while i was brushing my teeth, a couple of minutes ago, i was told the way to happiness by Gabriel Setlakwe, one of the mascots of the Setlakwe furniture store chain. it goes something like this:
"do you know what happiness is to you? happiness to you is coming back home from work and having your favourite easy chair waiting for you"
why, thank you Gabriel...
20040421
20040419
painting the urge/the urge of painting
it doesn't take much. i paint for a while then i quit for no reason, saying that there's no way in hell i'm ever gonna pick up a brush again. then weeks pass, i get inspired, i sketch my ideas... and then, boom, i see something that really awakens my urge to paint.
i had this idea for a character that would run throught a series of paintings (and maybe drawings, yes!). his name is albert and he has a computer screen for a head. the first thing i sketched with this character is called Albert 125 (yes, always the first name with a number), a bucolic fable about Albert visiting Nature. but then, it just stayed latent, waiting patiently in my sketch book for about a month now.
today - breathrough. i came upon two very interesting and really cool websites that woke up my urge to pick up the brush. (urls at the end of this post). not that i want to copy their style or something like that, but it gave me the little technical detail that was puzzling me about painting the Albert series (and other stuff). i guess that's what my arts teachers meant by learning by viewing.
here goes for the URLs:
Toothpaste for Dinner
natalie dee: huffing it up, every weekday
do enjoy please.
i had this idea for a character that would run throught a series of paintings (and maybe drawings, yes!). his name is albert and he has a computer screen for a head. the first thing i sketched with this character is called Albert 125 (yes, always the first name with a number), a bucolic fable about Albert visiting Nature. but then, it just stayed latent, waiting patiently in my sketch book for about a month now.
today - breathrough. i came upon two very interesting and really cool websites that woke up my urge to pick up the brush. (urls at the end of this post). not that i want to copy their style or something like that, but it gave me the little technical detail that was puzzling me about painting the Albert series (and other stuff). i guess that's what my arts teachers meant by learning by viewing.
here goes for the URLs:
Toothpaste for Dinner
natalie dee: huffing it up, every weekday
do enjoy please.
20040418
employment
i have a pretty odd job history. i have to have a job that fits me or else i just cannot stand it. it gets visceral. so if i hate a job for whatever reason, i'll start throwing up, getting ill for real just to avoid going to work, in effect just amplifying the effect of the non-liked job. that's how it happened before. i wonder if i was just actually making it worse than it actually was.
since coming back here in january, i've had two jobs. the bookstore job, that i began in late november, coming back to town on the weekends to work there and going back to the city for university (univercity? ha ha, kiss me, i'm clever). i left that job in mid-february because i had gotten a production job at a semiconductor facility of a multinational that i am not going to name. that job would have made me earn enough money to go back to school this september instead of september 2005. things were okay during the training. boring job, niiiiiice paycheck so it balanced out... but then, after training i was transfered to my assigned team-and-work-shift... weekend-night shift. so that's two twelve hours shifts during the night (midnight to noon) on saturday and sunday and then two normal night shift returns during the week. that's how things got bad. i was already rather at odds with the workplace and the people i worked with, but then, with the working during the night, things got really complicated. turns out i'm one of those people who can't work night shifts. it was sending me right into depression relapse. after three weeks, i was a replica of how i was when clinically-depressed two years ago. that's one bad bad side effect.
i called the woman who organised our training to see if i could be transfered to another team or something like that. during our training, that woman kept on telling us that they were there for us, that if we needed anything, if we had a problem, we just had to go talk with them and they would try and help us. so i called the woman about my problem with night-working, left her a message, asking her to call me back and explaining the situation quickly. then went to bed (it was 9 in the morning and i was working that night). she didn't call back. the person who called back however was my director (the boss of the area), with a transcript of the message i had left the woman (can you say breach of confidentiality?) and basically saying: "hello Olivier, this is ******, YOUR DIRECTOR. i got a message from ********* saying that you had troubles with night working... well my reply to you will be that if you have a problem with night working it is your problem, we never switch people from teams. well, we do, but only after nine months. so in your case, the dog is dead, haha. if you have a question, call me back at ***-****". i called back, got an aswerphone, left a message really explaining the case and stating that if there was no available solution, then i was quitting right after my shift of that night. he didn't call back that day.
