Finding Motivation

2020 has been a year. I remember making a promise to myself around December of last year that 2020 would be the year I went back to school. I was looking forward to it in those first summer months ready to feel like I was accomplishing a goal and working towards a purpose. I never expected school to be remote, and I remember thinking I would put off the start of my degree again until something resembling "normal" was restored. But I also remember making myself that promise, that 2020 would be the year I went back to school. So I'm sticking with it. It's been rough so far because I have been away from being creative for such a long time. Part of why I chose to pursue Digital Design was that I took comfort in the idea that the kind of work I wanted to do involved more layout and spread ideas than something so vulnerable as putting what I personally created out into the world to be critiqued and judged. So far we have been making art for my Intro to Digital Design class and my Typography class and part of the process is garnering feedback, and exposing our ideas to the world. Luckily, I've been inspired by my classmates instead of intimidated, and it's strangely comforting to see their struggles alongside mine as we all can't seem to get files to compress below 5MB and Illustrator decides to resize our images even though we just carefully fitted their constraints in Photoshop. 

It's helpful to remember that there are others on my path, and that I'm doing a pretty great job of it actually, for where I'm at. 

Right now I'm supporting myself on half unemployment. After being let go from my retail job of five years, the summer job I got within the week couldn't work around my school schedule so I chose to take another retail job and the hours they're giving me are grossly less than what was promised. Still though, I'm paying my rent and buying my groceries and driving a car I fully paid off and living in my first apartment (with a roommate) after moving out of my Mom's house for the first time this last December. I'm going through a breakup, ending a relationship of three years. There's a global pandemic going on. 

And I'm still going to school. 

And I'm still creating art. 

And I'm proud of me. 

Here is an image I created in my Intro to Design class which I actually quite liked