22 August 2011

Good Morning, loyal friends and comrades. I feel greatly flattered that you have come to read what ever remarkable words might come forth from the center of my consciousness and make it out on a webpage which can be pulled up on any computer with proper internet access. It was never my aim in life to be a blogger, but it started out more with me wanting to be a painter. Of course, my high school english teacher had seemed to take a dislike to me and I was never really encouraged in the way of literature, though I did have an audience with a mother who would snoop through my school bag to see what she could come up with. I had a little diary as a child, but that went into the garbage due to 10 pages of writing about hating people and wishing I was dead. The diary was a source of shame for myself for those anguished pre-adolescent years.

I liked going for long walks and composing stories and poems in my head. I never really much wrote anything down. It was just something I did on those walks home from school merely for my enjoyment. As a child I didn't have my sights set on being a writer or a painter. There were a million different ideas of what I might want to be when I was growing up. Sometimes it seems that my childhood self was more practical with ideas such as teacher and social worker. But, my mother quickly doused out all my dreams of becoming a lawyer and judge through comments like 'dream on'. So, I made the firm decision to be an artist.

I was kind of egged on to continue down the path of visual art by allowing compliments to go to my head. I enjoyed being a visual artist for some time, and I would probably wholeheartedly return to it if I had a decent amount of space to work in. I always wanted to be a sculptor, but my art teacher said that anyone with my eye for colour should be a painter. And, painting seemed equally interesting at the time.

But, I was interested in most of the arts. I performed in the Sears Drama Festival, though the first role was just a minor part. I got my long hair cut like a page boy's and I think my drama teacher was pleased. Another girl thought it was a bad thing that I cut my hair and told me I looked too normal. My first job after high school was for Theatre Brockville which was in it's first year, and I am afraid it is a theatre company which didn't survive very many seasons. I was there in the first year due to the fact that the government would pay me a salary and the Theatre Company, which couldn't afford to didn't have to. I was in a real rush to grow up. I had moved out of my mother's house after a tumultuous struggle when I was just a couple months away from my 18 birthday. It was very upsetting to my mother and different authority figures in my life had varying sides they would take on the matter. Nonetheless, my psychiatrist wrote a letter which helped me do what was so greatly desired at this time.

So, while I finished high school I received social assistance, but was eager to get a job. So, I left high school with only half of the credits neccessary for university. I still had everything I needed to get into a college program, so it didn't matter so much. I just wanted to earn my own living and see what it was all about. So, I started up with a program where the government allows a young person to go out and find a job for themselves while paying them minimum wage. So, this gave me the opportunity to work at the Theatre Brockville company and they gave me a title of 'visual design co-ordinator'. They had me doing everything from display cases, stuffing envelopes, editing bios, and anything else that had to be done. Shanna once had me trying to make these graphs on the computer on theatre attendence, but that task I found a little too challenging.

The girl who was managing the box office became pregnant mid-season. Her salary was also being paid by the government. They switched me over to her job, so I began spending my days over at the Brockville Arts Centre rather than being in the office in Shanna's house. Shanna had previous theatre experience as the understudy for Fantine in Les Miserable up here in Toronto. She and her partner decided to move up to Brockville and start their own company when work dried up in the city.

It was a good summer of my life. I can't remember how old I was, but I think I was 18 or 19. I wasn't yet 20. And, back in Brockville a minimum wage, full-time job paid for everything a person needs in life and leaves extra money hanging over. I know I still had 2 cheques I hadn't cashed by the time the work placement was over. After that I spent a year in Brockville working at a little diner on the outskirts of Brockville. Worked as a dishwasher and I also enjoyed that. Even if the people who owned the place loved Country and Western music and I had to listen to that all day.

But, by the end of it all I had applied to go to study either graphic design at Humber College, which I got into, or fine art at Dawson College which is an entirely different system than here in Ontario. College is free in Quebec under the CEGEP system, but it is sort of like an extension of high school. I went there for about half a year before moving up to Toronto. I spent the first year in Toronto hopping from one job to the next. I did another government funded position and worked at Sunnybrook Helath Science Centre's art therapy program for war veterans, which was highly fascinating work. Mike Harris had just cut funding to hospitals at the time and the arts therapy program was a department which had half of their staff laid off. One of the art therapists was leaving Ontario entirely as a result of losing her job and had decided to go to the Maritimes to start a bed & breakfast in some house they had inherited.

