A little shameless bragging

Today, please allow me a little shameless bragging. A couple of things have happened lately that were the direct result of some good ole', old-fashioned hard work and I think they are worth noting here because they are a part of all the change. As soon as they'd happened too, as I was basking in my glory, life came roaring up the beach and dumped cold water on me again, so it is nice to revisit and acknowledge them.

Some of you (hi, Mum!) might have noticed that I was a little quiet here over the Christmas/New Year period, and maybe I haven't regained my momentum yet. There were two reasons for that, one of which was that I was head down, bum up trying to finish my Diploma of Editing (Publishing). After nearly three years of self-paced learning, the pace of which would have made a sloth scoff, I did three months' work in ten days, and I finished it! My Diploma arrived while I was in Montreal last month.

Last year I edited the biggest publication my organisation has published to date—a 96-page, hardcover book, part catalogue, part biography, about an artist with whom we have worked very closely. It is in my top three professional experiences in my nearly-eight years on the job. It just got reviewed in Imprint magazine, as did the exhibition it supported. The review was glowing. The reviewer even commented on how well-edited the catalogue was. I mean, when does that happen? No one ever notes the editing, it's always about the writing, as it should be, but still that was nice to read.

When I move to Canada I will be setting up my own freelance editing and proofreading business. I am really looking forward to a shift in focus. I've already got one client lined up; and armed with my qualification and buoyed by a good review, I am feeling pretty good about that right now.

If it ain't broke...

"Listen up.
The 'universe' DOES NOT CARE about you, okay?
It doesn't try and 'tell' you things or reward or punish you for anything.
It just doesn't give a F#$%! It can't! It's a universe... not your f#$%in' mamma. Alright?!
Thank you." - GDD, former housemate, now long-distance Facebook friend, Facebook post 2012, initials used to protect anonymity.


Every once in a while you get a moment to yourself to pause and reflect on the true nature of the Universe. For me that chance came a couple of days ago as I was rolling around in agony at the bottom of my back stairs.

I was having an incredibly productive day, of the type I haven't had since before my back went dicky. I'd just had my medical and X-rays for my permanent residency application to Canada, I'd had two sales on Etsy, and I'd finally gotten around to buying a new printer after hours of painstaking research. I'd even taken myself out for brunch at Caffiend and had their truly wonderful fetta and basil omelette. It was a benchmark day in my recovery. Life was good. 

I'd popped home to package up the Etsy sales and drop off the printer, then I'd planned to do a run to the post office, then the op shop to try to restock for Etsy, pick up the X-rays and deliver them to the GP, and then do a supermarket shop. Busy, busy, busy! As I headed out I stopped near the bottom of the back stairs to add one last thing to my shopping list on my phone, and then I stepped off... 

Except I wasn't on the bottom stair as I thought, was I? No, I was on the second or third, and I stepped off into the void and went crashing down, landing with a sickening crunch on my right ankle while my phone smashed face first into the concrete. As I lay there trying to breathe through the pain—watching my ankle imitate a tetchy puffer fish and running through the checklist of "Is it a sprained ankle, or a broken ankle?"—I contemplated that I may have been done in again by a case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for. 

Now I'll confess that in my younger days I used to be a bit of a hippy-dippy, esoteric, New Agey thinker, but I got over that. Reason has won that contest, though on occasion Wonder still tries to put her two cents' worth in. I don't believe that 'everything happens for a reason'. In fact, that's a platitude guaranteed to send me into a boiling rage. But I have observed that sometimes if you really want something to happen, it does. Hence you have to be careful what you wish for.

