I don't want to blog today but here I am. Showing up. Keeping a promise to myself. I vowed that every Monday and Thursday, I would sit down and take one hour of my time to write and write and write about my passions. If you've read this blog at all, you've probably guessed by now that one of those passions is a passion for interior design. You know I love light and color and trinkets by this point.
For as long as I've been obsessed with collecting, and arranging, and changing my space around, I've been even more in love with art. I would drive my poor, sweet, second cousin (shout out to the no first cousins club) completely bonkers when we were tiny because when all she wanted to do was have someone to play basketball with in the driveway, all I wanted to do was draw. I drew in the margins of all of my notebooks and never finished my assignments in middle school. In high school, I used to get in-school suspension on purpose so I could be in the hallway where the art room was. I'd cause such a ruckus, that the ISS supervisor would send me next door.
When I started college the first time, it was for Painting and Drawing. When I dropped out, I tried to push it away. I thought that because I wasn't cut out for art in college, I wasn't cut out for art in general. Add to that my family being worried that I chose art and far more worried when I couldn't even do that, and I felt like I had no choice but to let it go. So I tried anything and everything else. I cleaned houses, I sold newspapers, I poorly photographed weddings, I bottled mead, I waitressed, I got a pastry internship at a pretty reputable place, I cooked, I worked in catering. At one point, I was about two weeks away from going to the French Culinary Institute in NYC (yes, the place where Celebrity Chef, Bobby Flay went to school) when I decided that every chef I knew was too depressed, addicted to something, had at least one failed marriage, and was, above all, completely miserable. So I kindly called the school and asked them to remove me from their list of prospective students.
Flailing and failing every step of the way sent me into a spiral, but I pulled myself out and decided I would try to marry food (another passion) with art. Now to take a step back, I am a first generation college student. I had no guidance when it came to getting an education, and the best guidance I got was seemingly everyone in my family telling me that I should go to college. So I thought the only way I would ever get out of my many cycles of flipping and flopping, was to try college a second time (third if you count the all-together missed attempt at FCI). Goddamnit, I was going to go to school for my Associate's degree in Culinary Arts and I was going to triple major. I was going to obtain a photo BFA and a journalism BA. I was going to be a food columnist, but I was going to have a leg up because I was going to be a photojournalist. Yes. It was all coming together. I didn't need art. I needed a scheme!
See you Thursday for Part 2!
