My life at the moment

Well I went to truck driving school and was out on the road for like a week until I figured out that it really is just NOT for me. Trucking is a really difficult life and you've got to love it or there's no way you can do it. I thought I could just do it as a job to pay for my art career but that's not happening. Basically right now I'm trying to find a job that will cover my bills as quickly as possible so that I don't lose this apartment at the Tashiro Kaplan.

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Super Excited!

So I'm still waiting to hear back as to whether or not I passed the first part of the leasing process but I'm super excited that if all goes well I'll be moving in to the Tashiro Kaplan hopefully at the beginning of January. I wonder if I'll be able to have a New Years party at my apartment...

So for those of you that don't know the Tashiro Kaplan is a rent controlled artist building in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle Washington. Its one of the Art Space Live Work Artist Loft buildings.

I have all these amazing ideas for paintings that are just screaming to be made. I feel this overwhelming NEED to paint.

Crappy Gay Art

This homo is extremely annoyed with the lack luster quality of gay art being produced in this decade. By gay art I refer to art which specifically addresses LGBT themes or issues. There's been some interesting developments in design and advertising but actual Art with the capital "A" has been severely lacking. For one thing though, if your art isn't erotic, you've gotten over your coming out phase and you're fairly well adjusted, its kind of hard to make good work about LGBT issues that isn't seriously depressing. I mean there are a lot of really important issues that need to be discussed (HIV, Gay bashing, disconnect of identities for LGBT persons of color, those horrible ex-gay ministries, the legal battles LGBT parents go through, etc.) but if every piece you see on gay issues is negative or depressing, eventually you just go numb to it all and you stop taking in the information.

That is part of the reason why I think works of art that show the world as we'd like it to be are so effective. We see this piece and really want to just stand there and soak it up as much as possible because its the world as we know it could be and should be, the way we wish everything worked, and then the message really has a chance to soak in and there's a driving passion to create that world we saw.

I want to live in a world where true love exists and princes fall in love.

Joining the Failure Club

So I came across this thing in the Yahoo news cycle called the The Failure Club, its the most amazing concept I've ever heard of. The whole idea is that if we never allow ourselves to put our entire being into something and put 110% into it and still fail we'll never learn our own limitations, that mediocrity is what fearful people settle for because they're scared to fail. So I've filled out an application to join the club. I had to select a goal to try to accomplish in one year that would be almost certain to fail but not completely impossible. I decided to attempt to move to Paris France and make my living entirely from my art. Its a huge dream and would be the most amazing accomplishment of my life, if I could do that, all I'd really need to have a fulfilled life would be to have babies and possibly a solo show at the Louvre and maybe a husband.

A Change of Scenery Provokes Inspiration

its interesting, I thought my muse had left me. Going for such a long time without a good outlet for my creative energy had caused some serious back up and stress. I went on vacation to the Oregon coast with my family and after some proding went for a walk along the beach on my own. After an hour or two I could feel all the emotional crap empty out of my head and the "spirit" if you will move through me. I may not have a place to go paint as I'd like to right now but I have been able to invest that creative energy in other productive ways. I'm actually really excited.

Some of the Best Advice I've Gotten in Life

1. The key to great poker is not having a good poker face but being able to convincingly fake a bad one taught to me by my grandfather an old card shark

2. Fake it till you feel it I forget who told me this one

3. Do not take a critique personally, you are not your art, a piece of art is a scratch in the surface in an idea you once had Told to me by my professor Preston Wadley

4. When you paint finish an entire layer, don't stop part way through a layer, especially on the grisaille, or the styles won't match Told to my by my painting professor Claudia Hollander-Lucas

5. Don't go out of your way to correct people who think you're an idiot, they won't see you coming and are less likely to attempt to sabotage your career from my mother

6. Kill them with kindness, you don't have to like them just be as professional, sweet and polite as you possibly can be at every turn so there's nothing they can use as ammunition to bad mouth you my paternal grandmother and mother both

7. Forgive but never ever forget my folks

Tiny thing Big Problem

So I went to Seattle over the weekend, I somehow managed to lose my glasses. I'm not sure if I left them there or if they're buried in my car somewhere. I have got to find them. It really sucks, my stigmatism distorts perspective which makes it impossible to draw without my glasses. I keep going oh, I should draw that, or oh, I've got an idea I want to sketch out and I can't because not having glasses sucks.

