it's back to hair ties and book reports

As the days go by all of this comes closer to a screeching halt. College is almost over which means.......I've been in school for 17 years. SEVENTEEN years. 28-11 years. HOly MOLEY. The best part is yeah, I still can't tell you who the first 10 presidents are. If only I could go back in time and actually take notes during 2nd period of 3rd grade. damn right I'd whip out excel and grid that shit. So do we now spend the remaining, say 65 years re-learning that stuff? I need the "What You Didn't Pay Attention to for the last 19 years Book for Dummies"..............book.

O well, I already have my summer reading lined up. And I plan that out every winter but never actually get to it by the end of summer. Maybe things will be different after I graduate. I can just picture it now. Snuggled up on the couch with an afghan watching re-runs of Rosanne after work........eecch.

Then again, I can't wait to actually get everything done on my own schedule for once. Working at home!!!! HELL YEAH! That means I can actually start cooking my own food again while having the TV on, WHILE PAINTING ALL AT THE SAME TIME. No more Kresge cockroaches, no more annoying studio spaces. No more kids that think it's cool to draw on peoples shit. No more ballerina stealer's. No more fucking Georgia O'Keeffe knock off of flower studies that don't even look like real flowers. Okay, I'm being mean. But there's a flower painter in every class, and that shit needs to stop.

This week started off very chaotic, and by this week, I mean yesterday because today is only Tuesday. But you know what I mean. Lists save my life, and I just learned that moisturizer saves you from wrinkles.

Beeb is going to shit a hairball when we move into our own place next year. I'll be able to get a couch from Ikea, and one of those bad ass coffee tables. I never thought it would come to this, but I'm ready to decorate my own place. Is there a way to arrange some type of "party" for that?

I want a few crap jobs that I know I'll only have for one year. Why? Because it'll only help me move on to bigger and better things. I don't mind offering my time to galleries in order to build my resume for a year, I don't care if I live off pennies until I get into grad school, why, because next year will be "my time year". And everything that I have during that year will be because of my own decisions and actions.

Yeah it would be much easier to move home and live out of the fridge everyday for free. BUT WHAT THE FUCK? You've got to make that decision in your life when you say to yourself, "wait........do I really want another year of my life to be like this?"

You bite the bullet, you live on pennies, and you start making your future day by day. Living at home is grand and all, but comfort provides cushions to fall back. No moral support, no one around you to say, "HEY, shouldn't you be painting." instead it's, "did you set the table yet?". I say "nnnnnnn" to all that, there's no way one would survive the initial stages of moving to NY right after living at home for a year. It's called instant depression. Why, because you'll be living without all the things you've had for an entire year. Why not get ahead of the game and learn how to take care of yourself by yourself.

Of course there's balance to all of this. Weekly visits home and what not, but fuck dude, no one's going to make your life worth living for you until you place your own two feet firmly on it.

And if money is an issue, then fuck it. You get the necessary jobs you need in order to pay rent, utilities, (tv and internet) and you buy bulk pasta at Kroger for months on end. It honestly works......grilled cheese is also a way to go. Ignore saving up for grad school, it's called a "fellowship". And that's called "working your ass off for a year in which all the sacrifices you've made over that year are payed off tenfold in the end." It's also called putting at least a third or half of your paycheck in your savings account in order to save enough money to move the hell out of Michigan.

most importantly, it's called "steps". No step is ever too small, as long as it's a step forward. But most importantly it's called praying and having faith that Allah knows how to protect you even if everything in your life seems to be in a downward spiral.

I plan on sitting in front of TV watching The Little Mermaid while planning out the next few years of my life all in the comfort of my own home, which will be financed by my own crap jobs.

I need that cooling off period where stress is only brought into my life by how many canvas's I can make before the end of the year. I want that feeling that I can go into one room, work for three hours on a painting, then go directly to bed and wake up at noon the next day and just paint in my boxers for hours on end with no one around. Yeah that could causes vomitus behavior for some, but that sounds better than pancakes in the morning if you ask me. I want to walk around my house with a robe that has coffee mugs on it (yeah I'm referencing Fight Club) for hours on end.

MAYBE I DO WANT TO WATCH OPERA ON A DAILY BASIS next year.

I wonder if Walt would let me use the wood shop next year if I volunteered to clean up the wood shop every so often. Probably not. I want to take an Intaglio class at LCC. I think it would be bad ass to get a masters in Printmaking thus becoming a "master print maker". I miss playing with nitric acid, it totally reduces the aging process for your skin. Just kidding.

Picked up two books on Cicily Brown just now. She's kind of perverted but in a "where's waldo" kind of way. I envy her colors. She makes me want to work on canvas again though, not that I ever got good at working on canvas in the first place, but who knows. It's a lot cheaper than wood, which means if things work out between me and miss unprimed canvas over here, someone might just have 20 huge frames for next year. It would be fun to work with Rabbit Skin Glue and Gesso at the same time. I envy Janelle's work as well. It's very uninhibited?

All in all I'm just talking to myself, this all feels like just another list written down. I need that though. Or else I'll lose track of all the decisions that need to be made.

I look forward to the day when I don't have to make so many lists throughout the day. I know it's not always going to be like this. In the back of my mind I keep telling myself that one day I'll be relaxing on some mountain in Florence right after having a big show someday. Dreams like that only happen if a) you inherit a billion dollars, or b) you start making sacrifices for the better.

I will end this sad bastard blogspot with a famous quote by an exceptional and "gentle" man.

"Gypsy, give me your tears. If you will not give them to me, I will take them from you! "