i am so…clogged. it just builds up and i’m not sure how it happens.

with my first gallery showing coming up i feel so much pressure. so much pressure to create something worth looking at. i don’t have much money or the best art supplies. and so every blank canvas is a white plane that i must use my materials and my imagination as best as i can to produce something that i love and that i feel others will love.

i spent countless hours immersed in art. history of modern art- reading, studying, examining, pondering. blogs upon blogs of artists, looking at their works, their photographs, soaking everything in. trying to do my own art. it is all coagulating. there are so many new techniques i want to learn, and new mediums i want to experiment with. but i don’t have the time or money, or workspace really, and it suppresses me.

tonight, i absolutely couldn’t take it anymore- the fact that there is so much i want to do but that it is impossible being that i don’t have all the materials at my disposal. i just opened up my moleskine watercolor journal that i received as a christmas gift and blotted bright paint allover it. with the specific intention of creating something i would never create, never show in a gallery, and never really look at as art. [and praise the Lord! my camera just had a miracle revival! it was completely dead (not the battery) but after much hoping and praying, she’s back!]

i’m experiencing the same frustration with blogging. because i feel like it has to be worthy of reading even though no one reads it anyway. i like to think my blog is cool and that people read it and are inspired by the art and photography and especially the words. and even if i did have something to write, as i do at times, there is never enough time. ugh.

these aren’t the only realms however, because i feel the same way about life. there is so much i want to do, so much i want to learn. i feel like i’m not finished with college yet. that i’m just delving into all the things that i really want to learn about. art. culture. french. africa.
and i really want to use the things i have been reading and studying about. and i really want other people to realize how important the things i study are. i don’t like being the “what are you going to do with that?” girl. i really don’t want a stupid corporate job that i hate, in fact i can’t tell you how much i despise it. i have this mental image of who i want to be and what i want to be like but i don’t know how to get there and i don’t feel like i’m moving there at any remotely quick rate.

the main point is that i am not ready to leave. i’m not ready to paint over my beautiful blue walls, to remove all the care that i have put into making this room and this home my own (joined with allie), to quit studying and learning, to leave people, ministry, and friendships that are amazing and inspiring. the other night as i was talking with a friend, she encouraged me that while we are in a certain place, its really hard to see the opportunities and the things the Lord has for us beyond it. we don’t want to come out, but if and once we do, we are opened up and moved into things that we never would have imagined would happen. i’ve never been good at seeing beyond my current situation. so i suppose that is something that i have to hope for.

there are so many things to hope for. and who hopes for things that he already has?