Its really annoying how there are all these practical things you have to take care of for your art practice to be successful, especially when the creative spirit moves you. You just want to make art, I know that if I went to my car and spent how ever many hours looking for my glasses, if I ever even found them, by the time I was done I'd probably have lost my inspiration. On the other hand its better to be motivated and find them as soon as possible so I can get as much work done as I can. Its so easy to be lazy when you don't have everything at hand to make your work but you've just got to make the decision to delay your self-gratification and do the toil work so you can get around to doing the fun stuff. To be real, you feel better you're more productive and when you're productive you feel better and conversely when you're depressed you feel lazy and when you're lazy you feel depressed so you've just got to make the decision to be self-motivated and break yourself out of your rut.

Tonight I'm going to get a goodnight's sleep and in the morning when there's light out enough to see I'm going to find my glasses. Try going out of your way to be as productive as possible in your art practice and see how much better you feel even if the stuff you're producing isn't your best work ever, the act of simply continually producing work will get the rust out of the gears and get you in tip top shape.

Finding Inspiration out of Frustration

So I've been trying to get financing for an indie flick in Hawaii and so far all I've been getting is doors slammed in my face. SO what I'm thinking I might do instead is attempt to do a shoe string budget documentary about the rise of social internet games and how the false sense of accomplishment is a form of escapism for people in today's down turned economy.

I'll need to do some research first but I think it could turn out really cool. Hopefully it won't turn into one long rant about how much the economy sucks. I think what it will be though is about how in a world where the American dream seems dead, that at least in the virtual world we can have this sense of pride of ownership not otherwise afforded to us in the real world.

Frustrating surroundings

I miss having something to take pictures of, to draw. I hate not having a space to create. I complained today to my father that there's nothing to draw here, nothing to take photos of, his response of was that there's tons of thing to draw and photograph. He brings up the sunset in the backyard. Its a shot I've taken hundreds of photos of since I was a sophomore in high school almost 12 years ago. Its an angle I'm never even been all that fond of. Its relaxing to look out at but its not something that works compositionally. I've drawn the backyard and all its pieces more times than I'd like to count. I hate coming inside to draw still lifes because I never feel comfortable and at peace here.

There is a definite awareness that if a space isn't really yours, its hard to make art in it. Basically I feel like if its a space where you couldn't feel comfortable walking around naked, its hard to really make yourself vulnerable enough to make art. I've seen this same landscape on and off for 11 years and its come to represent depression and being controlled, I look out my window and I feel sick. Its definitely time to move on when I can, but who has the money to travel these days?

I need an out, I really hope the financing for this film comes through.

How spongebob made me gay

For a supposed "man of science" my father is definitely on that list of people who try to force science to fit inside their own personal faith based cosmology and make wild leaps of logic to support these ludicrous systems of thought, ignoring anything which would disprove or contradict them. A convert to catholicism from an Oklahoman Southern Baptist upbringing, my father claims to be a reasonably rational scientific mind who disputes things such the theory of evolution. One should be intensely surprised at hearing such talk from a physician, but my father did receive his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma med school. University of Oklahoma being a school with strong connections to Oral Roberts and Christian faith healing, both of which were large parts of my father's upbringing, who actually met Oral Roberts as a child and attended many faith healing sessions at his church growing up. Need I say more? Though in defense of University of Oklahoma, while I have no idea what their policy was in the 1970's, their zoology department where my father studied for his undergrad has since passed a departmental statement validating and affirming the need to teach evolution. Ironic. If you would argue still that this isn't clear evidence for the man's bizarre state of mind, he claims he was accepted to both Yale and Harvard med schools on full scholarships but turned them down after touring because at the time what they were teaching conflicted with his personal beliefs.

Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, and just about any person who's ever met me, my father is convinced that I'm not gay that I only think I'm gay and that its a passing phase. My father has made statements to effect that if indeed I do have ADD (which I have indeed been classified as but my father does not believe exists, he thinks I'm just lazy) that it must be the reason that I've been suckered in by the malevolent forces of the world to being convinced that I'm gay. That somehow I went away to college and the liberals turned me gay, I being the child who begged for a New Kids on the Block doll for his 5th birthday and had to be expressly forbidden from being allowed to take ballet.

