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A girl living, loving and writing in Los Angeles.
August Listening
August Reading
Favorite Places
Copyright 2001 - 2008 by Ann, unless otherwise noted.
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Day in the Life of...
7AM: Wake up.
8:30AM: Drive to school.
9 - 11AM: Photo class. (cancelled, sleep in, whee!)
11:30 - 3:30PM: Teaching.
3:30 - 4PM: Meeting with coordinator.
5 - 7PM: Film screening for class (cancelled) -- so in lieu:
5:30 - 8PM: Printing in the darkroom.
8:30PM: Get home.
9 - 10PM: Dinner, check email, catch up with life.
10 - 10:30PM: Shower, prepare for tomorrow.
11PM - 1AM (?): Hang out with equally exhausted boy.
Rinse, repeat.
Life is pretty exhausting, but it keeps chugging along -- and now I can't believe that I am going to be graduating in 17 days! Hell yes!
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
"...it turns out the check really was in the mail."
SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). This is not a good time to be David battling Goliath. It takes more than a rock to bring the giant down now; strategize at night. On a financial note, it turns out the check really was in the mail.
I read that horoscope at the corner coffeeshop while waiting for my iced vanilla soy latte, and afterwards, fortuitously enough I checked the mailbox, and here was my paycheck for teaching photography.
Some of my favorite things about summer:
- farm fresh corn
- big plump juicy blackberries
- fruit salad (even though I sliced off the tip of my finger, resulting in a bandaid taped up like a hoodie)
- sunshine for miles
- hikes & picnics
- the cool breeze in palm trees
- pretty lush pink flowers
- summer film season (so far: X3: The Last Stand, Friends with Money)
- catching up with DVDs (so far: Ringu 0, Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil)
Lately I've been seeing all these blogs and books about how people had broken away from the corporate machine to "live their dreams", mostly summing up to pursuing creative endeavors. And then there is the breed of warm, inspiring women who have turned "stay-at-home-mom" into a financially rewarding endeavor -- women with their etsy shops and letter presses who craft beautiful objects and believe in socially responsible living.
I find myself somewhere between these lines. When I was younger, I never imagined my life past freshman year of college. Surprisingly, these last three years in which I was free-est from expectations have been where I have grown and beaten down paths I never would have dreamed of. As I was discussing with my favorite professor a few days ago, I would never have thought that I would be here -- a senior two weeks short of graduating, and a teaching artist extraordinare, with a resume listing references from an aquarium to a film production company, and in short, exactly the life I've wanted.
I've never taken the pragmatic route; I'm not going to business school or law school or medical school in the fall, I'm never going to dream of the corner office from my 90 degree angled cubicle, and the only kind of coats I own are in pink, pea, polka dot or houndstooth. But here I am, with a glorious summer rolling out lazily in front of me because I got to teach art, photography, and writing to 10 year olds and be paid well enough to support myself for three months + one move to another major city.
Though I've never worked for a paycheck, but for the love of the game, and believed that everything would be okay in the end as long as I kept doing everything true to my whole entire heart, here I am being able to support myself doing exactly what I love: art. & I didn't have to mis-step, listen to the pragmatists, waste time in pantsuits and cubicles. I have never, and will never, compromise myself. Learn to make that commitment to and trust yourself. And this paycheck, this summer, this move will be justification.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Friday Mornings
This morning I had 1.5 donuts and a bowl of blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries with plain nonfat yogurt (sweetened with vanilla extract and brown sugar). Man it's always such a struggle with me and donuts; I love them so dearly and they are so dainty and pretty, yet I know they are unforgivingly clogging up my veins and exponentially compounding on the fat tissue around my thighs as we speak. What a fascist food.
Last night I saw Friends with Money, which is Jennifer Aniston's latest project/tub of Ben&Jerry's substitute (fourth film since the big D) about wealthy people in west L.A. I adore Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, and Catherine Keener, so how could I not like it? It was so character driven and eloquently executed by the exquisite cast that I could ignore the fact that I got bored the last half hour in the subtleties of a film about "a slice of life". I want a gay husband. In fact, I want several.
Today I am going to:
- tutor workshop
- share donuts with my tutees
- watch Sacred Silence
- have dinner at one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants
- print a good series of photographs
- watch a movie
I'm sorely craving stuffed clams and writing fiction.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Chapter Three
I'm reveling in my first day off in what seems like months, due to a cancelled class and the fourth and fifth grades being away on a week long educational trip.
So far I've gone grocery shopping, chatted with a friend I haven't seen in awhile, and cleaned my glorious kitchen, which is where I'm set up right now with a few stacks of work and my laptop. I'm going to grade some papers, write up lesson plans for the next two weeks, and then make a kale salad.
The forecast is sunny blue skies and soft white clouds as far as the eye can see. And I'm enjoying learning to relax. Because I'm going to be doing this a lot the next two months; I've made a decision with much support from friends and family to take it easy this summer, and spend these two months detoxing and refocusing after finally finishing these 18 years of a structured educational system. I'm going to work part time, read a shit ton, write a lot, finish my novella, write a lot of letters, research grad schools, study for GREs, make tons of delicious salads, and run on the beach while it's still 2 blocks down.
Then I'm going to move up to start a love affair with Los Angeles, with one of my best friends and so much brimming potential for jobs, apartments, experiences, loves, new friends, and (my favorite) adventures. I am so ready to start the next chapter of my life.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
I am currently obsessed with Gnarls Barkley and TV on the Radio.
Monday, May 22, 2006
A Series of Unrelated Notes Composing A Life.