I'm not advocating 'wishcraft' or any of that Law of Attraction hoo-doo, I'm far more inclined to think that wanting something to happen makes you much more receptive to noticing when it does, and probably also makes you act in subtle ways to bring it about. But what I'm taking an awfully long time to get to is that, in my experience, if you are really putting it out there that you want something to happen you had better be specific—like make, model and serial number of desire—because otherwise it tends to come back to you any which way and you must wryly concede that you got what you wished for, just maybe not quite under the most ideal of circumstances. I'm talking getting fired when you hate your job but you haven't yet got anything else lined up, that person you've been crushing on turning out to be a dick once you are dating them or else confessing their true feelings the minute you've given up and started seeing someone else, that sort of thing. In this particular instance I have been very strongly focusing on how I wish I could have several days to work from home because I have so much written material to generate and I'm getting interrupted every five minutes in the office and can't concentrate, and, as is well documented on this here blog, I am really not loving my Android phone and miss my iPhone, particularly since Bek introduced me to Camera+ the other day, which like Hipstamatic is not available for Android users. Amazingly, my phone still works, even though its screen looks like a spider's web.

So, here I am, proving that is is in fact possible to limp with both feet (gosh, I must get around to explaining about that left leg!), trying to keep my fat, sprained right ankle elevated, compressed and/or iced as much as possible and contemplating either a replacement phone screen or the purchase of a second new phone in the space of six months (aaaargh!).

Can too much freedom be a bad thing?

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but I work for an art gallery. Last night we had an opening and it was gooood—one of those that feels more like a big party than a formal event. I prefer to keep my working life and personal life separate these days, which is hard in a regional centre when you can't help but make friends with artists because they are hands-down the most interesting people around, but this post blurs that line a little—it's a rare occasion.

Of all the many conversations I had last night, one of the most interesting was with Mark, of The Stylus, but then that's pretty much business-as-usual for a conversation with him, they're always interesting. Apart from being a kick-arse artist, Mark is also a teacher at a school that partners with us on a project that is one of the things I have been most proud of in my seven years working for the gallery (we do more than just put pictures on the wall, obvs!) That's all I'll say about Mark, because he likes to compartmentalise like me, too, but the gist of the conversation was this: do boundaries and limitations make for better creative outcomes?

Talking about this blog got us started: I referred to it as a discipline. I knew that I wanted to write from a more personal perspective than the writing I do for work, but I just wasn't getting my thoughts digitised (no point in kidding anyone and saying "on paper"). I knew that setting up a blog would give me a sense of...obligation, in a way: if you start putting it out there you have to keep putting it out there. But still, it took being confined to my house for seven weeks to, perversely, give me the freedom to set up my template and really give thought to the focus of this blog. Not only is a blog a discipline in terms of regularly contributing to it, but it also a discipline in focus so your blog has some sense of cohesion for you and your audience if you are lucky enough to attract one. Even apparently random brain farts can have some sense of order to them.

As an arts administrator, I have seen time and time again that better creative outcomes seem to be achieved when the artist has some boundaries. The boundaries may be self-imposed, thematic, temporal or site-related. Having to problem solve leads to creative solutions, whereas open slather can waffle on forever because there is no sense of point of completion. Examples?

I have seen an artist with an international career not be given a due date for delivering work and as a result just not know when to stop adding to his sculptures. When they eventually turned up they were massive to the point of impracticality for clients and the exhibition space, so thick with paint and varnish I don't think those suckers are dry yet four years later and, of course, he could never put a price on them that would reflect the true amount of time he put into them. I think he only stopped because he ran out of room at home: a site-related limitation, too, I guess.

Our most recent installation was fraught with mini-disasters—work was sent from an overseas gallery, but that gallery didn't include all the connector parts of the slot-together sculpture, there was a communication mix up and one whole piece didn't get freighted from Melbourne, the video work had all sorts of technical issues and the artist wasn't sure how to fix them. The outcomes were: the artist got much more physically connected to his work, which he hadn't laid eyes on for well over a year, because he had to quickly re-fabricate the missing pieces; our curator and the artist got to learn a whole lot more about the technical aspects of the video in order to get it to function and that is going to serve them both so well in their future work; and the exhibition looks much better for the extra breathing space created by missing a piece—it would have been too much if it had arrived and gone in the show. Our beautiful curator, after two weeks of intense stress, commented last night on how much she had learned through the process and how much better she felt she had become at her job as a result. The exhibition looks perfect, too. Wins all round!

