Day Twenty-Seven: Everybody Could Use a Little Peace...

My oldest and dearest friend, who is like a sister to me, lives in California. She's always excelled amazingly and easily at everything she's set her mind to: athletics, artwork, friendships, and academics being just some of the few. So when she enrolled in college, I knew she was destined for great things. But she never actually declared a major until it was absolutely necessary, and did so based on the number of classes she had taken that fit into that course of study. She took classes she truly and honestly could learn from, arts classes, cultural classes, and history classes. She took an internship at the Philadelphia Horticultural Society because it fascinated her. And when it came time for her to graduate, she didn't attend her commencement ceremony, and opted rather to take an immediate job creating topigraphical maps of a national park up near University Park, Pennsylvania. Not long after, she took a job teaching 6th graders in California about the ecosystems in their environment at a camp about an hour outside of Napa Valley. She has always had an incredibly free spirit, and I envy that about her almost as much as I miss her.

But when I do see her (which is usually once or twice a year), she's always happy. She never seems to let anything weigh her down. She never worries about money (which she never really spends on anything but true experiences -- wine tastings, festivals, and camping), and she will happily travel on a whim. I would give anything to feel that free about life, and I often think about how I could do it, but I can't wrap my brain around the possibility without giving up everything in my life that's important to me: my job, my love, and leaving my family. So I've decided to try to embrace the chance to feel free in my everyday life. I need to move more slowly, think more slowly, and breathe more slowly. I need to enjoy the little things in life. Maybe, then, it will get me a little bit closer to California and living a free life, even if I can't be with my sister.

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.