A Realization...

"Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
                                                                                      - Henry David Thoreau

This desire for moral reform through the mere act of being 'awake' is a call to arms that dates all the way back to 1846. There is an even greater need now, for those who are able, to stand out among the slumberers. I feel as though the search for meaning in this life and the desire to satisfy the human spirit began as an answer to this call and now has become so abstract and 'spiritual' that people forget that it is the concreteness of this world that demands this exploration. They key to defining our physical existence on this earth and the relationships that we have with others and with nature and with God is to realize first that we are individual and alone in our experience. Not to say that we should all go live in a cabin in the woods by ourselves but that our personal experiences in these relationships is one hundred percent unique. How we relate to this physical world in unlike the experience of any other person, plant or animal. Our human qualities, our internal and external features, our past experiences and our anticipated goals all help to shape this individualized vantage point from which we view the world. Because of this, each person has the ability to effect change in a completely new way. In order to accomplish this change we need to wake up. We need to stop searching for the metaphysical meaning in this life and begin living tangibly in it. The first step toward absolute "wide-awakeness" is first realizing that we are asleep.

Drastic Measures Don't always work...

Change, for the right reasons can be a great and necessary thing. It teaches you to re-evaluate your current situation. Sometimes it can really make you appreciate things in life before you made the change. Sometimes, however, it puts you at such a distance from your old routine that you can look on it with new eyes and see it from a perspective that makes you realize just how stuck you were. Moving to Thailand was both of those things for me. I felt like the work that I was doing was significant and I was actually making some money doing what I love and then I hit a wall. I hit a wall creatively and strategically. I had started doing a lot of commissioned work for friends, and then friends of friends and it was spiraling in the right direction and then it came to a halt. My creative rut and my occupational rut came together and formed a trench with walls that needed scaling. I reached a point that most of us artists reach and had the brilliantly conventional idea that maybe I should teach. I can't seem to baby step my way into life altering decisions so I decided that the best way to figure out if I was a teacher at heart was to move to the middle of nowhere Thailand and teach english to five year olds. What I learned instead was that I have a ridiculous fear of small lizards and that I definitely do not want to teach five year olds. It was a great experience and I learned so much about myself and all of that reflective meandering but I wasn't on the same commitment level that some of my colleagues in the field were. Some of them are still there teaching and have found their way into great, high paying jobs and some of them went home and furthered their education. I went straight back to the bar. I was so broke and in dire emotional need of a comfortable, ego-stroking environment that I went straight back to place I clawed my way out of.

My Anuban kids (Kindergarten) learning english songs.
Alright, a lot of it was very rewarding.

Introduction

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. - John Krakauer, Into the Wild

This blog, though applicable to many, is for you the painter, the graphic designer, the sculptor, the photographer, the woodworker, the writer, the film maker, and yes... even you the actor. It's for anyone who has been pinballing between the pursuit of their craft and paying the bills. It is NOT for the hobbyist. It is not for the CPA who likes to dabble in carpentry. It is not for the financial adviser who just picked up a paintbrush, or the day trader taking improv classes. It is for those of you who aren't quite sure how to live in this world as fully functioning, self-sufficient adult while also advancing your career in the arts. While I have a certain admiration for the 'starving artist' who is so committed to their work that they don't mind falling below the poverty line, I have a passion for good whiskey that runs deep. I enjoy nice dinners and good wine and an in-unit washer and dryer. This is not to say that I am above making sacrifices for the pursuit of something greater but I've met my Ramen Noodle quota for a lifetime. I have been in love with art since I can remember and knew that is where I belonged since eighth grade. We were working with watercolor in art class at school and I was working on a piece that I was so proud of. I couldn't sleep every thursday night in anticipation of Friday's class. I would literally have dreams about what I would do next with the piece. Still today I love the work that I create and I still sometimes dream about it. I will continue to create until I find my voice and what it is that I want to say in this world. The unfortunate reality is that we still have to pay our rent and our electric bills.

The service industry in particular is a world teeming with artists of all kinds facing this exact conflict. Working in a bar started out as a convenient way to support myself in my twenties while struggling my way through art school. Let's face it, you spend most of your twenties in a bar anyways, you might as well get paid for it. I got hooked. As a 21 year old I struggled and definitely had too much fun but I soon fell in love this industry and I wanted to learn. I wanted to know more. I grew up in a family that had always been employed in the hospitality industry and knowing the importance of good customer service and how to provide it is in my blood. It is something I am good at. I found that if you want it, there is a whole world of opportunity in this business. I learned how to make drinks from being an astute observant cocktail server and always asking questions and when I finally made it behind the bar I thought I had achieved something so great. There was, however, always another level of knowledge that I wanted to reach. I fell into this world head first. There are so many places, career wise, that you can go within this realm yet something kept me behind the bar. Although there were so many things that I thought I could improve and change on another level, I never went fully into management. Something held me back. We could get into my paralyzing fear of commitment here but I won't. Creating art was always my first love and I needed it. No matter how much I loved the bar industry it was just a supplement to get me where I needed to go in my creative endeavors. Instead of being a supplement, it became the focus. In my head it was to pay the bills while I pursued the other but somewhere it got all jumbled up.

Two years ago I came to this realization. I have always thought of myself as a skilled high-volume bartender and it was a gradual series of events and decisions that resulted in a low that totally caught me off guard. It made me realize just where I was in my life and how far I had veered off of the very ambiguous course that I had laid out for myself. It was some generic weekday that could have been any of the five and I was working a shift at a bar in downtown Chicago. I was in the process of listing off side item options to a guest at my bar, which I've done 7,000 times, yet somehow this time was different. I choked on the words coming out of my mouth. I was a talented, independent, twenty-nine year old female and the only reason the words 'Tater' and 'Tots' should come out of my mouth is if I'm serving them to my kids (Which I don't have and that will be filed away with the paralyzing fear of commitment and addressed at a later date). The work I was doing to supplement my art and become my priority and my original passion had been severely neglected. In order to rediscover this passion, drastic measures had to be taken, and that's how I found myself living alone, in Kamphaeng-Phet, Thailand.