I bought a domain name and a year’s worth of hosting today… possibly the biggest step I’ve taken so far in creating Violonjello. As soon as my payment clears on the 27th, it will be mine. I’m scared for what I’ve entered into, but also tremendously excited – I’m trying on different job titles for size and seeing which one fits me best. Designer? Illustrator? Illustrator? Creative Director? Owner/Manager? Not sure yet… none of them seem to quite encompass what I will be in my company.
Ha, how funny it is to actually write it. My company. My ABN will be in my mailbox any day now. Something else is happening though – my Mum visited today whilst I was doing some research. I ran over my basic business plan with her, and for the first time EVER, she actually seemed supportive. She said, “Oh, that sounds good,” which absolutely bowled me over. Probably just a throw-away comment, and I know I should be past needing my parent’s approval, but it felt so good to have my Mum believing in me.
I’m still researching, making up projections, drawing plans, sourcing wholesale paper and other such things, but also diving into the scarier, more grown-up stuff. Like applying for a business credit card. I don’t even have a credit card for me (probably a good thing), and I’m getting one for Violonjello.
Apart from all that, not a great deal is happening. My day job is draining, stressful and emotionally exhausting… I basically let people scream at me all day long for little more than minimum wage. Apparently we can earn commission though for the sales we make – one girl allegedly made $5500 in one month on top of the base salary. If I can learn to sell like that, maybe it would be a little easier to stomach the work if I knew it was really contributing to the things I actually care about. At least I have some friends there – they are the things that save me from just throwing in the towel.
Syar is in Australia, and Optus haven’t activated her phone! It’s driving me up the wall to know that she is here and I can’t talk to her! Grrr! Hopefully I’ll have magnificent adventures to report on next time though..
What a pathetic excuse for summer; we managed a handful of beach days and balmy nights, and now it’s cold again. So cold that I can’t feel warm, no matter how hot my shower is, how many blankets I pile onto my bed, or how I much I wear. There are girls in the office who were quite happy sitting there in t-shirts and leggings today, while I shivered in stockings, petticoat, dress, jumper and woolen hat. How unfair…
Work is bizarre. I feel like I’ve been sucked into this strange overly air-conditioned world of sub-standard communication, constantly crashing computers and customers that span every demographic. People call, they yell, I pander sycophantically to their every request, apologizing in my most soothing tones the whole time. The choicest insult I’ve received was being called a “shit-for-brains, fucking five year old” – I’m assuming this is a reference to the fact that I sound young on the phone. It may seem melodramatic to say it, but I feel like little fragments of the good things about me are peeling away again. I can’t draw anything, I can’t write… I get home and sleep or try to do some housework, I wake up and I go to work.
I frayed a little today; Miss Chipmunk was not at work, so we couldn’t cheer each other on. I sat in the corner by myself, occasionally piping up with a seemingly important comment, like, “I have paw-print underwear on.” Felicia’s book was very, very good though, and my motivation got rekindled all day, even if the medication was making my hands a bit too shaky to draw properly. It’ll get better.
It’s become all the rage for people to post YouTube clips instead of writing a post; laziness, exhaustion, what’s the excuse? Isn’t half the value in having any sort of journal the cathartic exercise of getting one’s thoughts out of their head? But I think I can make an exception for Björk – above is the film clip for her song Declare Independence. This was the encore song at Big Day Out – Sebastian showed me the clip tonight and I almost cried all over again. She’s so good. If you feel so inclinced, check out the Hunter video clip as well – it’s strange how she can look so absolutely girlish and cute with hair, then have such flashes of brutality in her face when she’s bald.
I have come to the conclusion that I am much more creative and I get heaps more done when I am happy…. bedtime.
