I got my last big paycheck from the college today. An old dread crept into my belly. How am I going to scrape by? This is a familiar fear ever since I quit real jobs. Oh, I'm so not better off than my Jurassic Boomer cohort. I worked and quit many times and so didn't earn a lot over my lifetime (or rather, built and spent some fortunes). I'm so much better off than Gen X folks, with nothing saved, or actually in debt. The thought of a limited income does not sit well with me, nor does spending what I've saved.
The future, always stating from grim and working up to optimistic, may work to my advantage if the world ends before my money does. That's a piss poor attitude, and contrary to my workadaddy nature. Or now workagramps. I got all my metal cast this past weekend.
I can't not stop making things. Especially metal things.
I need money I don't have for that. I need someone to pay me to make my things.
It is not enough to make just one thing, because I always have a postpartum depression after getting done. It is the process. The cycle from imagination to reality.
The universe bailed out Marc and I. We're ok living simply and not being in debt. If we can't buy it outright we don't until we can. But being self employed working artists we knew our future would be grim, we lived hand to mouth. Savings? Ha. Figured we would never be able to retire but it was sort of forced on us by our stable of customers dying or aging out. Who wants to start over knocking on doors in their 60s? Plus, large scale kiln formed panels were becoming the thing, easy to keep clean. But then, some worthless oil and mineral leases my mother passed on to me because she thought of her three children I would need them the most, nevermind no one was getting a penny. But new technology had one company on old oil and gas fields and in 2010 started paying off big time. That's petered out now. And the inner city house we bought for $19K sold for $330K 38 years later. We aren't swimming in money but if we're frugal, which we are used to being, we should be ok as long as nothing catastrophic happens. And we don't live in the city anymore. I still create but not in glass. Watercolors, colored pencil, some multimedia constructions fill the need and I even sell an occasional thing.
ReplyDeleteAnd while most of your stuff is a little too weird for me, I do like the one in the last picture.
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