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Busy weekend! Well...weekend for me. I had Monday/Tuesday off this week, and went up to visit family, then opened this morning, and have been caught up in a thousand other things, so I feel like I've been neglecting you, LJ. I'm sorry!

I'll have pictures soon. Tomorrow we look at two venues: Stuart Avenue Inn (outdoor venue) and the Kalamazoo Institute of Art (indoor venue). I got the KIA package in the mail today...I'm not sure if it's better or worse than I anticipated. I think better, but we'll find out tomorrow, hopefully.

Okay...photos transferred from camera to computer, so now I have an empty camera for tomorrow. Wish us luck!

hahahahaha...

One of my good friends, Will, did this for a film class. A short PSA regarding plastic bag pollution. Absolutely hysterical.

*headdesk*

I have such an obscene amount of pictures to resize, upload, and then post from this past week.

I'm going to ignore the above for a moment and work on answering a question from that meme:

The meme, if any of you want to join in...

Everyone has things they blog about.

Everyone has things they don't blog about.

Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on lima beans, favourite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. I reserve the right to filter appropriately.

From literaryradical:
Immoderate thoughts on ART and being an ARTIST while having a day job.

I told her I was completely the wrong person to ask about this right now, but I thought I'd give it a shot...and it's certainly something I kinda hate to think about right now, so it's definitely "out of my comfort zone" ;-)

The past couple of years have been a little bit difficult for me. I'm finished with school as much as I want to be right now, and I've been attempting to settle into some form of career I enjoy. I lovelovelove the restaurant business, and I enjoy learning the ins and outs of said business so that I can work towards opening my own place someday far down the road. Right now, unfortunately, that means I've been seriously neglecting my art side.

Now, art comes in many different forms. Some people are photographers, some are painters, some are writers, some are singers or dancers or actors or...well...you get the idea. I am not at all an artist in the visual arts ways. I have no eye for photography (if I get a brilliant shot it's pure luck) and I can't draw or paint to save my life. As much as I liked to pretend I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid (and despite all the encouragement I got for it from family and teachers), I was never meant for it. When I was little I read and read and read and read and read. I tried to write like the books I loved. The books were my main outlet for creativity--my imagination was wild and vivid. As I started to get a little bit older I fell into dance and singing and later into theatre.

These areas are where I truly excelled.

I never had a real job in high school because my time was mauled by ballet classes and rehearsals for plays and musicals. In college I extended this to belly dance and directing and honest-to-god voice lessons for the first time in my life. I also spent lots of time at local museums and such.

As my time at school ended I fell out of the loop. I couldn't pay for classes involving the above with student loans and for degree credit, and I had to start paying back those student loans and learn how to be an honest-to-goodness grown up. I wasn't working 9-5 jobs, and I was often working two jobs, and I can't stand much of the theatre in this city anyway, so theatre fell by the wayside. I haven't acted or directed since I finished school. I haven't taken a dance class since I started belly dancing my sophomore year (it's impossible to take classes of any sort on the schedule I have to go by). I haven't seriously sung since my sophomore year of college. I lost my art.

I tried to keep up with side projects that may or may not ever really happen (research/prompt book for Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, for example), but moving every couple of months and constantly trying to find a new place to live and driving hours upon hours to visit Dan every week or two and trying to keep my head above water in learning new things and doing side projects for a job where I already work 10+ hours per day at the restaurant itself have really taken their toll. I haven't picked up that script or prompt book for probably two years, for example.

In addition to all of this I have a very thirsty religious side that gets precious little sustenance. Those of you who know me know that my religious leanings follow the deities of Olympus. I've fallen into rhythms with my practices and set goals to keep in regards to them which I get good at starting, but then I move and everything I've done falls fast apart. These are all reasons why I'm so anxious to find a place to call "home" for real for a while. Once I'm stable and can fall into rhythms with everything I can find time for things like yoga or dance or even just seeing plays or musicals or going to museums. It's also very difficult to schedule in time for Dan while trying to do all of this. It's very difficult for me to say no to going out with him and his friends because it's the only time I ever have to see him, and when I start saying no for my own sanity (I hate spending so much time out) his feelings get hurt and he thinks I don't want to see him. On top of all of this, trying to find time to visit with friends even once a month becomes exceedingly difficult, but I feel like a terrible person if I don't find that time somewhere.

Balancing all of this has been atrocious, to say the least. I had lost all semblance of the artist I was, and the only thing I had to focus on was the desire to someday own my own restaurant to design and train and create. It's been that bright point of light so far down the tunnel I hardly can see it sometimes. Now, of course, I'm attempting to plan a wedding, also. I've kinda thrown myself head-first into it because it's a chance to flex my creative side and my artistic fingers. I get to play director again, really. I'm forming and guiding and researching and piecing together all these random elements into one lovely show, so to speak. Aside from the occasional piece of work I do on my website, this is my one single creative outlet right now. This I can do mostly on my own time, and I'm gulping it down like a near-death hiker in the middle of the desert who just found an oasis lake. This is exceedingly important to me right now.

So...as far as balancing art with a "day job"...I haven't figured out how to do it. I honestly think I could figure it out pretty easily if I were a M-F 9-5 day job (in fact, I had myself doing yoga classes on a regular basis and was thinking about starting ballroom dance classes before I started managing), but my job involves 9:30-8:30/11-10/3-12am shifts so scattered you can hardly imagine it...and so I don't right now. Instead I watch my friends who can, and I strive towards a time where I can make the time to balance everything I need to. It doesn't help with the balancing that my self-discipline is shit...lol I get so overwhelmed with everything I want to do and everything I should be doing that I just...don't. I don't do any of it. At all.

And it's been an exhausting day, so I'm going to go to sleep now.