Existential Crisis

Some days I feel the need to wax philosophically. Today is one of those days.

I'm feeling most displeased with my life today. Maybe it's the shitty conference call this morning, maybe it's Monday, a side-effect of the sleeping pills, the disappointinly short life-span of my BlackBerry battery. Maybe it's my unintentionally orange hair. I don't know. But I find myself sitting here at 2:41 pm questioning my life goals.

All of my life I have wanted to build things. I'm not even going to pretend I'm good enough at math to be an architect. I didn't feel I was pretentious to be an interior designer (thank you, silly world views of youth) So I picked door number 3. Exhibit Design: the bastard love child of architecture, marketing and interior design. I love it. It loved me. I thought I'd be happy doing this the rest of my days.

Today I'm not so sure. I blame my school for punching out as many graduates as possible, without properly preparing us for the real world. I mean, really preparing us. My education has to base in reality. There are no rules, regulations. Shit, even gravity doesn't seem to apply. When I stood up in front of the class to present my designs, no one questioned: how does it stand? How are you going to get electricity to those strangely placed light fixtures? For this I blame my teacher, that tie-died hippy in the corner who never taught us anything at all. We were given access to a 3D progam and told "have fun!" Never did we have to work within a budget, or in a group. It was all fantasy. It was all sunshine blown up our butts from the faculty telling us how amazing we were and that the world will love us.

So now I'm sitting at a shitty intern desk wondering if this is really what I want to do with the rest of my life. There is no sunshine. There is no fantasy. There is a 10x20 foot booth and a $15,000 budget, which really doesn't buy you more than a square of carpet and a tin of sardines.

If I stay here I'll barter in my soul and creative vision in trade for a project and a few extra buck. I'll become a marketing whore.

Wow. That was really emo of me. Excuse me while I go cut on myself for a minute.

Like I said, this is just a shitty day. And it's probably this project, which I haven't been feeling from day one. Tomorrow I'll probably love my life again. But I'll still be disappointed with my BB battery and my hair.

Cheers,
Alette


The Artist is nothing without the Gift. but the Gift is nothing without the Work.