I've been extremely, extremely, ridiculously, absolutely MIA over the past....year? Which is actually a big fat gigantic lie. I have been nestled in the security of my (shared, way too small) bedroom back at home in Northampton, meandering from one shitty entry level administrative data inputting job at a Nameless Faceless Banking Corporation to another (have you taken out a loan or credit card within the past five year? If so, you may have been mis-sold a Payment Protection Insurance policy that you didn't need! Write me loads of complaint letters because the Midlands has nothing else apart from factory work and chain bars to offer a broke, hungry graduate!), generally trying to pack something of monetary value into my extremely sorry looking bank account, and crossing my fingers that something with magically and drastically change without me having to try too hard. Which is going extremely well, obviously, because who wouldn't want to be 23 (oh, yeah, I got old), with an extremely useful and well received painting degree, living back at home and eating spaghetti hoops and toast for dinner? The Dream.
I also haven't created any new, decent art work since graduating. I bought myself a big, cheap, non-branded drawing board from amazon.co.uk when I first lef the world of part time employment (which came about after a lengthy couple of months slumped in the dole office in town, adamant that I'd been applying to jobs and not just writing down my shopping list on the fortnightly form, as the new Channel 4 advert would have you beleive, and promising that I'd take all of the art related junk out of my C.V, because yeah, I know, it doesn't really have much to do with why I, uh, want to work in PPI and insurance) and finally managed to find somewhere willing to hire me for 35 hours a week. I also got a new, awesome Rotring pen, which cost more than I really want to remember, and some paper that wasn't from the Works, or the bargain bin at WHSmith. And I drew. I drew for a week, and then I got frustrated, because I was drawing the same junk as always, and then I started to overthink my art work, and what direction I wanted it to do in, and then I started to overthing everything, and then I, evidently, flung myself into a gigantic, never ending black hole of small town despair about the state of my work situation, bank account, and life, in general. Then I crawled under my old patchwork blanket that smells of stale cigarettes, marathoned Hey Arnold! on Netflix, and got drunk. Because I'm an adult. And I know how to deal with grown up situations with maturity and class.
The point of all this nonsense, I guess, is to say that I've pretty much done nothing of artistic importance in the past year, which includes even attempting to keep this damn thing somewhat up to date. PPI has taken over my life. It's horrific but true. But I'm sitting in my room, still sharing it with my sister, still full with too much rubbish from when I was younger that I can't thrown away (I will forever maintain that I am a perfect candidate for the program about hoarders. That or SuperScrimpers, anyway) with my stupidly expensive Rotring pen, and a battered old sketchbook in front of me, and I'm going to try, if nothing else. To get all Serious Business for a brief, fleeting moment, this year has definitely not been what I wanted, expected, or needed it to be, but I guess the one thing that you can always say is at least you managed to stand up more times than you got knocked down, right? Hopefully, this place will be getting some more action in the coming months.