then i went to work. during first break, i went to the vending machines to get something to drink. some man came and asked me: "are you Olivier?" so of course i said yes. him replying: "well, good, 'cause we have papers to sign, you and me". turns out this was the weekday night shift director and then weekend night shift director had transmitted the whole "case of Olivier" to him during the day. so we signed the papers and after the shift, i was done working for that company. total worked weeks: 7.
i'm back to being unemployed now. but i started looking. i gave my resumé to a really cool design jewelry and accessories store. (trust me, they are really cool. the other day, they were playing Massive Attack. in my town... wow ). after giving my resumé to them, i was convinced they weren't going to call back. the woman-owner of the place called me back the same day asking me to come in for an interview. interview was yesterday. went rather well. then i came back and the woman called again, asking me to come in for a "working on the sales floor test". so i went back, same day as the interview. it went quite well. but i'll know if i nailed it or not only sometimes "before tuesday at 8pm", because there's another candidate (a girl...) for the same job and same type of shift as me... i guess that if it's meant to be, i'll get it. if not there's going to be something else waiting.
that's the state of employment for me, for now...
since coming back here in january, i've had two jobs. the bookstore job, that i began in late november, coming back to town on the weekends to work there and going back to the city for university (univercity? ha ha, kiss me, i'm clever). i left that job in mid-february because i had gotten a production job at a semiconductor facility of a multinational that i am not going to name. that job would have made me earn enough money to go back to school this september instead of september 2005. things were okay during the training. boring job, niiiiiice paycheck so it balanced out... but then, after training i was transfered to my assigned team-and-work-shift... weekend-night shift. so that's two twelve hours shifts during the night (midnight to noon) on saturday and sunday and then two normal night shift returns during the week. that's how things got bad. i was already rather at odds with the workplace and the people i worked with, but then, with the working during the night, things got really complicated. turns out i'm one of those people who can't work night shifts. it was sending me right into depression relapse. after three weeks, i was a replica of how i was when clinically-depressed two years ago. that's one bad bad side effect.
i called the woman who organised our training to see if i could be transfered to another team or something like that. during our training, that woman kept on telling us that they were there for us, that if we needed anything, if we had a problem, we just had to go talk with them and they would try and help us. so i called the woman about my problem with night-working, left her a message, asking her to call me back and explaining the situation quickly. then went to bed (it was 9 in the morning and i was working that night). she didn't call back. the person who called back however was my director (the boss of the area), with a transcript of the message i had left the woman (can you say breach of confidentiality?) and basically saying: "hello Olivier, this is ******, YOUR DIRECTOR. i got a message from ********* saying that you had troubles with night working... well my reply to you will be that if you have a problem with night working it is your problem, we never switch people from teams. well, we do, but only after nine months. so in your case, the dog is dead, haha. if you have a question, call me back at ***-****". i called back, got an aswerphone, left a message really explaining the case and stating that if there was no available solution, then i was quitting right after my shift of that night. he didn't call back that day.
then i went to work. during first break, i went to the vending machines to get something to drink. some man came and asked me: "are you Olivier?" so of course i said yes. him replying: "well, good, 'cause we have papers to sign, you and me". turns out this was the weekday night shift director and then weekend night shift director had transmitted the whole "case of Olivier" to him during the day. so we signed the papers and after the shift, i was done working for that company. total worked weeks: 7.
i'm back to being unemployed now. but i started looking. i gave my resumé to a really cool design jewelry and accessories store. (trust me, they are really cool. the other day, they were playing Massive Attack. in my town... wow ). after giving my resumé to them, i was convinced they weren't going to call back. the woman-owner of the place called me back the same day asking me to come in for an interview. interview was yesterday. went rather well. then i came back and the woman called again, asking me to come in for a "working on the sales floor test". so i went back, same day as the interview. it went quite well. but i'll know if i nailed it or not only sometimes "before tuesday at 8pm", because there's another candidate (a girl...) for the same job and same type of shift as me... i guess that if it's meant to be, i'll get it. if not there's going to be something else waiting.
that's the state of employment for me, for now...
