Withstand

"Withstand" - by anotherwanderer @ deviantART

Another brief post.

I actually had no intention of writing today; there was really nothing to report until just a half hour ago when my dad was about to leave for work. I've been asking him about printers because the ones we have are old. I want a wide-format one that also scans, but he wants a laser one for the quality. The one I'm looking at isn't laser, but it works. So he asked me to look at laser ones, and as I was doing that this morning, we came to a point in our brief conversation where my dad said: "I don't know what your needs are" - meaning school. He asked whether I had intentions of staying in school and I told him that I guess I would just finish to get it over with. But he said in a nutshell that if I'm going to finish school, I'm going to have to look for employment opportunities relating to my schooling. That caught me off guard. It makes me wonder: what would he do if I didn't obey him? My plans were to finish school to make my parents happy (and improve my technical skills in the process), but then head in the direction that I need to go in. But now... he's provided me with a roadblock. 

To be honest, I've just been trying to ignore this whole "I don't want to be here" attitude. I figured: hey, I'll be "realistic" for a while and attend school while I figure things out... despite knowing that in my gut, school and corporate illustration jobs are not where I want to be. I've been shoving this whole thing aside because I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to unleash the shitstorm (excuse me) associated with telling my parents that I don't want this, and that I would rather live a life helping others through spirit and psychic art while dishing out my own creative material on the side. 

And what's worse? As my dad left my room this morning, he said, "Stew on it during this quarter, and then we'll talk about it later."

Because - you know - I love hearing that from him. It reminds me of October, when I had the "big talk" with my parents that ultimately reduced me to tears (and made me feel quite embarrassed and belittled). 

It's a crap feeling to know your path, but to be told that it's unrealistic. Maybe "financial security" isn't something we should be pursuing. But that's irrelevant to the topic of this post. So now, I have a task. And that task is to decide whether I really want to finish school and head into a corporate illustration career to make my parents happy and worry-free. In my head, this is a no-brainer, but it's obviously a lot more complicated than that. Not being in school and not having a "financially secure" corporate job would make my living arrangements quite different. The whole parents-living-overseas thing is up in the air, too, because of my parents' conflicted feelings (my dad made the mistake of saying if he were single, he'd be overseas in a heartbeat). 

And, of course, it comes down to a big fat question: what would I be doing to earn money?

I could think of a small handful of things. Readings would be high on the list. Spirit art and the like. Becoming more of a professional blogger (which would also mean I couldn't feature some of my favorite artists anymore). Working at a shop like P&D. Doing commissions. Producing my own creative material (selling prints, artbooks, etc.). Teaching (something like online workshops for a small fee). Writing... although this would be more long-term. 

But you know? Idealistic and unrealistic as it may sound, at least I would be happy. Yes, it'd be nice to have money flowing, but I'd be doing exactly what I wanted, and so long as I had the cash to eat and maintain the necessities, I wouldn't care whether I had enough to splurge on things. To be honest, I don't even splurge all that much. And what do I splurge on? Art stuff, mainly. And tarot decks. Art supplies... but those don't count because the majority of that crap is used for school.

There's also a bit of stuff I could sell, like old art or books or trinkets I don't need. 

Man. I knew I couldn't hide from this forever. I'm going to have to start consulting with people again - get their opinions. My guiding energies have been telling me to do what makes me happy for the longest time... but I need other perspectives. This is a huge decision that will ultimately decide how I live and where I'll be in the next few years... so I need to be wise about this. 

In the meantime, I have schoolwork to do. Unfortunately, I don't feel like doing any of the assignments. One's a vector illustration in Illustrator (agh), one's another response paper, and the other is an illustrated recipe. Hm. I guess I could work on that... it's due before the other two things.

Off I go.