For years, I found this blog to be a place where I formed ideas, forged ideas and honed ideas. Of course, for years it was about writing, which was who I was then. To put it into perspective, I began this blog just over a year after leaving Goddard College with my MFA in creative writing. I began this blog shortly after leaving my briefest of stints as an adjunct instructor of writing. I began this blog, officially, less than one month after the first issue of Umbrella Factory Magazine. I was still in the process of becoming what I would ultimately become.
Fast forward a decade. I had had a few movies made from my screenplays, two novels published, I worked a couple of writing coops and I had more short stories published than I would care to count. Admittedly, I had decided to quit this blog almost five years before I finally ended things on April 20, 2020, ten years to the day from when I began it. I guess I figured that I had said what I was going to say and there was nothing else I really wanted to explore, and sadly, there was nothing more I really wanted to write. I wrote all of the 2019 posts together over a period of a few weeks. I added the 8 posts for 2020 around this time too, and I scheduled the last 58 posts sometime in the waning weeks of 2018. Then, I did not look back. Obviously, I did not remove this blog, but I did think about it.
Coming back to this blog was something that occurred to me on a walk around the neighborhood shortly before I left my restaurant job early this month. I thought, what an interesting prospect it will be to come off a lifetime working in a restaurant, a detox if you will, and write about it. And I got eight posts into it and decided that eight posts were enough. I may still be a writer, but I am no longer a waiter and I don't think that there is anything more to say about that.
A few years ago, I was looking at program catalog for Front Range Community College. I had looked through the Graphic Design program and thought how very cool it all looked. What I couldn't justify at the time, of course, was the money to go back to school. At that point I already had two degrees and a certificate that I was not using. I couldn't justify the cost only because I feared that at the end of the program I would still be a waiter. Officially, there is nothing wrong with being a waiter.
Two years back in January 2020, Janice got a job a Front Range and one of the perks of the job is tuition reimbursement for her dependents. Suddenly the idea of getting into this program seemed like a lot more reasonable thing to do. We decided that it was a worthwhile pursuit, and we decided that it could be something achievable both with where our family schedules and finances were. Janice has always hated our opposite schedules.
Then COVID came. I was furloughed mid March 2020 before I even knew what was happening. I started the Multimedia Graphic Design program August 2020. I was out of work for eleven months. When I finally went back to work in the restaurant, I did so only very grudgingly. I knew it was work I could do without much thought and it would not interfere with my studies. And I committed myself to a year of doing it.
I have very few classes left to take to finish this program. And it wasn't until this semester that I started to think of myself as a graphic designer. There will be more time to talk about what I'm doing in school, and what I want to do in life. If I give this a decade, like I did with the blog, who knows what I'll become by then. And the last thought is about this blog, what I'm doing and who I am. I have always preferred the process to the product with my creative endeavors. I do feel a little more sense of urgency with this latest endeavor, but I am a little more centered on the product than I used to be. I still believe in the process. So, I hope to chronicle the process here.
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