The beginning of the rest of my life
I’m currently in the throes of beginning a MA Designer Course at UAL, I really have no idea what I want to focus on. The endless possibilities that lay ahead are overwhelmingly exciting. It’s been 6-7 years since I’ve been in a proper education setting. Swinging hammers and bearing loads of lumber has been my life for the last several years, the dirty work. “Experiential Research” as some may call it. I’ve found mentors, life lessons, and a sort of ancestral meaning in the dirty work. After a bout of serious mental health issues that landed me in a stabilisation hospital; the long days of the dirty work was the only place, outside of the ocean, I felt at peace.
This dirty work is no longer. Well, technically there’s still a lot of “dirty work” to be done. However for the most part, the long days of Carpentry are over(hopefully forever). It’s not that I hate Carpentry, there’s two main reasons I’m moving on. First off, my back, hands, knees, along with all the other fine motor joints seriously hurt. Carpentry is no joke, I guess that’s why Carpenters typically gain so much respect. I’m only 28 and feeling arthritis in my right hand last fall seriously scared me. My dad, a contractor of 35+ years, always told me I didn’t want to do this work for the rest of my life and he was right. The second reason being, I can’t seem to get the creative ideas out of my head. The only way I’ve learned to expel them is to create them. The constant flows of random structures, knick-knacks, and doodads that seem to enter my mind through some sort of alien telepathy are constant. They began to distract me from my daily dirty work. In an attempt to meld the two worlds of dirty work and creativity, here I am.
It’s time to begin the rest of my life. This is a phrase I’ve used before. The way I use this phrase means, to me, moving on, growing up, or evolving. A rebirth I guess. Taking the last chapter and turning the page. I envision a caterpillar entering it’s chrysalis and emerging as a ethereal butterfly. The idea is to take all of the experience in your previous life, good and bad, and mould that previous life form into a new one. Think of a tree growing a new ring. You’re not necessarily moving on, you’re adding a new layer. It’s scary, special, and necessary. I need to remind myself of this sometimes.. and here I am, reminding myself of growing pains, wiping tears of relief away as I type.
