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10 February 1999
Is this all there is in my professional life? Entering numbers, verifying addresses, telling eejits how to mark a message as unread in Microsoft Outlook? Good Lord, people....
RIGHT CLICK!
This can't be all that I'm capable of. Dang it, I can feel an artist inside me trying to claw its way out like the monster in Alien. What I do requires manual dexterity and the ability to read numbers, and only a very little bit of what I know about computers. I wish I could just look on my job as a way to earn money, rather than as an extension of myself, but believe it or not, I actually care about what I spend 1/3 of my life doing.
There are so many wonderful, creative things I'd rather be doing, like sewing or embroidery, weaving, working on web sites, calligraphy, learning to do illumination, learning to do scrapbooks (archival preservation is a good thing), learning to dye and paint fabric... I could make money doing all these things, but I am just no good at marketing and pricing. Not to mention I don't think I'm good enough yet. The scrapbook gig could actually be very profitable, I bet.
My grandmother had a boatload of photos she kept in a lovely little chest. Many of them are from the '30's and '40's -- there's even one of her feeding a bottle to my dad. These photos really should be preserved. (Diane adds another project to the list.) I'd love to calligraph the captions and stories about the pictures. Would that I had thought of this project when she was still alive -- in many cases, she's the only one who knew who the people in the photos were!
Maybe when I have kids I'll be able to stay home withthem and do all those things. I dream of a well-lit room with hardwood floors, with space for a cutting table and two sewing machines and fabric and notion storage and a big floor loom and a rocking chair by the window. All my projects will be organized, I'll always be able to find my spool of black thread, and I can sit in the rocking chair and embroider pretty things.
Not what you'd expect from a 10-year military veteran and and brown belt in karate, is it?
I don't think I'm turning out to be what anyone was expecting.
Not even me.