#i haven't been following production or anything so i'm going in blind but so far so good!

[taamlok]

my little princess, isn't she beautiful

[frogsandfries]

Then my other newly awakened internal struggle

Growing up, my dad worked factory. He didn't have the education to do anything better, like get promoted. He raised four kids on his own income, while struggling against the progenitor of his children. He worked hard, in my opinion when I got to work alongside him, too hard for what he was earning. When he came home from running his errands and running his children to appointments and so forth, my dad would sit in his chair and just veg out.

Some would say, oh you're a millennial, you're lazy, you don't have a work ethic.

In fact, yesterday, for the second time, I was told that I should be working double the hours I'm getting at this job, that I should have a second job.

I know I've been in an unstable situation for almost a year and a half, and I've fallen into a place where I'm more talk than action. I have recently made an investment to change that-- perhaps my ex's parents and my friend's parents are right. It's just hard to give over to the perspective of older middle class adults/parents/homeowners, when these adults are blind consumers and subscribers to the "American Way" (the house, the car, keeping up with the Joneses) but also in over their heads in insane debt. Also, all of these middle-class-ians have one thing in common that stands out to me: As I pointed out, they are all, to date, consumers. They have no aspirations of being makers or contributing to culture. For me, this makes it hard to fully accept their advice to go out there and get a second job. When I have a place to sculpt, I believe I have a second job, and certainly I gamble my time and money. Maybe it's not enough to know that there's an audience out there for my work, and to believe that I simply haven't had a consistent, long enough run to reach that audience. I know that any creative endeavor is about an investment of time and money. Maybe I simply can't afford this gamble and I should give up gambling and go for the steady, guaranteed paycheck.

Maybe I've misinterpreted the message behind my dad working one job and being a parent, instead of working two jobs and being a paycheck. As a single individual, I read his single-job way as looking out for yourself being healthy. Maybe you're only going to make so many dollars per hour, but you should take some time and invest in yourself.

My friend and I actually discussed it from a millenial standpoint last night. He actually has worked jobs that demand fifty or sixty hours from him (I've done forty-eight myself, and mostly because of my dad), and while I found that I simply never had time for anything besides sleep and work, my friend found that he outsourced his errands--having food delivered being his primary example. That's no way to live.

Being a musician, my friend understands better than I do what a roll of the dice being a maker or creative is. He produces an experience, an idea. His product is fleeting and intangible, even if you can capture it on video or audio recording. My product, when I finally get back to that state of my life, is every real, tangible object.

I've written before that the whole reason I decided to sculpt charms was that I wanted afew things: I wanted to make affordable art. I was often either sad or frustrated to be unable to support the artists I love and show my support by buying their work becauseit's more often than not, far out of my budget. And I'm not trying to shame artists for charging hundreds of dollars for their hard work, I'm merely equating that to the work to would be making if I had that kind of following and support.

So when a grocery store is trying to bring on a new product, what do they do?

They offer samples.

I figured by down-scaling my work, I could produce and complete more pieces faster. I could show off my range of skill faster. And since a piece like that doesn't take much time or material, I could offer them for very little investment on the part of my audience. I could give a kind of sample to a far broader audience. Furthermore, if you put my work on your body and go interact with people, more often than not, you're likely to tell them where you got it. Someone else is promoting me, instead of me fumbling to promote myself. someone objective to myself might tell their friend what they liked about me or my body of work.

Maybe one day, I'll have the kind of following that will allow me to go back to making dolls, or maybe I'll move forward to something else, or maybe I'll get the kind of support that allows me to do all the creative things I'm passionate about.

Or maybe after I've bought thousands in Facebook and Instgram ads and handed out flyers and business cards and entered juried exhibitions and traveled all over the country, I'll have to concede defeat.

Who truly knows?

All I know is that I will never become a better sculptor if I don't invest my time. I know I will never learn to speak with my charms and develop my own style or brand or personality or whatever if I don't create. I know that if I'm too busy chasing that green, I'll never know.

So maybe that's not the lesson my dad meant to teach me, but the lesson I learned from him is to invest in oneself.

I believe in this. Others may have drank the Koolaid and believe that you have to grind for the money. Others may doubt that I work hard, but it doesn't matter what they think. I have to believe.

If everyone who was discouraged from making and imagining and creating decided to just go with the status quo, one culture wouldn't be half of what it is today. Somebody has to believe.