Glazed Over

This is the part of winter that I love most, and it only just became winter today, or yesterday depending on when I post this (12/21).

Here are some of the shots that I took as I returned to my home nestled in the orchard. When people say something or someone is beautiful but deadly, this is what I think of.

EDIT/UPDATE 12.23: We've been out of electricity since early 12/22, along with 270k others in the state. I love a white Christmas as much as the next person, but this is a little much. I'm posting this now from a hotel, but we'll be traveling back and forth from here to home to take care of the animals. It is nice to be able to shower, though.

because I'm an artist.

Song Recommendations:

Florence + the Machine - Heavy in Your Arms, Seven Devils

Sometimes we have low points in our "job" in life. Or our chosen career. But that doesn't mean we give up. Inspiration is everywhere around us and sometimes we just need to zoom out from what we're doing, take a step back and let the world inspire us all anew. Adapting a little of JLaw's frankness wouldn't hurt either: http://31.media.tumblr.com/6b2cab7cf54a36edebc1a56264972664/tumblr_miql99uJzU1qck5fxo3_250.gif

For me lately, it's been music (lyric breakdowns and getting wrapped up into fantastical worlds that I've long been away from) but also one of the classes I'm taking is forcing all of us out of what we know to be photography and to look at it in all of it's past forms. We've moved on from pinhole photography and into scanography as of late, and it's so different. We aren't looking through a lens, but instead discovering new things that are normally right under our noses, and distorting them into something altogether new, which is thrilling.

That and I went to an artist talk last night by the global designer for Calvin Kline's denim, and that really opened my eyes as well. I've been so bogged down by trying to be better that I've overlooked my creative process on how to even make my own art. He broke down his pipeline for all of us and it was definitely a "why haven't I been doing this this semester????" kind of moment. If I'm not doing art for myself, I'm not doing it right.

Needless to say, I feel recharged creatively. Now to find a way to work in the time to utilize it all!
This isn't the first time I've wished that I had a time turner or some way to suspend time so I can accomplish all that I want to (including getting enough sleep > >  )

checking in, but keeping busy

Song Recommendation (not necessarily while you read, but whatever): 

Staying on top of two photography classes, an online art history, making a game, and surviving my senior capstone for studio art is keeping my hands more than full this semester. But! I can at least share some of the spoils with whoever stumbles across this page.     EDIT: SORRY for the AWFUL color on some of these... I took them with my phone rather quickly and called it good enough when clearly they're not good enough haha.. wee.

INTRO CYANOTYPE:

INTRO 35MM COLOR FILM:

INTRO PINHOLE:

DIGITAL:

With another shoot scheduled for tomorrow with two models (yay for friends), more pinhole shooting on Wednesday, two midterms, a meeting with a MSU game design grad who went on to SCAD and is now in the industry, 20 hours of work somewhere in there, and heading home on Friday for my brother's birthday, I'm doing my best to stay on track.... but we'll see how it goes.

Additionally, I've had to do a lot of retrospection/planning for the future lately. There is nothing worse than your mother misplacing your anxiety for the next couple of years on your current relationship with "are you worried you'll have to split up?"
- ___ -
Of all the things, I don't think I've ever worried about my relationship.
No, instead I'm worried about my empty degree and lack of skill trying to support me in the incredibly competitive job market.

To put emphasis on the stress I feel concerning my own shortcomings as I see them, I was tasked with writing an artist statement for my senior show (which as of right now doesn't consist of anything, because me.)

I thought I'd put what I typed up (or the draft anyway) here for you all to see and maybe understand a bit about me and how I feel about what I do:

"I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to being an artist. I make what I want to make, try new things when they attract my interest, and tend to stick to what I like. I don’t make particular series to try and push an issue in the world with my art. In fact, I don’t even think about the world when I’m making my art. My art is for myself. If others are able to get joy or excitement or any sort of appreciation from it, that’s just a bonus. I realize this sounds incredibly selfish, but I don’t really do anything unless it’s for me. That’s (unfortunately?) who I am.

