Venting time!

Need some goals. I mean, I have major goals but I need some smaller ones so that I can work toward them and move on to the next ones. I've realized I'm super fantastic at achieving something when I have something to work toward. If I don't have something, I'm just fumbling along life laterally...sort of like a lost puppy. And...going along with that things seem so much more official when someone else tells them to me. Someone else's insight or advice seems so much more valid and true than something that I come up with myself. So, finding this art job.....I've realized in order to do that I'd have to have all new art pieces or at least MORE art so that it shows more of my capabilities. I have so much variety to my art skills that...shit, I see no reason why I WOULDN'T be a good, qualified employee for someone. It's mostly, I suppose, getting myself to get noticed ahead of the crowd of everyone else who's also competing for the same thing I am. That and, I can't afford to do some internship that doesn't get paid or if it does it's minimum wadge. That doesn't fly with student loan bill people haha. Do I regret going to art school? No, I think that was probably the best 4 years of my life where I FINALLY was able to actually, truly, come out of my shell and I met the best mentors I've ever had who truly cared about me, and I've met some life long friends there. However, all that came with a super steep price tag since I'm paying for it all myself with no help. Not that I'm blaming this on anyone. I used to, I used to be mad at my parents for letting me get stuck in something that was this much above my head and made my life so difficult after the fact. Especially since my mom was an artist and gave up her dream for a mundane life of a vendor for the Navy that she absolutely hated. (She actually was more pissed at me because she assumed I'd just fail like her and become a poor, starving artist.) Part of me is happy for the challenge and I know I'm a work-a-holic so the work ethic isn't the issue. It's that if I'm working 70+ hours and I'm just barely making it by without a car payment, mortgage,with bottom low rent, and with very little money toward utility/groceries, and 1 vacation per year to a friends house in Maine, how can I grow? Not like I can suck it up and get another job. Not like I can afford to quit one and work more on my art/dream. I don't have a lot of friends where I am so it's not like I'm hurting my social life....since I don't have one. So what direction do I go in? I suppose I could keep job searching for a crap job that pays more and is hopefully full time so I can go down to one job and only hate my life for 40 hours a week instead of around 70. I actually really like my waitressing job. I just like seeing people happy because of something I'm doing. Really, simplifying things, that's all I want in life. I want people to be happy, or in awe from my art. I love expressing myself through it, and seeing people happy about it. I just want to see people happy. But not myself. I suppose I don't care enough to see myself happy...odd? Is it? That I base my own happiness off of how happy I make those around me? In some sort of reverse way, is that selfish? Or perhaps it's that I've spent so long trying to make everyone else happy that I no longer know what will make myself truly happy? I suppose that single question could solve 99% of my problems: if I make myself happy then my path should become a lot clearer....but I suppose one can only hope?

Trial Run

Alright...I'm attempting to use this thing. Let's see how this goes. If anyone has any tips or advice, please feel free to post. Here's to more blogging!

:)