1st oil painting
I have worked full time since i was 16 years old for the most part. I have taken college classes before, aquired 94 credit hours and no degree;however i have never “went to college” There is a huge difference in taking college classes and actually going to college. Both are difficult and include mountians of problems. The main difference to me is the focus. When you are trying to go to college and raise a family, and work a full time job you are peice milling your self and time out. I admire those like my sister julia who manage to be able to work like that and make the eventual summit. By that i mean she did aquire her degree. Focus divided 18 directions did not work for my life all the times i took classed before. It was great but it was always a cheat. The amount of time and energy to do one thing successfully kept making me crazy when i was trying to do 18. The skill set to stay focused and not deprive either my child or my JOB kept me from obtaining my degree.
So we fast forward into 2012, my second child has turned 11, my oldest is 24, and i find my self like many for individual reasons, UNEMPLOYED. I wont go into the labor of telling the tale of the past few months that led me here, but i am here. I am here, I am flat broke, I have a grade school aged child, and yes I am in college.
The worst part of this is that I chose NOT to drop all my classes, the deadline is past and I still dont know if my federal aid will arrive soon, if at all. The best part of this is that I am in College!
I can’t even begin to express how stressed out that makes me, I stress therefore I know I am still breathing. On the flip side of it all, after I made the decision NOT to give up the only dream I have at the moment and stick it out,(I needed 24 hours to allow that reality to settle in) I went to classes Thursday still stressed and sick to my stomach, but excited to be there.
That is a whole other file of goodies to explore. For example, I was excited to be there yet feel GUILTY for feeling excited. Yes you have it people. I feel guilty for being excited for being in college. Why? Well if you are and have been the entire support of your family for as long as I have you would not need the WHY. For those of you who need the why. Because it is selfish of me even though I am unemployed to put myself in school when the soul provider for my family is unemployed.
The best part of thursday? I was at school. I was allowed..no ENCOURAGED, to work on my clay sculpture for THREE uninterupted hours. I was allowed. I got to sculpt in clay, preparing this is neccesary because next week I will be allowed to make a plaster mold of the sculpture. Which will lead me to make my first real glass work ever. Can you believe it they are going to let me do these things? I am allowed….even better I was ENCOURAGED to dive in and have at it. Which I happily did. That is not to say that there still are not problems ahead, I am dreadfully behind in my mathmatics, and even though I am enjoying my humanities class, “the ethics of morality”, ( as if my life is not a class in that already) I have a great deal of work to do here. Do you want to hear about my painting class?
My last clas of the day is Oil Painting 101 , baasicly to learn how to mix color, apply the paint, and really learn to SEE the work you are making. To train yourself to see what is really there is going to be a big part of this class. We have been working on a black and white still life. It is not my 1st choice in subject matter, and well I am all about color usually. However being locked down with three colors is in a way freeing, it is challening but the simplicity of it was freeing. Now I have never really worked in oils so I was very excited about that, and more importantly I was allowed to PAINT!.. oh YES there is guilt in this pleasure. They allowed and encouraged to paint for three and a half hours at a go! Although I did not create what I would call a master piece of work, I had the chance to paint in a nice block of time.. I wont go into the ongoing saga of being almost fifty in a class full of eight-teen to twenty somethings at this time because of course this is all about the joy and the guilt, not the young and unpleasant! I will give them a break and not harp on them right now.
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Tags: art, crazythoughts, get inspired about you, life, messy life
