Picture perfect, I paint a perfect picture*…
I live in the South now. Louisiana to be precise. It’s a long way away from the creative bubble that Los Angeles, my hometown, is. I thought I wanted to be part of that bubble and for some time, I worked to gain access to that bubble – I minored in film and television at UCLA, attended a trade program in new media production after college, spent countless hours, sacrificed numerous trees in writing down my ideas, moved around on the outskirts of Hollywood. Now those pages sit colleting dust, my Canon T4i that I received as part of my tuition package sits on a shelf, this blog even sits unattended to for nearly a year….
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My brother turned 40 in January. He asked for me to crochet him some blankets since I had recently picked up the craft again. I managed to complete a granny square blanket for my newborn nephew, a hat and scarf set for my now fiancé and a few other items. I purchased books to sharpen my skills, followed numerous Instagram accounts and pinned items to my Captain Hook Pinterest board. Eventually, seeking a side hustle, I took on the name For Hooking Info… (get it?) and commissioned a logo on Fivver. Yet, my brother’s blankets remain unfinished and there hasn’t been much in the way of making any progress of making FHI a viable money making enterprise, save for some updates of this site and following and getting resources from a few internet entrepreneurs that bombard you with emails to purchase their thousand dollar courses so that you, like them, can become millionaires and work on some beach in Tahiti….
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Upon my relocation to the South, I left my job at the tech start up call center that I worked at for nearly two years. As it is with life, a lot can change in such a short amount of time, and a lot changed there by the time I left, the biggest change being that my boss was pushed out. While I understand it’s just business, it further accelerated the process of me becoming disenchanted with the job, having already been disenchanted with customer service positions in general. In addition to having a style that I meshed with, she also renewed my faith in myself after the disastrous three years I spent at LAX. She was the reason I started looking into candle magic, becoming reacquainted with a tarot deck that I purchased from Eso Won bookstore some years back, purchasing even more decks and creating an altar. Now on top of the differences between my spiritual awakening and my significant other’s religious leanings that leave my altar sitting in the storage closet outside, I am also trying to convince a totally different job market to look past my years of customer service experience and my degree and hire me to do something else….
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Crochet, pole dancing, tarot cards, filmmaking, writing, making candles (an endeavor that I am thinking of starting), the Pokémon League (I’m thinking of joining), bartending, IT. These are just a sampling of the hobbies, side hustles and career fields that I have looked into and burned out from, or I realized that I wasn’t that interested in them or was doing them for validation and recognition, just to give people the impression that I had it together. I am concerned with looking like I have it together, that I’m enjoying life, that I know what I want, that I know and everyone around me knows, that I am in control.
After a fairly short episode last week, I had to stop lying to myself, because now, being so far away from home, with nobody’s eyes watching me except god, I had to admit that I do not know what I want.
When I said it, I expected it to be a weight off my shoulders. It wasn’t, but it didn’t add more weight to them either. The heavens did not open up, no trumpets sounded heralding the arrival of the answers to everything. The words were said and the moment passed and I was still in the same spot. A few days later, I still haven’t received a revelation, a dream hasn’t given me any indication of what I should do and my tarot cards are recharging, so I’m not asking them. No sign, no advice from an unsuspecting source.
I do not know what I want to do.
It frightens me somewhat, not as much as it did even a year or so ago, but it still frightens me. I’m almost 30. I placed the expectation on myself that I should be somewhere right now. I should have my ideal self, my ideal life locked in place and should be enjoying the financial and social benefits of that ideal life.
You see, I’ve been skim reading a lot about manifesting and visualization and one thing the teachers and practitioners always say is that you have to see it. It’s not enough to say it, you have to see it, treat it as if it is already here, because it is.
I wasn’t doing that. I had an ideal life, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. It wasn’t specific enough. I figured I wouldn’t be working a traditional 9 to 5, possibly writing and being a free-wheeling libertine and that’s about as far as I got. I didn’t have a complete visualization, I didn’t have a plan, or a road map. I just expected it to sort itself out by the pure force of my will.
Hence, the bouncing around, trying to find something that sticks. While some things outright didn’t stick, other things would stick until I got bored and then I went back to them after the boredom subsided or when other endeavors didn’t pan out. Things could stick if I wanted to put in the work for them.
In fact, like most people, I know what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to teach, which is the first thing everyone suggests I do because I’m good an explaining things to people, kids like me and I have the quirky personality for it, but I don’t want to do it because I don’t want that responsibility, but I found a credentialing program out here that I’ve submitted my old SAT scores and my college transcripts to already, and they just need PRAXIS 2 and some money for the courses to start, so that ghost has been given up and I am preparing for the eventual widening of the chip on my shoulder as I stare down a classroom full of children and try not to cry at being on the other side of that equation.
I do not know what I want to do. Do I still want to create? There is still that need within me to do so, but every day I spend on the internet makes that less and less of a fun possibility. Do I want to be in charge? Responsibility is stifling. Do I want to be a worker bee? I don’t like being at the whim of incompetent people. So here I am.
This time, I’m okay with that. I mean, I still need to find a job. I’m not going to like it, but it will put some money in my pocket. In the mean time though, I am okay with what I want to do finding me instead of me lazily trying to find it. And in the spirit of manifestation, I am going to say this, it will find me. Whether it is in a classroom, or on a film set, or even in the most unexpected place, it will find me.
