"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

19 February 2010

Like Carrie from Sex and the City...I recap my day by typing up a journal entry at 12:30 am.

Coming home from the cleaning products section of the grocery store at exactly 12:12 am, I'm eager to get started on the bathroom, the kitchen, and whatever else I can find to tidy up and clean. I have my new green products spray cleaner, extra sponges, and new paper towels. I get to the bathroom, finish the quick little cleaning it needs, then head back to my room....and plop down on my bed.

The thought of cleaning a community space excites me. I like doing dishes...(a new development) because I know that my roommates like to come home to a clean sink. Cleaning the bathroom...I mean...I wasn't able to do much because it was clean already, but, who doesn't like to come home to a clean bathroom? Who doesn't need a clean bathroom, actually? When I return to my own room, however, a different feeling settles over me. I try to coax myself to treat me as nicely as I try to treat others, but that proverbial horoscope wisdom doesn't last as long as I might like it to. I don't want to do work for myself. I don't want to. This is my problem, I've discovered. This is why I need a career goal in mind. Not necessarily because I need to know my five year plan and have every step mapped out, but because I need assurance that I'll actually be doing tangible THINGS for others and that I'll be able to see the results of that. Teaching was something I could latch onto and be like "hey, I'll be able to witness myself helping kids, kids will know me, every day will be....rewarding." Saying, "I might do something in art," is so vague, it's almost mind-numbing if you consider the scope of what that could be, not to mention terrifying when you look at alumni from art schools that are now just working for a simple branding company (gosh forbid one for cleaning products like the ones I just sifted through for a good hour while the stock boys looked on in confusion).

It's not that I don't believe in the work that I'm doing here. Or, the "process," I'm not sure if taking a couple of classes and spending most of my time wandering and pondering can be considered "work." I am enjoying art so much. Enjoying treating myself to new colored pencils. To a canvas. To a new tube of paint. I'm also being more materialistic, and more wrapped up in my own head....(have you noticed?) But since I am so separate from the rest of the world, currently, only seeing a few people and not my usual 1000 per day, I find myself enjoying the solitude but longing to create, to make an impact, for heaven's sake to come down here and BLOG at least instead of playing Xbox or watching American Pie 2!

Isn't that everyone's longing, though? To leave something behind in this world? To leave a mark, because we are impermanent and so we long to create something permanent? A legacy, a masterpiece, a legend, a history?

I have a thirst for a lot. I want to create art because I want to say something. Being around so many "liberals" or at least similar people to me on shallow levels at college, it's like, I don't so much feel my voice is completely unique but yet.....there is something there, you know? I think the space I occupy as a human being IS unique. I don't think there are that many people out there who are actually like me. And I think that's worth something.