit? Now I understand that the satisfaction I get from decorating and splashing colors on walls goes only as far as my own personal space, and that no amount of money could make me enjoy, let alone love, having to adhere to other people’s tastes, but back then I just really wanted to be on Trading Spaces. After two and a half grueling years of General Ed I took Drafting 101, my first official ID class. Four months later, after having to study the the weight of pencil lead like my knowledge of it could determine whether or not I get to go to Heaven, and paying an arm and a leg for supplies like vellum (a.k.a. really expensive tracing paper), I quit.
I quit, I quit, I quit. And not even because of the fact that I didn’t like drafting or because I felt the cost of supplies was ridiculous; all of those things were actually expected. It was the attitude that I found in the classrooms and most unfortunately, even among the teachers themselves, that wasn’t. Being an ID major in San Francisco is exactly what I imagine being behind the scenes of Project Runway is like: a bitch fest. Everyone talks shit, most are only out to help themselves, nobody really cares whose toes they have to step on on the way, and girls wake up at six fucking AM just so they have enough time to shower before they do their hair and try on sixteen different outfits like class is some motherfucking Miss America pageant. The saddest part? It is. My own personal experience with interior design taught me that if you’re a guy and you’re not super flamboyantly gay in your v-neck t-shirts, cowboy boots and Chanel sunglasses, or if you’re a girl that’s not a total heinous bitch with amazing hair, perfectly manicured nails and a purse that cost you more than a month’s rent, nobody will look twice at you. It is very sad, especially for people like me who carry their belongings in twelve dollar zebra-striped duffle bags from H&M, or two dollar reusable shopping bags from Trader Joe’s, and wear Converse sneakers on almost a daily basis and have hair that fluffs up to nearly impossible heights at the slightest hint of humidity.
When I left that world behind I turned back to writing, something I’ve been doing since I was seven when I wrote my first (and thus far only) novella. It was about mermaids. I was and am still very happy with that choice. I believe that I was born to write, and it’s a skill that I will never tire of developing. Even now, when I read old posts from websites I used to have, I can see how much being an English major has improved my writing and I’m thrilled by it. However, halfway through my junior year of college I realized how much I missed visual creative works, so just before the semester ended I declared Art History as my secondary major. To my father this translated into: hey dad, I need a few [thousand] more dollars from you so I can add another non-lucrative degree to my collection. Needless to say he was not pleased, and it took a lot out of me to try and squeeze the necessary money out of my family just so I could do what I wanted to do in life.
With all of that in the past yet still weighing down on my shoulders the way parental expectations and choices you make that scare you always will, I began my last year of college hoping I’d find something I could do with my life before it was time to walk across the stage. Then, after what felt like a zillion applications to galleries and internships that I never heard back from (something that's been well documented on this website), I found that something. Or rather, that something found me.
Today I attended my first staff meeting at my internship, which is a highly prolific alternative art space in San Francisco, and acts like a watering hole for both new and established bay area artists of various disciplines. On top of having an awesome gallery, it's a place for playwrights, lit-freaks, music heads, actors, and people who like to shake their jelly on the dance floor like there’s no tomorrow.
I told my ID horror story to a few of the new interns today at the meeting, and to my great surprise one of them burst out laughing because she had the exact same experience at the exact same school with the exact same teachers. I can’t even begin to explain how it felt to bond with someone over something like that. The knowledge that for once in my life I’m not the lone ranger in my decision making process is something that I will treasure forever. When my future spouse calls me crazy for buying ridiculously expensive 5,000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets I’m going to say, WELL THERE WAS THIS GIRL AT MY INTERNSHIP BACK IN 2008 WHO LEFT INTERIOR DESIGN FOR ART AND WORDS TOO, SO I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS THIS WAY. When I get yelled at for shoving dishes with dried beans and egg yolk all over them in the dishwasher? ’08 INTERNSHIP. When I bring that box of twelve abandoned kittens home? You guessed it, INTERNSHIP STORY! Doesn’t matter what it is, having such a specific and life-changing similarity with someone totally justifies any decision I make from here on out.
If interning at my specific establishment has taught me anything in the whole two days I’ve been there, it’s that it’s the perfect place for me. I really needed to be a part of an organization that would allow me to work in all the fields of art that I’ve studied thus far. I didn’t realize it until now, but I’ve never been the kind of person to sacrifice something I love in order to pursue something else that I love just as much. I’m all about immersing myself in every aspect of my eclectic personality, and thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, I’m now a part of a place that’s meant for exactly that. I'm already dreading having to leave when I've only just begun. THAT'S love.
The gods must be crazy
You may have noticed the little link to Blog Catalog down in my ads section on the right sidebar. Blog Catalog is a directory in which bloggers can post discussions, rate other blogs, send messages, comment, etc. I joined the directory a few months ago because, sadly, for the last year or so there have only been one or two sites that have held my interest, and I was hoping to find more blogs to relate to. That, of course, in addition to wanting to expose all of the heavenly glowing light and splendor that is Girls are Strange dot com to the world and thereby increase my traffic to the site. So far it has worked nicely.
Sometimes I’ll run into a rough patch, like when some moderator deletes my thread on kegel exercises, or when a user will privately message me with something like, hi, I’ve added you as a friend so please rate my site and comment. But did that user bother to rate MY website and comment? Did that user even bother to LOOK at my website? No, they didn’t. They’re selfish and all they want to do is promote their own dot com without giving the same respect to the people they’re hoping to gain as fans. And I’m not down with that.
On the bright side, there are a few very honest and good-natured people, like Neil McCartney, who left me a comment this morning that goes something like this:
“I love it, you seem so real, yet so comical. Your writing style [is] so relaxed and informal. First time a blog has drawn me in like that- if I was you and someone asked if I had a website, I would have been proud to tell them about it -it shows an element that people would miss in an interview.”
What a sweet guy, ey? And his highly interesting site, www.neilmccartney.blogspot.com, is a photo log of his adventures as a photo journalist in South Africa, and I strongly recommend you visit it.
It’s comments like this that make me feel like the things I have to write are really worth something, which really means a lot to me, and if I knew Neil in real life I’d call him and I’d say, Thank you Neil for boosting my confidence, and something tells me you’re right about there being an element in me that I should work on exposing more because I GOT THE INTERNSHIP, SON!
I’m still floating around on a cloud of how-the-hell-did-this-happen-I-am-so-fucking-happy, but I’m hoping to come down soon and set up a permanent schedule with The Dream Job.
Sometimes life rocks, but don’t tell it I said so because then my Life Asks section would be kaput.