Day Sixty: Who Cares!

While at work today, I came across a wonderful, amazing blog called "A Hamburger Today". After reading about and looking at probably a hundred hamburgers and cheeseburgers over the course of an hour. I REALLY wanted a cheeseburger. I also wanted a food blog. And so, I want to do something similar, just for the hell of it. While the food I'm going to write about will remain a mystery, it's a project I'm going to start probably this weekend. It's going to be informal and fun, without time constraint or minimum posts. And in thinking about my new, fun endeavor, I had another one of those epiphanies I get.

I've started trying to not put as much pressure on myself lately, in terms of my future, where I want to be, what I wanted to be doing, and who I want to make happy. And strangely and miraculously, I'm finding it easier to be creative. Doing simple things that aren't meant to impress anyone seem like fun to me again. I'm feeling happier already. And it's pretty pretty amazing.

So today is hopefully the launch of a new bout of creativity. Hopefully I will have more to offer and share, and with that, I cut things short today, because honestly, who am I trying to impress? I'm writing to keep the habit up, which is good, but there's no reason for me to put pressure on myself to write enough in volume, or profoundly enough, or interestingly enough. But I would still like to come up with decent endings...

Day Twenty-Three: I Really Don't Get Artists.

Before I went to college, I contemplated being an artist. I would sit for hours capturing people and animals in graphite, or creating weird, colorful paintings with acrylics. But, my logical side won out and I went to school for writing instead, realizing that I would probably end up hating anything artistic from being forced to create everyday until I was utterly exhausted. And, more importantly, that I would probably have a difficult time eating and would live in my parents house until I was forty. But when I arrived, I discovered another reason I am glad I didn't try to surround my life with art.

I really don't understand artists.

Some artists are just normal (somewhat normal, anyway) people, like me, who just enjoy creating art and playing with color. Other people, the kind of people I was surrounded by in school, are artists. These are the people who wear tophats as a part of their regular everyday wardrobe, and chainsmoke in front of maple trees while their friend named Calliope sits painting her feet for fun. While these people are undoubtedly on some other plane of existence, and their brain functions on a completely different level as the rest of us, I have a difficult time taking them seriously. In fact, I'm pretty sure anyone except people not unlike themselves can take them seriously. As I walked by on my way to my web design class, I would shake my head and wrack my brain trying to understand how these people think from the moment they get up in the morning. What must it be like to be that...weird?

The thing that fascinates me most about artsy artists are that most of them act as free as they look. They really don't care much about anything but love, art, and thinking. Either that, or they're completely conflicted, angry, and tortured. But what must it be like to create that openly and think that freely and just be consumed by making things all day? I might like to be an artist for a day, but certainly not more than that. I'm pretty sure I'd go legitimately crazy.

Day Nine: I Hate Them Fancy Railroad Cars and Subway Trains...

When most people in my location think of the city, they think of great nightlife and a wealth of history and culture. But when I think of the city, I’m not quite so optimistic. I think of smog, crazy people, angry, impossible driving, and lots of pigeons. After about twenty visits, I’ve determined that I really rather despise the city. Unfortunately, I love everything the city has to offer. Every concert I go to is in the city, and there’s a cornucopia of amazing restaurants and markets with every kind of taste I could ever want to enjoy. I can educate myself with hundreds of museums and educational centers, and there are countless quirky events I wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. But I still hate the city. I’m the kind of person who enjoys her space. I hate walking, I hate driving in a gigantic, crowded, multi-directional grid of angry people, and I hate coming home feeling like I rolled around in farts and car exhaust. “So take the train!”, you might suggest. Oh no -- I hate public transportation, and I have a terrible fear that I’m always going to miss my stop and end up getting off in a dangerous and creepy area. And along with all the goodness in the city that draws me there every once and again, they are gems amongst a plethora of dirty, neglected, and frightening areas engulfed by crime and poverty. I feel immense sympathy for anyone who lives there, but I still want to be as far away from such places as physically possible. I grew up in the grassy suburbs, where every house had a lamp post and there was a cornfield down the block. Although I love my town and I loved my childhood, I’m not going to call it cultured in any regard. So it’s perfectly natural that I would feel slightly uncomfortable in an area quite opposite from what I’m used to. And the fun little magic that comes with the city is that one wrong turn and you can easily end up in one of these areas before you’ve even realized you’re on the wrong street. Since I’m twenty-four, 100 pounds, and about as street savvy as Little Bo-Peep, I think it’s understandable why the city and I don’t get along. I have a close friend who lived and thrived in the city for four years while she went to college in one of the most dangerous parts of the area. She walked everywhere, spontaneously took mural tours, and took the subway to anywhere it would go to anything from the Italian Market to an Indian Pride Festival. She even lived in a house with drug dealers at twenty-two (having never touched drugs or alcohol of any kind) and lived a happy existence in her room upstairs. What I realized she had that I did not was a sense of fearlessness. She could live and love the city because she wasn’t even the least bit afraid of anything about it. Sure, it has a ridiculously high crime rate, but she didn’t let it get in her way. So maybe one day I can learn to love the city if I become a little fearless, but that isn’t going to help me ignore the smog or the pigeons.