The Art of Time Travel

With my renewed passion in drawing, otherwise known as "getting back to my roots", came the need to find the tools necessary for the creation of crap. I mean art. Being that we have moved so many times in a reasonably short span of years, there are boxes that have traveled from home to home without having been opened. Most of these boxes contain my collection of books, which is an admirable and heavy collection. We don't own any bookshelves, so unfortunately the books cannot be unpacked. It was these heavy boxes that I decided to rip open and comb through this weekend in search of my set of nice drawing pencils. I went through about 8 different boxes, each weighing a metric shit-ton, before coming across a box labeled "art stuff". Duhhh.

I couldn't have predicted the effect that opening this box would have on me. I liken it to the effect that stepping from a time machine into the past would have. I guess I hadn't realized just how long it had been since the contents of that box had seen daylight.

I was considered a "goth" for the majority of my teenage years (I never cared for the term and still don't). Though my tastes have matured in a lot of ways, I'm still the same person I've always been. This was evidenced in part by the triumphant yell I let out when uncovering this at the top of the pile:



Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio.

 I THOUGHT I LOST YORICK! I hadn't realized he was merely hiding in a time machine! I got this guy from some charming, kitchy little Voodoo store down in New Orleans. He now has a prime piece of real estate on top of one of my desk speakers. Also found in the box: a stone box with a gargoyle on top, a small Gollum figurine, a heavy lidded onyx box that smells like incense, and every art supply I've ever owned. Linseed oil, fixative, india ink, my pencils, blank canvases, a hundred tubes of crusty paint, random sketchbooks, a nice black portfolio binder, several embroidered asian boxes containing stamps. I even pulled out my old silver desk lamp, speckled with paint (and subsequently pierced my thumb deeply on the coil of the broken bulb while trying to remove it). Suddenly, despite the looming beginning of the work week, I didn't feel at all like settling down or sleeping. In a flurry of excitement (and blood), I bedecked my desk with everything reminiscent of a more inspired time in my life.

I forced myself to bed at ten, knowing I had to get up at five am, and tossed and turned for hours before finally falling asleep.

I've got a plan. I'm not going to tell you what it is, in case it never comes to fruition, but it's big. Life-changing kinda big. This heavy box, this time machine, could be exactly what I needed to find myself back on the path I wandered off of years ago.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

And also keep them ready to loan to me in case I need to have this thumb removed, okay?

I can't wait for YOU to shut me up.

Don't you hate it when there's someone that's got a talent in something or other and they let it go to waste in favor of doing something they hate, which they insist on constantly complaining about and lamenting? That's totally me. So if you answered "HELL YES I DO!" you probably shouldn't keep reading.

To put in perspective the type of person I am (rather than just saying 'neurotic' and making it easier on all of us), you should know that I've been narrating my actions mentally since the third grade. I remember the precise moment it began. I was given a paper, and I shoved it unceremoniously to the bottom of my backpack and stood, staring at it, for a moment. Briefly, I could picture the illustration of that crumpled, shadowed paper perfectly, so naturally me proceeding to sit down at my desk was accompanied in my head by "Amber reluctantly slid back into her chair" (probably not in those words, but maybe!). This never stopped. In my maturity (I mean age-wise- mentally I'm still in third grade) it has slowed down significantly, but it still hangs out there.

I'm telling you this to emphasize a point, which is that my view of life has loaned itself to a talent in certain things, specifically writing and illustration. It seemed to have been what I was born to do for the longest time.  I'm GOOD at it, and I can admit that I always have been, which says something coming from someone whose tendency is to short-sell themselves. At least- I was good at it. I was also good at singing, and acting, and painting, and working with others. I grew up dreaming of being an actress, a singer (which was abandoned upon realizing that I'm terrified of singing in front of people. Those who have heard me are a reasonably small group. Do I write in parentheses too much? I do, don't I?), a writer, a painter, a graphic designer, an illustrator, a psychiatrist, a social worker.

Never did it even cross my mind that 10 years- and counting!- of my adult life would be dedicated to foreclosing on peoples' homes, and invoicing.

There are a number of musicians I listen to, artists I follow, etc. that have produced work that more or less points a finger of blame at me and mocks me for the decisions I have made that have lead me here. I can't say that I blame them. They are brave. They took that plunge into a strange, competitive, unpredictable world to follow their dreams. I'm too chickenshit to do the same.

This is all I have on hand. I had a crappy scanner.

A good part of the reason behind it is that I have always feared that there was no such thing as enjoying a "job". I was worried that turning a "hobby" into a duty would take all of the enjoyment out of it. What I didn't realize was that eventually I wouldn't have the time to engage in any of the hobbies anymore anyway.

The second part of the reason is that, as aforementioned, I am a chickenshit. You see, I really like STUFF. I like having stuff. Nice stuff is even more appealing, as is expensive stuff. This includes a house, preferably one I like, and a car that isn't a piece of crap. Stuff costs money. Money is never a guarantee, but especially not when you're an artist. There's a reason the term "starving artist" came about. The idea of not knowing when I am going to have money is absolutely terrifying to me. Considering I am not particularly wealthy, or even "Well off" most of the time, you can only imagine how often I am on edge about finances. I obviously am just me and therefore can't tell you whether or not everyone feels the same way about this, but when I don't know if I'm going to be able to pay my bills or when, I literally think of nothing else and lose tons of sleep.

Maybe the choices I've made have contributed to this way of thinking, or maybe it's just another one of the traits that make me the barely tolerable person I am. Maybe I would be more happy and tolerable a person if I could find a way to let go of materialistic things and figure out the difference between what I need to be a happy human being, and what I want. It's worse now that I have kids, because I'm not just worrying about myself anymore. Now I need to ensure that they have electricity, and bedrooms to sleep in, and comfortable furniture. Would they still be happy if we lived in a little shack with no heat and no TV? Some people argue 'yes'. All you need is love, ideally. Realistically, though, in this day and age? I'm not so sure. I'd love to trust in that and take a flying leap into the unknown. I'd love to be able to let go of this fear and embrace the struggle with open arms the way I did once, but I've lost that ability along with the squandered talent.

I don't know if it's my approaching 30th birthday that has gotten me so introspective lately, but I seem to be on a massive self-improvement kick. As part of my quest, I've found myself way too focused on materialistic means of acquiring a sense of satisfaction, though I know full well that it's empty gains. I've never purchased something for myself that followed with a sense of contentment. It's always just- "now I have this, what can I get next?" and that lifestyle of greed will never make me happy.

I guess my real quest should be getting back to the basics of who I am as a person, because in my pursuit of keeping up with this increasingly materialistic and vain society, I have lost that. Here's hoping the next decade can be one in which I can chip away at the meaningless layers I've piled on in the in the decade before it.