After the art therapy job, I worked as a hot dog vendor for about 5 months. My ex-boyfriend really hated that I worked there and was always bitching at me to get a better job. But, prior to the hot dog vendor job I worked at a place which is kind of like a baby sitting service for elderley people. Certainly a job meant for somebody a little more experienced than me. I had enough experience with volunteering in hospitals and then doing a stint as an art therapists assistant, so they hired me. It was really stressful and so I got the hot dog vendor job, which was at least entertaining for a while. This street kid from Russia who suffered from schizophrenia became an ardent pursuant, but I was still with my very first boyfriend who I started seeing in maybe grade 11 or 12. Plus, I wasn't really that interested in this Russian fellow, but his dad came around to talk to me and made me decide to visit this kid named Ruslan in the hospital. It was when he was in the hospital that I had to tell him I already had a boyfriend, but he still wouldn't give up for as long as my phoneline was hooked up when I lived in that first bachelor apartment out in Parkdale here in Toronto.

Eventually I couldn't hack working as a hot dog vendor and I decided to just pursue things that interested me, like new age books, art, and literature. I also started exhibiting painting in whatever little outdoor art shows I could find. Sold my first painting of a lady bug that summer after I decided to not bother seeking gainful employment. Then me and my boyfriend moved in together. I was concentrating on this idea of just becoming an artist and continuing as I had. But, the Ontario government stepped in and I was sent to a program to prepare me for a job search. I didn't have to search for a job for very long as I just took over Tom's job at the little used classical records store and enrolled as a full-time student at Toronto School of Art. Mid-way through the year was when all that 'God is talking to me' stuff happened and I decided to break up with Tom. I moved into Student housing and life was pretty good for a while. I went to art school and I managed to draw plenty of attention from people. I also pushed myself to get out and do stuff.

So, back in the previous year of the dragon all these opportunities in art just kind of came to me almost effortlessly, but some of it was a bit much to handle. I got a job as a ceramic tile painter, but I seemed to have an allergy to the materials and began experiencing the sorts of mood swings I have struggled with ever since. The trouble with my unbalanced state is that I am not very good at being on time. Sometimes I find the place I am in completely unbearable. It's been a huge problem for years. Me not being able to arrive at a place on time due to frazzled nerves or a prior night of insomnia. Things kind of started falling apart on some levels at that time, but they also came together in other ways.

I would simply be asked to do stuff and I exhibited for a while and sold a number of paintings. I left the record store for several reasons, and went to do evening work at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I think that the trouble was that I was finding the work at the record store a little too socially isolating and wanted to work with other people. It had absolutely nothing to do with money, because my pay at the record store was higher and the hours I was offered longer. I just enjoyed the job and thought maybe I could eventually be promoted to a less humble position, but when I applied for a promotion things started not going so well on the job. Near the end of it all I was working at both the record store and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the same time. But, then all the mental health started happening and I decided to leave Toronto. Went back to my mom's place and she was diagnosed with cancer. I was pretty much a mess that year. I tried working as a customer service rep for a short time, but it also seemed rather challenging considering my emotional problems.

My mother decided she didn't want me living in her house any longer and started pushing me to get subsidized housing. That took maybe 2 months to come through. When my mother brought all the papers for places I could get housing in, I liked the idea of trying out life in a smaller place for a while. An apartment came up in Mallorytown first, so I took that, even though it was n absolute speck of dust and only had 1 store and restaurant. After 2 years out there, I decided I couldn't take it anymore, and so I moved back Toronto.

Now I have been back in Toronto for 3 years. I tried returning to work at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and then I tried a stint selling Globe and Mail subscriptions. For a while I was doing volunteer work at a soup kitchen. And, I think that about sums up my entire life with the work force in a nut shell. There are certainly many interesting stories I could tell about the jobs I have had. Like the plagiarism scandel that took place at Theatre Brockville when it was discovered that the woman who won the contest for designing the promotional posters was discovered to have copied it off of another artist just living over in New York state. That had it's little flight through the Brockville Recorder and times when some reporter seemed to make it her life mission to torture this copycat artist.