Jason Driskill

I’ve been hired as the Office Coordinator at Dale Carnegie Corporate Solutions.  It’s a job very similar to my previous employment at Aquinas College in Nashville.

Committing to a 40 hour work week after a summer of self-directed art courses has been a little overwhelming.  Instead of being grateful for my intensely-sought-after, new employment, I found myself at first feeling a little resentful and very anxious.  Forty hours a week?  When am I going to find time to make art?  Am I losing sight of what I moved to California for?  Will I be able to afford art supplies after paying for rent and food?  Woah, slow down there Tiger.  Ease up a little.  It’s gonna be okay.

First of all I am thankful to have a job.  Second of all, the hours are wonderful: weekdays 8:30 to 5.  Thirdly, balancing work and art is not a new struggle for me.  I just have to find my rhythm.

So I got a little anxious, and I’ve been avoiding the blog because I didn’t want to dwell on my stress.  Today my perspective has begun to shift from worried and pessimistic back to excited and happy.  As soon as I got home from work I began rearranging my bedroom (rearranging furniture has always been a kind of a compulsive neurosis for me).  I haven’t been happy with the layout of my bedroom for several weeks, and since I’ve been stressed about not having a space devoted solely for making art, I decided to pull everything out of my closet and turn it into an office.  It’s just the right size for a chair and a small desk.  There’s even a window in there, so it’s perfect.  I’ll figure out what to do about my clothes and other closet-stuff later.  So while I’m left with a comical state of disarray all over my bedroom, this arrangement tidies up the big mess in my head about being unable to devote time and effort to art.  Now I have can balance out the 40-hour workweek with something that’s personally fulfilling.

And the world is a great place again.

To prove it, I got a call from Margaret Tedesco this evening in response to my request for her to serve as my guided study mentor for my off-site fall semester.  She said she was excited about such an opportunity, and upon talking more with her about her background, I was thrilled to hear her express an appreciation for a cross-genre approach to art making.  Her original background was in choreography and she’s heavily involved with writing and film studies as well as art.  While she has an extensive curatorial background with galleries and other art institutions, she has recently begun featuring art shows out of her apartment, as she put it, reverting back to her “renegade ways.”  It sounds like she has a little Secret Show stuff going on!