So, I made a poster yesterday, and I feel mighty proud of it. Indeed. Obviously, you saw one of the rough-draft images in the previous post, which was done in Illustrator... but we've now moved onto InDesign, a layout program that allows you to combine text, images, and illustrator drawings. It's an awesome program and I'm going to have fun with it, I think.

In other news, my life is utterly insane, and I'm going to pull out my hair. No, I'm going to be fine. No, I'm going to leave school utterly destitute and stressed out. No, it'll be great. No, I will fail to produce even a section of the book-project I'm working on. No, life's splendid. No, I will be friendless and desperate, and confused as to what next. No, look at what all you've accomplished. Etc.

Shit, only one more month. I'm panicking, and trying to get my act together about cover letters and applying for work. I don't want to be thinking about that stuff yet, because I have a bunch of school projects, but I'm going to be fundless as I leave school, so...

...so, today I'm going grocery shopping, and then I will write. And then I will read. And then I will write again. Plus I'll send out applications. Yeah, plus.

As for the rest of stuff:

Friday was open studios (in addition to a bunch of other events I wanted to see but couldn't), and so I opened my studio and visited others. It was so nerve-wracking having people be in my studio that I had to leave. But the oddest thing was that lh asked me to put out his buttons - to be given in trade for those who would exchange an "I'm not racist--" statement with him. And almost all of the written responses were very very hostile. Man, there's a bunch of people not willing to consider the correlation between categories such as "racism" and "homophobia." And also a bunch of folks with no sense of humor. I was awed.

Later in the evening was the writing program open mic, and I thought it'd be my last chance to read my work within the school setting, as us December graduators don't get our own reading... but everyone went so overtime with their pieces (sometimes 10-15 minutes) that I didn't get a chance to read. I didn't want to admit it, but I was pissed. I thought it was obvious that in a group-reading setting with 20 people who want to read, 5 minutes is the cap, not the baseline. But apparently it's not obvious.

But I got over my pissiness, made a poster, and last night went to the 50th b-day of one of my former teachers here at SAIC. It was incredibly wild, tons of people, only a few I knew, and a whole room with a disco ball for dancing. And the teach danced up a storm, bare-footed, with red-painted toenails.

Every time I see her, I feel embarrassed for having been such a surly shit when I was advising with her. She just got me at the highest point of my sensitivity about writing, and didn't understand what I was shooting for, which doesn't bother me now that I've had one adviser who understood my general goals, but bothered me then because I thought maybe I was crazy. So, instead of dialoging, I was simply a shit. But she forgave me, I guess, because she is always so sweet...

I had a really good time, danced quite a bit, ate food, talked around a bit, had a couple of fruit martinis and chilled out. All of which will help me do what I need to do today... groceries, writing, reading. groceries, writing, reading. grow celeries, right tea, in reeds ink.