20040416
AssPrint
a few things scare me at the gym where i train. the histrionic personal trainers, who, when off duty, wear shirts saying "MisterHard, accepted by women all across the globe"; the fact that they created their own line of training clothes (so far, nothing freaky), line of clothing they called "BareButt" (see where i'm going with this?); the buff dudes who seem to do more talking than training; the overweight girls who wear pants with PRINCESS printed on their asses...
i completely understand that sex sells. but it seems so silly to me. probably because i'm gay and all that histrionic seductive (inductive?) lingo is meant for male-female relationship. still, the bulk of it just screams: "I'M TRYING TOO HARD" or "LOOKIE HERE! I'M FAKE!"
just to prove my point, the gym hosted a gala recently (or they will host it soon, i don't remember the date of the thing. i didn't pay attention. mainly because i don't care) that they titled: "Barbies and Kens"
eh.
i completely understand that sex sells. but it seems so silly to me. probably because i'm gay and all that histrionic seductive (inductive?) lingo is meant for male-female relationship. still, the bulk of it just screams: "I'M TRYING TOO HARD" or "LOOKIE HERE! I'M FAKE!"
just to prove my point, the gym hosted a gala recently (or they will host it soon, i don't remember the date of the thing. i didn't pay attention. mainly because i don't care) that they titled: "Barbies and Kens"
eh.
20040217
cinematic bovarism
rather than doing the usual rambling about why i don't update often and then just say not much before stopping that for another undefined length of not updating, here i go really talking.
high school was a really rough time for me. hell, even now, 5 years later, i still shiver when i think about it. but what got me through that was movies. movies and imagination. i would watch a lot of various movies but fall in love with a particular one. i would watch the beloved movie often, very often, sometimes as much as three, four times a week, for months. always feeling the same things at the same places. sometimes the feelings increased through the watchings. so i basically lived my teenage emotional life through cinema. and then even after high school and after my trip to the other side of the country, i still did that bovarist thing for a bit. to avoid people, to live life in predictable kind of way. but that behaviour dried out (working in a videostore pretty much killed my interest for living-in-movies).
last summer, i was introduced (by a former professor of mine) to a lad. i fell in love. he didn't, but kept leading me on, thinking that "he could, given time" fall for me. i once went to a movie with him and a couple of his friends. i was sitting right next to the lad, his friends were a couple of rows below us. the lad hated the movie, i liked it a lot. but as things got rougher (because i really was much in love with him), i went to the cinema to watch the movie i saw with him. and i did that, a lot, during the two months of that non-affair. then, the movie stopped being shown in most theaters. so i stopped seeing it. and delt with my grief some other way.
that movie came out on video today. i was really expecting it. not because of the connection it has with my lost non-love, but just because it was salvation during a rough time (and because it's a good movie). so after work today i went to the store to buy the DVD, and watched it. it was really eerie. during some scenes, i re-felt the things i was feeling last summer; from other scenes, i remembered smells and atmospheres, feelings and longings.
for about the past 3 weeks, i've been seeing and hearing things that reminded me of the lad. songs we sung together coming back from the wedding, authors he liked and kept on talking about when we had those huge literary chats over coffee, words he said, stuff he told me that i didn't understand at the time but that i do now. and all those pointers make me want to call him, to talk to him, to see what he's up to. yet, somehow, i know i shouldn't. part of me thinks that all those pointers i'm noticing only appear because i'm being receptive to them, because i need to feel something for someone but there's no one, so i go back to the last strong felt feeling. the other part thinks that i should indeed get in touch, that i have nothing to lose.
for now though, i'll keep on believing that i'm only seeing those pointers because i'm being receptive to them, because i feel the need for love.
high school was a really rough time for me. hell, even now, 5 years later, i still shiver when i think about it. but what got me through that was movies. movies and imagination. i would watch a lot of various movies but fall in love with a particular one. i would watch the beloved movie often, very often, sometimes as much as three, four times a week, for months. always feeling the same things at the same places. sometimes the feelings increased through the watchings. so i basically lived my teenage emotional life through cinema. and then even after high school and after my trip to the other side of the country, i still did that bovarist thing for a bit. to avoid people, to live life in predictable kind of way. but that behaviour dried out (working in a videostore pretty much killed my interest for living-in-movies).