            I don’t have anything to reveal in my work along the lines of some intention or hidden meaning, so don’t bother looking for one. There is never any attempt to send a message, make a statement, or for people to take away something “more” from my work. If it ever looks that way, it wasn’t on purpose. I take pictures of what I like, for myself and for the people in the pictures. This is simply what I do, and I continue doing it in the hope that I’ll improve."

 There you go.
Add this (http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2013-10/enhanced/webdr06/3/17/anigif_enhanced-buzz-29606-1380834724-10.gif) and you have me in a nutshell.


And on that note! Back to the grind.

moving through life

Today was my last day at the first job I ever loved.

Go figure the moment I find my footing, my niche, my comfortable place
it's time for me to move on.

This summer yielded a lot of things for me.

A good talk with someone who understands my position as a child of someone diagnosed with cancer, and consequently coming to terms with what that means.
The long distance separation of a best friend, and the realization that it doesn't have to separate our friendship.
Starting to grasp my self worth, and beginning to know my place in the professional world as well as what is beneath me.

I'm not to the point where I don't have my moments like this:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/8fc007f08c1419f812f6a33fef6270f4/tumblr_mftpejgT6t1rk46zoo1_500.gif

but I am getting closer to having a foundation for myself. Six years too late, but at least it's happening!



Suffice to say, this summer was my favorite time at the CE. I felt like I knew what I was doing, managing my projects more than well enough, and delivering content well above expectations. I felt accepted by my coworkers, and will actually miss them as opposed to feeling like I was never a part of some secret like I did in semesters past.

Don't get me wrong, I always liked my job, but I loved it this summer.

I didn't get to finish my talking plant (because other CE inhabitants sabotaged it, which was wonderful), but I have all of this year to sneak back and give it another shot.

But! Now I get to focus my energies on an even better job at the GEL, doing what I want to do in life: make video games. So needless to say, it's a fond farewell to my CE career.

Here's to moving forward through life, and continuing to learn from it all.

settle down

Love that girl's groove. Best modern adaption of Jazz vibes and pop around.

I've been thinking lately that maybe I've become a little too settled down. Within a year, I'm going to be uprooted from my comfortable existence in East Lansing, and have to stay on my toes as I float from town to town looking for a job.

Is it possible to take all that I've acquired in the recent years with me as I flit about? Is it something I can even ask of those who've become so closely knit into my life?

Most likely, the truth is that I just shouldn't worry about it, and whatever will happen will happen.

Life is a shifting and ever changing landscape. People will part and come together and part as life sees fit.
I'm just selfish and stubborn and never want anything to change, even though I know that most of the time it is for the better.

reaching out

It's easy to let yourself huddle into a fetal position when times get tough and try to weather it out on your own. We let ourselves think that no one can help us, it's all our fault and so we should suffer for our mistakes and deal with the consequences. But that kind of mentality only leads to more tough times, and we start to shrink away from those we love and the world.

Instead, at least for me, I needed to reach out. Tell, not just one person, about my anxieties for the future. Let them share their experiences and what worked for them, and get motivated by it all.

If you don't know something, ask someone about it. You aren't being rude to them, wasting their time, looking stupid, any of that. You're learning. You're growing. And nothing about that is bad.

I realize this is an extremely simple concept, but it's harder to adopt in practice for some of us than most of us would assume. But I think I'm ready now. Ready to start reaching out.

Guilt Trip

Every father and son has or wants to go on a father-son trip somewhere at least once.
Whether it's fishing, camping, hunting, what have you.
You all feel the urge.
Or at least mass media marketing makes it seem that way.

In any case,
my father and his son are out on such a trip right now.
One that was to be wrought with adventure, ripe with freshly caught fish dinners, and a calming atmosphere within which the two could bond.

What's happening instead is me, getting texts from my brother wanting to come home three days into the week long jaunt, my dad catching a cold, the atmosphere turning sour with competitive and rude neighbors day after day, and no fish to be found.

I'm working 40 hours a week at school to try and give back to my family a bit, and be able to soften my financial burden on them. I see, or rather saw this as me working hard and making them proud.