My father is a radiologist, he is not a psychiatrist, psychologist and has taken nothing past some mandatory undergrad classes in psych back in the 70's, and yet he claims to be an absolute expert on the subject. Like most physicians, he believes that because he is so "God touched" that he is brilliant enough to become a physician he must be light years ahead of anyone else that isn't, and in fact many that are as I've heard him on many occasion talking about what an idiot some other doctor is because he disagrees with them on subjects pertaining to their particular specialty. Physicians think they can do it all, like severely socially retarded aspergers kids, they lack the understanding that the type of intelligence related to science and math amounts to absolute squat when dealing with anything outside that realm. Every physician thinks he or she is a master pianist, artist, philosopher and any other "lesser" discipline that walks the face of the earth. They fail to understand that raw mental bandwidth is not enough. Aside from the basic fact that there are several different types of intelligence and mathematical intelligence does not translate into the required spatial, intrapersonal and existential intelligences required for making art of any substance in the contemporary world, the time and dedication taken to become a physician would completely atrophy any other talents they might have had at one time or another. It takes years to become an artist, I don't remember a single semester of college when I didn't have a minimum of 40 hours a week of homework in addition to the class time I had to devote, there is no possible way someone could keep up with that and do what it takes to become physician and maintain their knowledge to keep it up to date. The idea that someone should parade themselves as an expert in an entirely different field of medicine that they have no formal training in is ridiculous.

This evening my father brought up an article from the journal of pediatrics. My father knows I'm considering returning for a second bachelors in character animation. If you are unaware of this article, its sketchy to say the least. Its basic idea was that children who are allowed to watch fast paced cartoons have temporary attention deficit. The study seemed unreasonably biased. They compared the effects of watching spongebob to those of Calliou. The kids watched the shows then took tests. It seems to me that you might have compared it to other things that are fast paced and hold children's attention such as games like tag. The study is already been ripped apart on the web and people are making some really valid points, I'm not going to dive into them here. So regardless of the fact that I've had ADD my entire life and when I was going to college I had little to no television time yet still had a lot of trouble with my condition, my father suggested that all of my problems with ADD were caused by cartoons. He suggested that I should stop watching cartoons altogether and that that would make my ADD go away. In true Freudian fashion, his underlying message was stop watching cartoons and you'll lose the ADD symptoms, grow up and turn straight. There is no evidence that the effects of television are long term, and in fact the study seem to suggest they last maybe a few hours at most. I might go days, even months without seeing a cartoon, even now I rarely go a minute without thinking about guys. How's that fit into your cosmology dad?

Twice Exceptional in a World built for the Neurologically Mundane.

Twice exceptional is a term meant to define someone like myself. Someone with a learning disability or handicap who is very gifted in other areas or who has an extremely high IQ. A website I came across was saying that twice-exceptional people, because their giftedness can often hide their handicap, their handicap can often hide their giftedness and are often mislabeled as lazy. This was absolutely the case for me in college the first time around. My professors had no experience with meeting a person with special needs on their own level and they went out of their way to make it clear that they weren't interested in doing so. Yes I'm exceptionally gifted and talented but their are specific areas where my mind can lag, and sometimes I can get very frustrated and give up, usually around things like cleaning and organization. In addition to my ADD, I also get migraines and panic attacks. There is a positive side though to my ADD, I'm also what's termed a super creative. Ordinary people have an organizational mode and a creative mode, I've got a creative mode and a super creative mode where I've been known to almost black out and produce some amazing work of art where I step back and go "Wow, did I do that?". This time around I'm going to step up an education plan for myself. I plan to take my meds (HUGE CHANGE), talk to my counselor and my professors about my condition, buy a season pass to Six Flags since its walking distance of the school and will help me deal with my adrenaline addiction, not take on too heavy of a class load and make use of all the help and aid available to me.

Feels like a year

So it feels like a year since I last posted. It was really hard to keep up with blog when I was job searching. Every free bit of energy was spent either looking for a job, trying to complete and sell different creative projects that could have amounted to a job, and when I'd spent every ounce of productive energy I had left, I wallowed in the unemployed depression funk. As of about two weeks ago though I have a job. Unfortunately its another independent contractor gig, and its a little bit of a pay cut in hourly wage and I'm not getting a lot of hours right now but ITS SOMETHING!

