pwacticing da counting

i often feel like i need to be doing more with my life.

i don't know if this is healthy ambition, unhealthy ambition, me being called to fulfill my true potential, or me doing too much thinking and not enough doing.  i suppose i'm having a third-life crisis.  no, not a mid-life crisis (because knowing my luck, i'll live until i'm 100); not a quarter-life crisis (because i don't forsee surviving to blow out 120 candles).  approximately one-third of my life is over, and it's freaking me the fuck out.

i mean, i just ate a chocolate chip cookie and hardly really tasted it.  i'm going to need to get my act together if i plan on making the other two-thirds of my years count.

i know part of it is the pressure of our culture: pressure to have a retirement fund set up by age 25 and a college fund for your kid 10 years before you have her.  i don't even want kids, but i feel guilty for having all of $400 in the bank and a crappy credit score.  i guess i can thank my family for my financial retardation...and since i'm not having any kids, my bad money karma can die with me and that will be the end of it.

i really should just be amazed that i made it this far.  everyone here knows that i attempted suicide, landed in the hospital for anorexia, blahblah blah blah blahblah...but instead of feeling like a superhero for being able to eat peanut butter and avocados without having a mental breakdown, i feel like a 17-year-old trapped in a 30-year-old's body, a girl who just figured out what everyone else was practically born knowing.  i can't even figure out relationships for buddha's sake (although i know some 50-year-olds who still can't quite get it).  there are people 5 years my junior who are running startups they'll be ready to sell by 2017...i have been putting off fixing my brakes for so long that i'd rather run the risk of a ticket for rolling through a stop sign than endure the embarrassing looks from pedestrians as my shrieking bansheemobile pulls up to the crosswalk, shattering a few storefront windows in the process.  i don't know why i feel that car maintenance is a microcosmic metaphor for life, but i just do.  so there.

thank god for graduate school and doctoral programs, because at least i can go to school for the rest of my life, rack up debt and avoid having to figure out what to do with myself.

yeah, i sound a little bitter and depressed.  sorry.  transitions were never easy for me, and the move is having a delayed effect on my stress levels.  i broke up with my ex because i wanted more space.  now i'm in the center of a gaping abyss with a dinosaur of a laptop checking into my Facebook profile page every 10 minutes.  it's just sad.  i should at least go to cafes and check Facebook...because when you're on a laptop at a cafe, you always look very busy and important, even if you're watching the latest episode of Baman Piderman.

what?  you haven't seen ANY episodes of Baman Piderman?  christ, man, click here.

anyway, i wish i had some uplifting conclusion to this post...but i don't.  i'm going to pick the cookie crumbs out of my teeth and try to recapture the taste so i can make the 100 calories i just ingested count for something.

yo! ganesh!

hi again...

well, i don't have the discipline to to anything consistently...why should blogging be any different?

UC Berkeley's application is due on the 14th.  i HATE writing artist statements.  it all ends of sounding like too much sugary icing on cake.  but i don't have the cojones to write it all raw.  i need to stop censoring myself: i'm not my mother, after all.

in other developments, i seem to have slowed down the post-move binge-purge cycle.  i think a lot of it had to do with all the hiking and Bikram (tm) yoga i was doing.  now that my hamstring is re-injured, i'll have to find another outlet...like...painting, perhaps?

i'm so mad at myself for not having a new piece to flesh out my portfolio.  four months i had to get something done!  it's close to completion, but not 10-days-close.  or is it?  if i can sweat it out for 90 minutes in a 110-degree sauna doing deep backbends and balancing in vrksasana, i can probably do anything.  in fact, i know i can.

i am my own worst enemy; and my biggest obstacle.  i need a giant elephant-headed deity to "kick the living shit outta me."

crossroads

just when i felt i had the next 3 years of my life roughly planned out, BOOM!

but isn't that the story of my life?

so, it's back to researching grad schools.  what do i want out of a graduate program?  wouldn't i be content to paint commissions, teach yoga part time and live from paycheck to paycheck, worrying about whether or not my car will make the drive home from work each time?

ANSWER: not really.

i'm hungry to learn.  i need to manage my time better.  i want to see India and the Galapagos Islands and the Great Barrier Reef before i die, and for that i need time and money.  it would also be fantastic to have a car that doesn't require duct tape to hold it together.  an MFA is my meal ticket.  plus, if i don't find an art community where i'm going, i'm afraid i'll eventually lose interest in making art.

The candidates:

(1)  UC Berkeley, MFA Art Practice.  expensive, competitive, deep in the heart of Hippieland.  i would definitely fit in at Berkeley, but my undergrad experience at UCSD was less than awesome.  i get my own studio, but i won't be able to rely on public transportation to get there.  way to "go green," Berkeley.

(2)  California College of the Arts, MFA Fine Arts.  ridiculously expensive, 24-hour access to my own studio in San Francisco proper.  i like the fact that i won't just be investing in more figure drawing and landscape painting courses...they ask questions like, "So, i can paint...what now?  How is this relevant to a world in which most people have never heard of Betye Saar?"

(3)  California Institute of Integral Studies, MFA Creative Inquiry.  vague, but interesting title.  less expensive than CCA, but no studio space.  Not your typical art school snobbery, this program is similar to the one at JFKU, my first choice.

(4)  Academy of Art University, San Francisco, MFA Painting.  this is a long program (3 years).  no studio space.  rolling admissions mean i don't have to wait an entire year to start.  the electives don't sound all that fascinating.

(5)  Stanford University, MFA Art Practice.  UBER-COMPETITIVE!  Only 5 of 125 applicants are accepted.  GRE is required for admission (but scores are not considered...do i even have to pass?) and expensive to apply.  if accepted, tuition is paid IN FULL through fellowships and work-study.  i could be a teacher before getting a job as a teacher.  possibly no social life.

i guess i'm looking for a institution where i can balance alone-time in my studio with stimulating discussion in the classroom.  i'd like to build on my technical skills, but be encouraged to remain a human being who can hold a conversation with someone at a party.  i want to feel prepared when i hand my resume to the department chair at the University of Awesomeness Where I'd Like to Spend the Next 10 Years of My Life Teaching.  i want to feel supported, but challenged.  i want to find my niche.

all of this reflection on my life and my future is freaking me the hell out.  i ate chocolate for breakfast AND second lunch. (don't worry; i also ate a banana and some high-fiber bread.  lots of water.)  good thing it's friday.  i could use a dip in the pool and possibly some green vegetables.

speaking of food, i can't remember the last time i purged.  i'm pretty sure it has been more than a month...go, me!  if i could get As in my undergrad classes at UCSD while i was brainstarved and on the verge of heart attack, who knows how i might perform at Stanford...



* influential mixed-media artist from the Feminist Art Movement of the 1960s and 70s.  gurrrlllll, shoot.