Instead, I get needled bit by bit by each member of the family whether they are aware of it or not, concerning my never being home.

Sometimes I feel like they forget that I want to be home with them.

My dad checked in the first day of their trip to say that they made it safely and were getting settled, and that he really wished I was there, too.

Normally such a sweet sentiment, but I felt it like a shock of lightning straight to my core.

The implications of 'you should have come with us' 'you never come with us anymore' 'when will I see you again' 'why don't you ever come home?'

When the truth is that I can't.
Not when I'm supposed to be giving my all at these jobs this summer. I get so burned out by the end of the week that I'm absolutely useless on the weekends, and I don't have a car to drive back and forth between our two cities whenever it's convenient.

And they know this. Or at least knew it at one point.

There is nothing more that I want than to be by my dad's side as he goes through his chemo treatments. I'm the most like him out of the family, and I think that having me around grounds him a bit. But I can't be there the days he gets the injections, during the resulting symptoms, in between it all to remind him how wonderful life is.

I have to leave that to my mom and my brother and keep faith that they're taking care of it all to the best of their ability.

But when I get these god awful texts! I just want to give up!

I get all of the complaints about the mood swings, about the sadness in the house, and then whenever I try to keep the mood light I get told something to the effect of "the chemo is rough on dad"
as if I don't know that it's hard on him, or can't appreciate it to the level that it is.

And that kills me.
Just what am I supposed to do?
Crawl back into my tangled existence inside my heart, already heavy with guilt.


On another completely unrelated note, I was shuffling through my iTunes this morning at work and came to the conclusion that this song encapsulates Bio:Shock Infinite for me, concerning Elizabeth and Booker.

Wanderlusting

As my first (and potentially last) summer staying on campus begins, I have come to the realization that traveling and road trips have become rather a necessity for me.

A large part of me yearns to pack up the car, hop in the passenger seat, and drive with the boy somewhere new and different for a bit.

I haven't spent a summer home in years. I say this rather unfortunately as my family are such a huge part of my life and school keeps me away 9 months of the year already. Last year I spent it in Wyoming, the year before: Japan, the year before that: Traverse City.

Is it because I've traveled these past few summers that I long to travel again, now?
Maybe.

There's just something so irreplaceable in the feeling I get on road trips.
It curls itself up in my heart and tickles at the sides.

I'd compare it to how music can make me feel,
but whereas the melodies oft remind me how I am so very alive
traveling re-opens my eyes to how the world is so large and so full of possibility,
so never lose hope or stop dreaming.


Hopefully I can escape for a bit this summer.
We'll see.

In the mean time, here's a song.

is this what happens when you say yes?

I've been getting into life a little bit over my head lately.

I brought it onto myself, of course. Taking too much to do at once, pretending I can balance these heavy things on the tips of my fingers when I'm really scrambling to keep even my thoughts from getting jumbled.


Then 2013 had to remind me that this is the year that I take my own Hero's Journey.

I've made it through the many challenges, one by one, and now I am at the peak of my transformation. The obstacle of all obstacles, waiting to shake my very existence to it's core.


And so, the one person I love most in this world was diagnosed with skin cancer.


As my world started to fall apart around me, I struggled to collect the pieces on top of everything else I was trying to do,
and I failed.

I gave in.
Gave in to selfish wants, gave in to the fear, gave in to the voice in my head that constantly tells me that I'm not good enough.

Sleep has -- since some time early in my life, but more frequently now -- always been a retreat for me. When I'm asleep, whether I dream or not, I'm free from it all. The pressure, the sadness, the self-depreciation.
I embraced that escape when I failed.
I ran away from it all and stopped trying to keep pushing forward despite the turmoil in my heart and in my mind.

But when someone so close to me, whom I've always admired and looked up to, has so much more reason to give up, who am I to let such comparatively trivial things get to me so? I need to be strong for them, as they have been strong for me all of my twenty two years.

I've recently been taking steps toward recovering my lost panache. Forcing myself to attend things I would normally sleep through or pass on, because of the sloth that so often convinces me it's more comfortable to just lay down in bed.