You have no idea how much better I feel having a job. I really am one of those people that needs to be productive. So my new position is a the marketing director for this little internet start up one of my dad's partners from his radiology practice is starting that sells t-shirt designs through print on demand t-shirt company called spread shirt. So right now I'm making an hourly wage and if at some point in the future they start hauling in a considerable profit I will get a percentage.

Currently I'm just concentrating on trying to get everything to work and managing the startup operations of the company while coming up with advertising and marketing schemes. You have no idea how much its impacting my sleep to have to deal with super early risers on the east and west coast and a late sleeping artist in Hawaii, but I'm happy to be in charge. Thank goodness for emails. Thankfully my job is entirely over the internet so I can move anywhere I want to. If I can get enough money together for a ticket, security deposit and first months rent I was told I'm at the top of the list for a loft in the china town artist lofts in Hawaii. Actually its really nice that I'll be able to make all my own art and not have to worry about exhausting all my creative juices at work then not being able to create when I get home like I did at PCM. Plus it will be great if I can make this happen to be able to drive to the artist's house if I need to. The thing is that his work looks SUPER familiar, I'm starting to wonder if I know this guy.

Anyway, so my creativity has quite a bit more direction now. I have decided that eventually I want to go back to school and study film/character animation, but that will likely be a while. Till then I'm just going to do my best at whatever I do and try to earn the money I need.

Its nice to have a little more direction.

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On another front, I've got an update on the side business doing discreet portraits for people. I did some nude portraits for a protestant minister in town, and had a query from a small time politician back east in the Carolinas who decided the whole thing was too expensive for them, and since then that business has basically died. They were really fun and tasteful and the customers were extremely satisfied with the results but I think there just isn't a market right now for professional pinup photos for personal use. I'm not interested in working in porn so I'm just going to continue checking the email I set up for the business but unless someone comes looking for my services I'm going to pursue other job opportunities and just leave that on the back burner for now.

Hexagram 12 Stagnation Hexagram 52 Thunder

Where I'm at in my life. The heavens and the earth are disconnected and disunified and inferior invaders seek to fill the void of power. Quick fixes are to be resisted as they will lead to the downfall and destruction of the noble person. Thunder flashes, a sign from the heavens that is time to put myself back into alignment with the higher power. The money I could have made would have been enough but that isn't the way I want to make it. Its so tempting to take the quick fix and get the hell out of here but I've seen the order of the cards before the ante and this is not a game I would have won. Right now my intention is to do what I have to to get physically fit and become my most alluring self so that I can capitalize on the god struck good looks I've been blessed with having when I'm at my thinnest. I'm then going to use the money from that to further my art career. I figure gastric bypass and stiperobics and in no time I'll be paying for my new artist loft "working that pole like a runaway".

Holy Crap

Ok so its been two months since I've posted, wow. Bad me. Well first of all the person I found to teach me turned out to be a total flake, (interesting to be on the receiving end of that) and basically was all committed to teaching me then never actually responded to me so we could meet up. So then I was going to go to the tattoo school in Portland but its 9 grand, which I don't have plus rent and my credit sucks and there's no federal funding because its licensed not accredited. So that's still a vague possibly very good idea, if I can ever manage the money. So I've been trying to work on drawing more, finding the motivation is difficult to say the least. What can I say I'd rather veg out and do nothing in front of the television or surf the web then spend an hour practicing my drawing like I should. I've been looking at other options for work type stuff. I'm attempting to start my own business taking erotic portraits for discreet professionals and I've got my first customer Saturday. Should be good, I'm getting $300. If nothing else, that money will be a big help with whatever I do next, even if no one else takes me up on my services. I have an interview in Key West when my family goes there on vacation to apply to work in a gallery selling art, which would be pretty awesome, mostly because its Key West and I'm hoping they'd let me sell my own work there as well. I've also decided to apply to graduate school again. I'm applying to the American Film Institute for a Masters of Fine Arts in Cinematography. Its something I'm good at and a career I'd enjoy. Now I've got till May to do 2 twenty minute videos that show off my skills as a cinematographer. Wish me luck.

Ok then

So I managed to find someone to teach me tattooing but first I need to get my life together so that I can live in Seattle. I really miss living in Seattle and I need to find a way to do so, especially since my tattoo instructor lives in Seattle. The plan is become an awesome tattoo artist, save money while living in Seattle (difficult but possible) until I save enough money to move to Paris.