It came today – a package, in ochre-colored paper, slightly battered, with a Harper Collins letterhead tucked inside the clear plastic front. I love getting mail and packages, usually never so much for what they contain, but the excitement and anticipation of waiting for them, getting them and then finally opening them. Maybe carefully slitting the sides and peeling back tape, but usually just tearing them open with a dramatic flourish. The content of this package was just a bit exciting though – I got me a copy of Felicia Sullivan’s The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here, published by Algonquin Books.
Despite the burgeoning list of things that I should need to do, I had to read a couple of pages. Or a couple of chapters. Maybe just the first part.
No, I just charged right in and couldn’t tear myself away. I always feel a little bit sad when I read books in one sitting, like a “I’ve been too greedy and now it’s gone all gone!” feeling. That feeling is definitely present, but another one is neutralizing it; deep contentment.
Felicia Sullivan has crafted a haunting memoir; it recounts the sick, sad chaos of a childhood spent with a diabolical junkie mother and the way it translated into years of her own drug and alcohol addictions. At many points, it read like a long-held burden being confessed to a best friend; I was aching to give her a hug. Sullivan is probably one of the bravest authors I have ever read. She offered up everything for us, not just the glamorous or dramatic parts – every gory detail. I am often wary of memoirs for the sometimes distorted or biased way in which people write about themselves, and I admire Sullivan for being honest.
There was not so much a narrative present; it was more a series of extended vignettes that came to a poignant conclusion. Any girl will tell you how complicated relationships can be with our mothers or daughters, and Sullivan has done a great job in exploring the further intricacies of this relationship when drugs and violence are involved. Sullivan’s use of descriptive language is great in the way it juxtaposes the horrible setting of her childhood with the fleeting shininess she craved so badly.
Even though my issues with my own parents are far from the magnitude of Sullivan’s, the book was perhaps just what I needed. I can’t depend on my parents loving me; Felicia Sullivan is successful, beautiful, smart, talented and an author without that to depend on either. So I guess there is no reason why I shouldn’t aim to be as strong as her.
I have never liked geraniums. Perhaps because their name sounds like it should be listed on the periodic table; perhaps because they are too violently colored for me. There are some bleeding-eyeball colored geraniums growing outside my bedroom window, and their very presence is oppressive. Can’t all plants, animals, people have the simple grace of a dandelion? So light, so fleeting, so unconsciously spectacular for those moments after you blow all the seeds into the air. I wish I could have dandelions growing outside my window… they don’t deserve to be called weeds.
So, I’m back. I’ve been trying to restrain myself from writing; I knew that it would be junk, I’d feel badly about it, the cycle repeats, et cetera. But I have also found myself making appalling spelling mistakes, like “nervouce” and “rembering”. So, for fear that my ability to write anything coherent might atrophy even more during this rebuilding time, I’m back.
Working my first ever full-time job is certainly an experience, not one that I would ever volunteer for in a hurry. Luckily I have an accomplice in my friend Miss Chipmunk Jones (haven’t thought of a proper pseudonym for her yet), otherwise I’m sure we would have both succumbed by now to the ever-present urge to cry and run away from that horrible room that gives me headaches. 25 or so people are squished and jammed into a room where we barely have a cubic metre of oxygen each to ourselves. Fluorescent lighting, faulty air conditioning, computer screens, broad Australian accents, squawking self-righteous peasants, bad ventilation, feeling stupid at not being able to retain all the seemingly useless information being fired at me. I almost can’t write about how sad it makes me; it gives me money, and the absolute boredom has led to me drawing some quite nice things.
It’s making me more motivated about getting Violonjello happening though. I’m giving myself deadlines, writing out plans, filling out forms, making bold plans and decisions. Feeling thoroughly grown-up about it, and scared witless at the same time.
It’s back to the dreaded blue building tomorrow, without Chipmunk to keep me company. I’ll survive, thrive and remember the existence of beauty and love in the world. Or I’ll cry and hide under my desk again.
Feeling: Cement-head Listening:Bones of an Idol by The New Pornographers Wearing: Peach socks, black dress and peachy crossover Reading:The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan Wishing: I could get a massage..