Unfortunately for most of my academics, I've dug quite a hole for myself just in time for the finals crunch, but I'll be okay.

I'll not let myself ruin the opportunities that have recently come my way. So much good comes to those who try, and even in the past week and a half I've seen as much more than I deserve. A summer job in the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab, featured work in the Media Sandbox Showcase, and potential for a future in the field I yearn to surround myself in.

I can feel eyes on me now, and if they think they'll catch me off my game for one moment, they're sorely mistaken.

It's not just for me anymore.

So goodbye, sleep. This is the end of our long term relationship.
I'm going to probably have to embrace this thing called cosmetics to compensate otherwise very dark under eye circles, but that's a compromise I'm willing to make if it means making the most of my life.

On to a better tomorrow.

what happens next

Reading: The Silent Blade
Listening: Better Life
Day: ??


So much has happened since the turn of the year. Or at least, so much has finally sunk in for me since the turn of the year.

Hello, indeed, 2013.

My grandpa, at the age of 89, finally let slip his grasp on life and passed in his sleep on January 13th.

He was a wonderful man, and I am lucky to be able to say that I have many many fond memories of time spent with him.

The last time I saw him, he had been in the nursing home for a few months, and frankly.. the moments that I could really tell that he was present with me were few and fleeting. At this point dementia had already begun setting in, and it was a gamble whether or not he knew who was visiting him. For me, there is nothing worse than being with someone you've known all your life and not being able to see any recognition in their eyes. This was the main reason I was not willing to go up north often after he was moved to the nursing home, much to my mother's frustration. My grandpa had already slipped away from me.

Prior to that visit, before I traveled to Japan for the summer and he was still living at home with my grandma, I had one of my most profound moments with him. I understood then, that he knew he didn't have much time left in the larger scheme of things. I appreciated that he wanted to settle certain things while he still had the presence of mind to do so exactly how he desired, and I am so happy that he was able to.

In my heart I know that that was my grandpa's goodbye to me.

I would not have had it any other way.

This isn't to say that it made his death any easier to bear. I can't help from crying right now as I type about all of this. But at least I got the chance to have closure with him, the way I know he wanted it to be.

Many members of my family were with him in his final moments, his oldest son and daughter holding his hands. We had all known it was coming for a long time.

Not that that ever helps.

In any case, the family dynamic up north has been turned upside down; an understandable side effect as all 8 children try to comfort my grandma in her moment of loss. My oldest cousin married in just enough time for him to witness the event, and her wedding reception yesterday was a chance for everyone in the family to come together and start figuring out the politics of what will happen next.

My grandpa was in the military in his youth, and was station in East Asia for a while. He was fortunate enough to be able to bring many items back to the States with him. Many items now coveted by each of the 8 siblings.

I don't even want to think about it. Or about what will happen to my grandparents house (my grandpa was a Realtor, so he and my grandma were able to retire to a nice piece of lake shore property) when my grandma is no longer able to live by herself. Or about how despite Wills, everything will hit the fan because of personal feelings of entitlement.

I don't want to think about it.



Outside of the grief 2013 has brought along with it, I've started preparing myself for life outside of the sandbox.

I'm making attempts to make the lyrics from AWOLNATION's Kill Your Heroes become my anthem for taking on life.

"Never let your fear decide your fate"

I am afraid of so much after college. My last post sort of addressed that among other fears, but really as I have gotten older, I've shrunk back into hiding from more and more that life has to offer.

I need to step up. Take chances. Apply for everything that I possibly can. Chase my dreams.
This is why I'm getting this education.
I want to be able to catch those dreams and live them.

So I'm going to LA over my spring break to network and job shadow game and movie companies. I'm trying to hone my skills in all of the programs I use. I'm expanding and improving my talents. Everything I can, so that I can make all of the struggle, all of the needless fear and worrying, worth it.

And so it's you and me, 2013. We're going to evolve from this Magikarp existence into a Gyarados that can fend for itself. I will succeed. I will be able to conquer the growing shadow of debt, and I will live my dreams.

I can do this. And it all is starting now.