last summer, i was introduced (by a former professor of mine) to a lad. i fell in love. he didn't, but kept leading me on, thinking that "he could, given time" fall for me. i once went to a movie with him and a couple of his friends. i was sitting right next to the lad, his friends were a couple of rows below us. the lad hated the movie, i liked it a lot. but as things got rougher (because i really was much in love with him), i went to the cinema to watch the movie i saw with him. and i did that, a lot, during the two months of that non-affair. then, the movie stopped being shown in most theaters. so i stopped seeing it. and delt with my grief some other way.
that movie came out on video today. i was really expecting it. not because of the connection it has with my lost non-love, but just because it was salvation during a rough time (and because it's a good movie). so after work today i went to the store to buy the DVD, and watched it. it was really eerie. during some scenes, i re-felt the things i was feeling last summer; from other scenes, i remembered smells and atmospheres, feelings and longings.
for about the past 3 weeks, i've been seeing and hearing things that reminded me of the lad. songs we sung together coming back from the wedding, authors he liked and kept on talking about when we had those huge literary chats over coffee, words he said, stuff he told me that i didn't understand at the time but that i do now. and all those pointers make me want to call him, to talk to him, to see what he's up to. yet, somehow, i know i shouldn't. part of me thinks that all those pointers i'm noticing only appear because i'm being receptive to them, because i need to feel something for someone but there's no one, so i go back to the last strong felt feeling. the other part thinks that i should indeed get in touch, that i have nothing to lose.
for now though, i'll keep on believing that i'm only seeing those pointers because i'm being receptive to them, because i feel the need for love.
20040129
enraged and frustrated
life seems to really enjoy making cruel jokes, waving what could be the savior of my situation in front of my face. and once hope has set in, then either the situation stagnates and nothing moves, or life simply just withdraw what might have helped, leaving me there, frustrated. that's what i call a cruel joke.
and that has just happened on the job front. now i'm just waiting, because nothing moved, everything stagnates...
grrrrrr
life seems to really enjoy making cruel jokes, waving what could be the savior of my situation in front of my face. and once hope has set in, then either the situation stagnates and nothing moves, or life simply just withdraw what might have helped, leaving me there, frustrated. that's what i call a cruel joke.
and that has just happened on the job front. now i'm just waiting, because nothing moved, everything stagnates...
grrrrrr
20040109
one week in
it's been nearly one whole week since "the free time" has begun. i can't say it's been joyous all week, it's really hard to have days with nothing planned to do. my life used to depend so much on schedule and things to do that having not much planned (except work shifts) is like falling in a lake from 1000m of altitude.
there's an odd feeling i can't shake off: the feeling of unreality. since i moved back, i have had this sensation of things, life, everything not being completely real. it just might be the pernicious consequence of all that's been happening, or just the continuation of the confusion left by my autumn schooling, i don't know. everyday feels padded, odd, slightly off-center. i still can't really find myself. very much like a maelström i'm spiraling down. i have no idea where my art is going or even what my art is. again, i feel i don't know anything anymore; i know myself even less.
i even started doubting my capacities at art. am i really an artist? was that all a fluke? confusion doing it's thing again. deep down i know that i am not made to work in any other field than the arts, but i guess i have to convince myself, or find some form of direction...
it's been nearly one whole week since "the free time" has begun. i can't say it's been joyous all week, it's really hard to have days with nothing planned to do. my life used to depend so much on schedule and things to do that having not much planned (except work shifts) is like falling in a lake from 1000m of altitude.
there's an odd feeling i can't shake off: the feeling of unreality. since i moved back, i have had this sensation of things, life, everything not being completely real. it just might be the pernicious consequence of all that's been happening, or just the continuation of the confusion left by my autumn schooling, i don't know. everyday feels padded, odd, slightly off-center. i still can't really find myself. very much like a maelström i'm spiraling down. i have no idea where my art is going or even what my art is. again, i feel i don't know anything anymore; i know myself even less.
i even started doubting my capacities at art. am i really an artist? was that all a fluke? confusion doing it's thing again. deep down i know that i am not made to work in any other field than the arts, but i guess i have to convince myself, or find some form of direction...
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