Longing.

I've finally managed to please my mother on some level. I told her that I'm going to take a course in illustrating children's books. A distance learning one that I can complete at my own pace.
I'd like to get a job and quite possibly a life, so it's necessary. I've also emailed a few places asking for volunteers for various things that I've decided won't look too bad on my CV...but then my email address died (I can now be reached at audreybishop@live.co.uk, which is better than my old address by miles). I don't recieve emails to it anymore. It's very odd.

It's been snowing like mad.
Today I went for a walk into town to meet Johnny after his doctor's appointment to go see 'Daybreakers'. He is a good person to go see movies with because he actually has opinions on them. Even if sometimes I liked a movie and he didn't and he tells me why it was bad and then I feel unsure as to whether or not I should have liked it and my head explodes with uncertainty. Aside from that, excellent person to see movies with.
Anyway, on my way there, I walked over the bridge and looked down to see massive pieces of ice floating down the river. I was pretty surprised as I didn't think moving water would freeze into such large pieces like that.
I've been having some real blonde moments.
A coffee shop was closed and had a sign out the front about frozen pipes, but it had weird capitalisation going on and was about 'FROZEN PiPES', so I ended up saying 'oh, it's closed because they have frozen pi-pes' (as in...I said it like 'pee-pez').
I really should not be admitting my stupidity on the internet, should I?
Anyway, I took some photos the other day. Here are a couple (made rather small. I should do that flickr thing again. Flickr does Good Things to photos.):




Aaaaanyway. I am trying to do more art.
When I did my first 'big thing' in March (I did a painting, whether it was large or small, well thought out and...er..good, or barely thought out and frankly rather terrible...as long as I got one done each day) I got a lot of support from friends and family all around the world. I got donations from people i didn't know. I sold paintings to people in other countries too, which was exciting. I had my first exhibition (at the Papered Parlour in London on it's first day as The Papered Parlour following some renovations, actually. I forget what it was called before that) . All by myself. It was an exciting and busy month.
It fucked up my relationship with an amazing girl I was seeing (I didn't have the time or energy to give it a real go. I feel horrible about it. In my defence, she also had exams and things that she needed to get on with.) and it was the month I stopped being able to tell my at-the-time best friend everything because he just didn't care anymore. And yet I never think of it as a particularly bad month.
I think I'm going to be doing something a bit better soon. I've been avoiding doing anything real. Aside from my card for the Amanda Palmer tarot deck (which I got to do because Beth Hommel had seen/liked my work and sent me an email asking me to do it! So ANOTHER great thing came out of my whole...weird...effort...thing.) everything I've done since then has been limited to sketches.
I want to work on something with someone else but all the people I really, really want to work with are in other countries (though I always consider Bekki L a teammate/partner in crime and Beth described us as an 'art making power team' a while ago which was lovely and made me realise that nothing would be the same without the Bek.) and...well...I don't really know anyone here who I'd be able to work with in a way where I could really throw myself into it.
Blah blah blah blah.

Christmas was interesting. I spent it with my family, of course, in London.
My dad called me on Christmas and gave me another one of his art history lectures, which is an odd thing to get for Christmas indeed. He too was pleased to hear that I'm trying to work more at...well...whatever it is I've been working at.
He said he was excited that one of his kids is getting into art and he sounded proud. Which is interesting. I guess it's the kind of validation I've been after for a long time...and he gave me that after I stopped needing it. I've been drawing and painting and considering those two things to be my favourite things since I was a little kid and I think it always was partly a 'let me be like yoooou' thing because he was always making things out of metal or painting or drawing and I loved going through all his work and seeing it up on the walls or sitting on the shelves.
Now it's not like that. Now it's just something I enjoy. It's something that's there when I feel like I'm stuck by myself, it's something my friends can enjoy, it's something that makes people I love proud of me even when I'm not great at it. It's special and I'm glad I stuck with it.
I'm not amazing at it but I will keep trying and getting better because it makes me happy.

End of long ramble about nonsense.

Audrey.