Who we create for sculpts our way of thinking about being creative

Once upon a time i use to create art on a daily basis. It grounded me, yet kept my spirits soaring high above the world at the same time. i created for me and only for me. Then i started working in the field of art and my love of creating just for me went from joy to discontent.

Over the past 2 years i have failed to stay on any task of creating art that was not for someone else. I miss creating, just to create. No deadline. No angry boss. No "it has to be THIS way!" Just creating because i wanted to see a finished product and sit back and say to myself, "i did that."

for fun:

for work:

something about having to work within the confines of what someone else tells me is Art... i get fed up with it. So i quit.

i think i am ready to get back into the creating just for me atmosphere. it might take me awhile to get back into a groove where i do not feel like what i am doing is work and not fun... but darn it, i miss creating graphics for just me!

i'll keep you posted on how it goes. right now i've got real work to do.

all grown up with attitude issues...

It seems like we have become our parents age... whether we want to accept that we are old fart parents or not, we are the same age they were when we looked up to them as children and thought, "man, you guys are really... old!" We also thought that they were very uncool.

I get frustrated when people ask me "awe, is this your little sister?" 
when meeting Claire and i. 

I went through 3 days of labor, wiped her ass everyday for almost 3 years, helped her learn to read/write/draw/etc. Not to mention that i have managed to keep her alive to the ripe age of 11 {and many more years to come!}. So, when people ask if we are sisters i snap back and say, "NO, i'm her mother." because i've more than earned the right to call myself her mom.

There is something that i am sure is inside of all of us moms... that desire to still be young and somewhat hip to what is going on in the world.  A desire to feel young, to look young, and to some degree still act young. We each have a bit of youth inside of us, its how we show it that counts either towards us or against us. We all talk on twitter, clearly a place where youth hang out {Justin Bieber isn't trending daily for nothing!}. We all drink soda, eat junk food, talk to our friends about the cool things we read online, and most of us tweet about our fascination with the Twilight crowd {be it pro or con}. And for the most part, we each hold our lives together by a thread just hoping that no one will notice that we truly do not have it all together. But that is us... the mom's of this generation.

June Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver. Circa 1957.

I love to look back at the moms of the 1950's and imagine what it would have been like to be a mom back then. Would i have been that rebel mom who wore pants to pick up my kid at school because i was too busy to frill myself up with a dress? Would my hair have been all done up, or a mess? Or would i have fallen in line with the rest of them looking like a cookie cutter image of June Cleaver?

I try to not look at anyone in the hollywood crowd as a role model or example of what it is like to be a mom or a person of the same age as me {35} because lets face it... Tv is not always based on real life, and people who live the life of a celebrity are not {for the most part} "real" moms with the same day-to-day struggles the rest of us moms have in our lives. I do not have a nanny, a maid, or anyone to help me with my kid - just me {ok, hubby counts towards 15% of the raising time}. So it is unfair to compare myself to people who are not like me in anyway... but last night we sat down to watch a movie. We watched Never Been Kissed and all of it's dorky glory. Claire turns to me and asks "how old is Drew Barrymore?" i had to think for a minute because she is one of those actors who never age in hollywood. They are not married, have no kids, and still look and live like a 20 year old. So we looked it up... 

Drew Barrymore, 2010, age 35.

She is my exact age {a few months older to be exact}. Yes, the exact same age as me. Yet, she looks and acts so much younger. And i look, act, and feel so old! How can it be that she looks so amazing and yet i look so blah? Oh, wait... it's that darn kid isn't it... having a kid stresses you out daily and makes you just look and feel --- old!

As i sit her feeling like an old lady, yet still feeling like i have not yet grown up yet or even figured out what i want to be when i grow up... i find it unfair that my kid looks up to me and thinks the same thing i did when i was her age as i looked up at my parents, "man, you are old!"

xoxo

MB

you remind me of...

it is hard to pin point a person's complete persona and see it in another person. Yet people often say to me, "you remind me so much of *fill in person's name here..." This is a phrase that i never (or rarely) use in life, because no one person is fully like another person in the way that they act.

So unlike looks, you are unable to fully grasp the understanding of what they are talking about when they say something about your being like someone that they know. I've gotten the "you look just like..." and they were able to show me a photo and say, "see!" and expect me to just accept that i look like this person that they know. But a way of acting like someone... this is much harder to translate and if you are not careful, you can insult the heck out of someone.

This tends to often be the case when it comes to me. I am a riddle wrapped inside of an enigma! i am kind, but i am a cold hearted bitch. i am laid back, but uptight. i am a hippy but i am a preppy snob. i am a whole ball of random things! More often than not people pick my "nice/hippy/earth-loving" side to say i am like someone that they know. Which i take this to mean that they see the good in me and not the nasty - thank God! ;-)

However... when i meet the people they say that i am like, they are always whack-a-doodles! you know, those overly friendly, earth-loving, almost stoned acting people. Crystals and moon-beam people. And not that there is anything wrong with people like that... but it is SOOooOoOooO not who i am. i do my best to not take offense to them seeing me as that kind of a person, but often i think "what the f***?! am i really seen as a freak by the people i know and love?"

Part of me thinks i should stop doing so many kind things. Hide the fact that i am a vegan. Put away the buddha statues. Wear less jeans and t-shirt outfits. and never ever mention a thing about moon-beams... or crystals. ha!

so in the future, if you know me... and you THINK that you know me... trust me, you don't know crap if you think i am like the psychic you saw that one time in Vegas.