No more stress! Huzzah! Wait...

I had the last final of the longest, hardest, most rewarding, most tearful semester ever today.  I AM  DONE.

This was taken during a low point in the semester when I went around half the day with my sweater  inside out, and then after realizing this, removing it, and putting it on right side out, I went around for the rest of the day with it buttoned very wrong. The arm is my boyfriend holding me so he could send a picture to my mom. They tell me they love me, but I'm beginning to wonder if that's really why I'm kept around.

there is no such thing as free

Okay.  So, I've never actually been paid for any design/arty work I've done.  In my defense, I've only been doing arty stuff for like a year, and only with moderate confidence for like a month.  But!  I've had a slight disappointment today in regards to some free work I did and what they are (or more specifically, are not) doing with it, and I've realized that I need to make some rules for myself if I'm going to keep doing free work.

(And these rules apply after I've consulted the "Should I Work for Free" flowchart and it's a YES.)

1. You may not agonize unduly over the work.

2. You may not let free work get in the way of normal work you have to do.  Free work is the lowest priority, unless it's for something extremely important or a lot of people will see it.

3. You may not spend lots of money on free work.  Strive to spend no money, if possible.

4. You may not spend an unreasonable amount of time on free work, unless, again, it is extremely important or being viewed by many eyeballs.

5. Because it is free work, you will not subject yourself to too much direction or interference. If they want you to do work for no pay, regard it as a chance to have complete freedom with what you make.

6. Free work should be completed as quickly as possible. The more time it is left undone, the more time you have to think about it and let it worry you. Fast turnover is required.

7. Even if it's for a good cause, or a family member or some other deserving person, you are allowed to say NO.

okay... thanks mom

After seeing all the work it entailed, I decided a while ago that I probably wouldn't do scrapbooking. Ever.  I'm too self-critical and changeable, and I thought I'd always be making a page and then hating it and ripping it out. I told myself it was cheesy.

But when I started flipping through our family scrapbooks the other day, looking for a picture to draw for illustration class, I ended up sitting on the floor for like an hour and a half. 

 I never looked nice as a baby.

 Odd bonding between enemies over the automatic cat litter box.

 Bowling league. I thought that headband-scarf (the kind you tied round your head with little strings - remember?) made me the hottest thing on the planet.

 Sewing gone wrong.

 Childhood triumphs.

Grandpas.

Actually, scrapbooks are great.
Mom? I'm about to say your favorite words:

You were right and I was wrong.

Magic Mouthwash and bleh.

Glorious, isn't it?

You know, you'd think being sick for a long, long time would have a great number of benefits.  Lots of nice food.  Parents and boyfriend waiting on you obligingly.  Lying in bed and daydreaming that you're a consumptive poet whose greatness will only be realized after your tragically young death.

But there are a surprising number of cons.

1. People don't wait on you.  Nor are you allowed to stay in bed for long. Very selfishly, people forget that you're ill and give you homework  or make you contribute to the communal living experience and do things like clean up after yourself.

2. You're all weak and tired and then all your relatives and friends who aren't weak and tired go to the rock climbing gym all the time without you and get WAY better at climbing than you.  Which just makes you feel worse about yourself.

3. You wear the same pair of socks like five days in a row because you're sleep deprived and forget to change them. And then you loose friends (the definition of friends being people willing to come within a ten-foot radius of you).

But, quite seriously, I've been ill for over three months now with a tenacious and sometimes dreadful viral infection.  I shan't go into details, but let me just say that cold sores (or whatever they are) can do fantastically hideous things to you if they want to. Keep on their good side.

The only really enjoyable part of the whole ordeal so far was when during a visit my doctor said, "Okay, I'm going to prescribe you some magic mouthwash." I started to grin but realized he was perfectly serious.  And when I got the prescription? Printed on the side was:
MAGIC MOUTHWASH. GARGLE TWICE DAILY.

Dinnertime

I'm beginning to suspect that people ask me to cook solely for the entertainment value.  These:

were supposed to be pancakes.  And, quite honestly? They look better in the picture than they did in real life.

Painty clothes and bruised knees, essentially.

It's been too long.  I feel an agonizingly long-winded UPDATE ON MY LIFE twitching in my finger tips! Can't... can't!  Too laaaaate!

So.

Hello, my name is Kelsey.

I am 22 years old.  I go to college, which is fun about 57% of the time.  I think that's not a bad percentage, really. Lately I have been making things like suits made of dried-out sanitizing wipes and fake wooden moose heads (like the sort hunters mount on their walls after they've, uh, shot them.)
This is art, apparently.

(This shoe made of wire is art also, from what I understand.)

Recently I realized that I will never make good art if I try to force myself to be all serious and deep about it.  I like funny things. And if, by some chance, the stuff I make gives somebody else a laugh... well, I can't think of a reaction I'd enjoy more. 

One of the weirdest things that's kind of happened, and which I have not even mentioned here, is that basically I rock climb now. 

See? That's me a few months ago. Climbing (not particularly well, but climbing) at a fancy schmancy gym in St. Louis. 

I never would have imagined that someday I'd get into this sport. Heck, I didn't know it was a sport. 

But I think I can consider myself into it. I have shoes and a harness and a chalk bag and a carabiner from when my dad climbed in the 80's that makes a horrible "skree" sound every time you open and close it (and, as a result, is never actually used).  I'm getting better at it. I go at least three times a week when I can.  I rattle off jargon. It's bizarre. Mainly because I'm, quite honestly, a deeply lazy person.  

I think one of the key factors in the quite miraculous way I've stuck with climbing, besides that it's not competitive and doesn't require spandex, is that climbers are fantastic. And when I say "fantastic" I mean WEIRD.  Climbing is kind of a fringe sport, and so it seems to attract the oddest array of characters. At the local gym I climb at, we have a 16-year-old yoga instructor (who only began yoga because he broke his back playing serious football), a linguistics-anthropology major who talks like a moronic surfer, and a 40 year-old Frenchman named Jose.  Basically, it's marvelous.  I'm becoming intimately acquainted with the "lower leisure class" as my boyfriend calls them - people who work just enough to fund weekly trips to climbing areas and the purchasing of gear. They're a remarkably happy lot. 

And it seems to be doing me some good. Besides climbing with a fair amount of frequency and going vegan a few weeks ago, I've changed nothing, and I've lost 20-ish pounds.  Today I wore pants I haven't fitted into since I was 15. They were a little tight, but it was worth it. 

SO! That's where I've been lately. It's been very, very good. 

What about you, mate? 

No Nose-Picking

A little ways back, I was in an art rut.   I was whining.  I said I didn't think I could do it, blah blah blah. But! Jessica suggested a project to do that would make me feel better. And guess what?  I did it! And it did make me feel better.

This is a cruddy screen-shot of the completed poster, but if anyone desires, I would be more than happy to send a high-quality PDF whizzing through space to their inbox. It's your typical poster size - 18x24, if I recall correctly.

The lesson to learn from this:
I SHOULD WHINE ALL THE TIME!  Commenting makes people feel good (which means I should do it more often, because I often want to and don't) and can help them more than you'd think.