I used to have a friend who was an artist, and oh, how he railed against exhibition thematics. "Why do I have to have a theme for my show? I just want to paint whatever I want to paint and put my work up on the wall." Y'know what, I don't know why he bothered to complain about this because he didn't start a show the whole seven-plus years I knew him. His choices were just so vast because he wouldn't set a theme, he didn't know where to start, let alone stop.

Even my work writing I view as improving my writing style. I write a lot of grants and acquittals and inevitably they have a word or character count. Get the crux of your project across in a 40 word project description—go on, I dare you! Think about it real hard now so you cut right down to the marrow of it. It's difficult, but it makes you more succinct. Four hundred words to explain the purpose of your organisation when you do a gazillion things? Again, what is most important? What's your message? Do seemingly disparate projects actually relate to each other somehow and can be summarised together? I'm such a nerd I find it fun.

Artists, writers, and creative types in general will always have boundaries imposed upon them. Whether this is lack of money to fabricate their vision, the cost of basic materials, the need to keep a day job to support their personal responsibilities, people just not 'getting' them, no gallery space to exhibit in, or no time for creative expression. However, I really believe it is the pushing against those boundaries that leads to better creative outcomes. Problem-solving leads to growth and improves your practice. Fighting against the limitation, or working with it or around it, sharpens your focus and helps you know when 'it is done'.

Anyway, that's my two bobs' worth. (Speaking of keeping it succinct, oops!) Do you enjoy the challenge of finding a creative solution? Or are you sure that total freedom would be better for your practice?

Working from home: the unexpected pitfalls

Contrary to popular belief, working from home does not make you immune to common office issues.

There is still a queue for the toilet:

If you turn your back for a minute someone tries to move in on your desk space:

And someone else is always, always, using the coffee machine when you are dying for a caffeine hit:

That said, with my seven weeks sick leave shortly coming to an end, this time off from work has shown me that I could get very used to the freelancer/work from home lifestyle. Because when I say "had time off", I should qualify that by saying I spent about one week of this time finishing up editing a 96 page exhibition catalogue for work, I assessed some grant applications, I set up this blog, and I set up an Etsy shop. If I tell you that to me these were fun things, well that might just give you a better idea of who I am as a person. However, it was just enough work-like activity to make me realise that this is a way of working that suits me. It also suits the career direction I want to move in, and supports me to take care of my health the way I am going to have to from now on.

I'm not about to rush out and quit my day job just yet, this girl's got responsibilities y'know - to the company, to my project partners and co-workers, and to my personal finances. But a seed has been planted, and as the cogs keep turning to effect the BIG change that's a'coming, my little brain is ticking over too, beginning to work out ways to make this my work-a-day reality in the mid-term future. I will keep you posted as I make that transition, but I'm guessing already that it would be naive to expect my future co-workers to pitch in for their fair share of the milk.

Oh, get on with it, already!

Cancer Horoscope for April 2012
By Susan Miller

" ... Look into building a website or blog, or changing the one you have. This is the month! The new moon that will appear on April 21 is truly special. ... "

Okay, okay, even the astrologers are nagging now, it's time to stop thinking and talking about it and just do it, already! There. Was that really so hard?

I love to write, I do it all diddly-day long, and when I'm not writing I'm reading other people's writing and tweaking it a little, or sometimes a lot. Anyway, I love words, you get the drift, but I haven't made the time to write for me until now. There are some big changes coming up in my life. In fact, they started a while ago, but they are really gearing up now. They are not all going to be easy, but that just makes it more interesting. I'm going to look for the good in it all, and you have permission to kick my butt if I don't. Deal?