Monday, Jun. 26, 2017 - 2:16 p.m.

I did one linguistcy calligraphy piece. I am pleased but into isn't quite what I'm going for. Well, onward and upward.

I have such limited time to work that I do not practice often or efficiently or effectively. Also I have been somewhat poisoned for a long time by the desire to make money from my work. The linguistics calligraphy urge has really brought that to the fore. It doesn't feel valid or purposeful to do something just for myself, even something so close to my heart. Even if I knew it would somehow result in good art at some point (which remains an open question), without external validation in the form of sales it seems pointless. Which is sad. Even if I had another line of work that people were buying sometimes (and sometimes I do, as you dears all know), I would still have a hard time with this. I read an art business blog the other day where she asked, do you really want this to be a business? Because there are ways in which that will suck, and will be hard and time consuming and maybe not worth it. If you want to make art, just make art. This reminds me of the advice my mentor gave me about grad school: if you just want to do linguistics, do linguistics. You don't need it to be your career, necessarily. That was good advice.

I think that would be very freeing and might even result in some good art at some point. More creativity (NOT THAT I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT). But just having all this stuff I spent time on that no one will ever see (until my kids finally pitch it) is not really an inspiring vision. I dunno. Even that is not true: with Instagram and FB, plenty of people can see it. It's the money, and the way I have been taught to find my value primarily in my earning potential. I think that's all kinds of fucked up, and yet here it is, messing with my head.

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