​no matter how i fight it, olympia is grinding on me. not in that mildy tolerable ''oh it's just not like home'' way either. in another way. in a different vein. an artery. right to the kisser, through the heart.

• i feel like shelly duvall in the shining and olympia is the overlook and the rain is the snow and the more weird shit that happens, the more i feel like the world is going cuckoo... or trying to kill me. 
• i woke up today and visualized myself as a puberty-struck straight edged pimple faced teen at a sweaty basement grindcore show, violently full body windmilling to chaos music, fists in the air, ragefully punching each fucking rain drop in the goddamn fucking face. 
• i can sense the seattle freeze on the faces of folks as they stare me down when i'm not looking so as to get a complete judgement of me within an instant and decide all of everything all at once. 
• i work a job i equate in detriment to that of a stereotypical miner--labor intense and heavy, speeding up the inevitable and untimely end of body... all in the name of someone else's future gold. i'm slowly working my way away from my ability to hold a paint brush for longer than an hour and soon i'll be demoted to canary. a canary with a BA.
• i feel like all of my chakras are trying to work together and align and energize like a beam through the top side of my skull and all this smug inversion, scratching sea salt mist, and incessant cloud get in the way of it reaching the imperative sun-gilded atmosphere resulting in a 72,000 car chakra pile up inside my soul. 
• i'm ready to start selling organs on the black market or figure positions of portrait  in my tarot deck. one or the other, they're both mortal sacrifices.
• i am a woman without my tribe and my knees are buckling from the sheer weight of gravity and social anxiety. (all my systems are nervous)
• like everything else here covered with moss and wet and mold, i am experiencing a thickening layer of rust slathering over my rosy disposition causing me to slow down and care less. 
• my ego is imploding. the scales of struggle are teetering between self-worth and financial worth and frankly at this point it all feels like a wash. 
• work pays but doesn't work and art works but doesn't pay..
• i want to be like dorothy and fall asleep in this tornado, panicked and worried and unsure and wake up to bright color, imagination, possibility, and adventure. and then home. straight... home. 

The more poor I get and the better I get at being poor, the more I reevaluate what's valuable to me. Health, peace of mine, that of my family's...gas and cigarettes.
The holes in my socks are okay cuz no one sees them.
The fact that dinner and a movie are no longer on the table because chicken broth and pasta are cheap (and the internet) is just fine.
Phone bill is a priority cuz my friends and family rule.
New paints? Nah, I've got some old weird colors I can use.
New canvas? Nah, just paint over some old shit.
$50 has more use and I can now make a penny talk, Grandma.

I have love from my Babeduder that keeps my fires stoked and lit, the support of far away hands, trust in the universe that it'll work out, and half a pack of smokes that feel like gold in my glovebox.

Poor? Sure.
But lest we forget:

​

As I sit here... in Olympia, Washington... in the wake of my fourth wonderful job interview in so many months... I can't help but get nostalgic at the amount of rejection I've experienced in my time--creatively and professionally. 
Lots of it.
Gobs of it.
Loads of it. 
​
From residencies... 

..to painting marathons and juried blasts....

..to the abusive ex-lover you can't escape from and keep running back to... Artown...

It's hard not to look back at the last seven years and wonder if you broke a mirror somewhere. 
It's hard not to look back and wonder if someone at the head of the line or with the ear to The Man isn't fucking with ya on purpose.
It's hard to be grateful for all the rejections in an effort to be content with who you've become and where you are today....
​
...
but my goodness I'm trying.