Knowing there are people that have it worse in the world really doesn't help me, and having it worse is really dependent on the way you measure it. If you're describing it in terms of the freedom to move through life independently, the ability to follow what you love, I find my life lacking. My whole life I heard that if you find your true calling everything will just flow together for you, you'll be happy and nothing and no one will be able to keep you from accomplishing it. I guess I'm starting to understand that what they meant is that regardless of how much shit gets in your way, you won't stop until you accomplish your goals. Even if it never happens for you, you just keep trying. The problem with that, is when you have a strong desireto accomplish great things, but are unable to find the resources to do it.
It really sucks but the world we live in is so much nicer to you if you're a good looking skinny person. Hell if you're straight, white, male, good looking, trim, and come from money the entire world is open to you. I am short, gay, fat, mixed race, balding, and have no financial help to pursue my art and no one will hire me. Every time I think I'm going to get over this rut in my life and get to go back to my "real life" where I make art and live in a big city and have fabulous artistic friends who throw amazing parties and everything else that implies, Lucy pulls the football.
I land on my back every time and I never learn my lesson. I keep letting Lucy get my hopes up, that I'll not just get to kick the ball and get to move the line of scrimmage off my own field goal so I'll have a fighting chance but that somehow I'm magically going to kick a 100 yard field goal.
My magic wish, if I had a Fairy Godfather, would be to a full time fine art gallery and museum artist with a three bedroom flat in either New York, London or Paris, and I would have a husband that was a stay at home dad and three sons. I'm at the point now, where just having enough money to rent a room in someone's basement that isn't my parents, and be able to eat and make art would make me happy.
So people are always talking about building a staircase to the moon or the stars, that its slow and it takes work. Yes, I do look for short cuts and yes they have been backfiring but I can never seem to find the tools and the resources I need to win if I play by the rules. Where is this great American upward mobility?