Lately the greyness in San Diego has made me miss London more than I ever had before. Sometimes I wish I'd studied in England for a year, instead of one term, though I wouldn't have had the chance to study in Cambridge (the university only has a summer term program) nor meet all the incredible people who have significantly and beautifully moved me forward. Just because I still feel like I left so much of England undiscovered, so many pebbles and doorways in Europe left unturned.
A couple years ago, my manager at a coffee shop had shared with me how in her early twenties she had come into a small inheritance and she blew the whole thing by picking up and moving to Paris for three months. All she did was live in a hotel suite with a kitchenette, smoked, drank wine, ate, read, wrote, and spent time in museums. I've made it a goal today to have a similar adventure in my twenties.
This past weekend I watched Art School Confidential, which was hilariously accurate yet stereotypical at the same time. I highly recommend it for anyone who is an artist, knows an artist, or mocks artists. Now I can't wait til Ryan goes to Cal Arts in the fall so that I can make up stories about all the characters that will come and go from his life.
I also had a secondary interview with a marketing company this weekend which resulted in my first post-college job offer. I indirectly declined by default since I am interviewing the rest of this week for other companies; but it was nice to receive affirmation that I am indeed going to succeed, at least financially, after college.
What surprised me more, though, than receiving a job offer, is that I had the self-resolve to actually turn it down because I knew it was something I didn't want to do with my time -- even though it was well-compensating and a well-established firm, the actual job itself was something that would not be satisfying to me. It's not snobbery; I don't think that the job is beneath me or anything of the sort, but I do know myself and know that it's something that I would not be satisfied doing, even if it is for two months.
So it's really satisfying to have an opportunity in which I received not only affirmation that I'm going to be just fine job-wise, but that through these past four years I didn't just become a product of corporate, consumerist America, I actually learned a lot about my self worth. And that is the most important thing to always remember in great times of change: don't underestimate yourself.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Practically Geriatric, or Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Super Rad (Reader's Choice)
1) Listening to NPR.
2) Even my teaching artist job is 9-5 (sometimes).
3) Waking up at 7:15 AM, even on weekends, even when hung over.
4) Eating dinner around 5 (sometimes).
5) My idea of fun is flea market hunting.
6) A subscription to Real Simple.
7) My spring break was spent learning how to play shuffleboard.
8) Something hurts somwhere, almost always.
9) Reading BBC news before thesuperficial.com and pinkisthenewblog.
10) My orthopedic pillow.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Ingredients for a Lovely Morning:
(from an illustrated list in my journal)
- One preplanned outfit, with big shoes to tower over the fifth graders today.
- Veggie Breakfast Pizza from Whole Foods
- All natural Daisy sugar cookies (frosted!)
- One really tall boyfriend making faces at you from the lane over.
- Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (I tend to hold onto things) on repeat.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Whatcha gonna do with your life?
No, your eyes are not deceiving you, I've upped the font size. A redesign is coming soon too, I want to be able to post larger sized photographs with each entry, but I still like flickr to do all the work for me.
Apologies that updates have been sparse and sporadic lately; it is indeed my last quarter in college and there are so many balls up in the air:
1) School: Advanced Camera Techniques, and my senior exit portfolio for photography. Italian Film class (relearning history from the Italian's point of view! Did you know Italian is not a real language but a standardized written form mandated by the Fascist government?)
2) Teaching: 4 fifth grade classes a photography and collage project; 1 fourth grade class through a digital photography/exhibit project. Yes, five elementary school classes. I never thought I would be an art teacher, yet it makes perfect sense.
3) Tutoring: lower-class(wo)men in Fiction.
4) Graduating
5) Cooking
6) Trying to keep up with reading
7) Crafting (minimally)
8) Cleaning, constantly, because the room is always a crazy mess from my running in and out.
9) Lots and lots of shows lately.
10) Work on novella.
11) Keeping time to see friends over lunches and tea.
12) Spending lots of time with the boy, who helps me enormously with the load.
13) Job hunting.
On that last note, job hunting is hard and frustrating and there's not enough time in my day to do as much research and clicking around and talking and networking as I should. Why is this all so hard? There should be a better system devised for exiting undergraduate school, a softer transition, because all I'm seeing right now is a big black hole on my calendar right after June 17.
I have long term goals, but for the short term, I've got all sorts of voices asking, "Whatcha gonna do with your life?"
There are never enough hours in the day. Last weekend, Ryan and I were working in the darkroom from midnight to 4:30am. Don't say that I don't sacrifice for my art.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
This weekend was wonderful; 50s housewives themed dinner party at Trinh's lovely apartment, and then spending all Sunday up in LA at the Festival of Books (which I've been waiting four years for!), then scoring goods at my favorite thrift shop, including a dress, a belt, a headband tie, and a necklace with an old key charm.
I've decided that when I move up to LA in the fall, I plan on taking classes at Otis again. I might even venture to finish a fashion design certificate, just so I can learn to design/drape/sew/create my own clothes. Which makes a sewing machine high up on my wishlist.
The ideas of domestic life, adoption, and what a fulfilling life entails has been so high up on my table of discussion lately. Perhaps this has a lot to do with the fact that in just five short weeks I will be liberated from the structure of the public education system -- and supposedly well-equipped to seek out and make a life for myself. Right now, this means for me DECIDING what it IS that I want to make my life out to be. And though I think all these choices are so personal; it's also important to share it with other people. And I am so so so fortunate that I have many friends who share a lot of my same value systems.
I've also been cooking a lot more, both in the interest of health and finances. I became vegetarian about a month ago, and I'm finding cooking to be so much more fun than settling for the limited selection out there; the internet is a plethora of resources. I particularly love the vegan recipes out there, though I won't ever believe in not eating honey. To be quite frank, I don't care about bees or bugs on the same level as mammals in the farming industry.
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