With third year well underway I sit in front of my keyboard trying to come up with something to write for this blog. I toy with the idea of explaining my recent projects in full, but now is not the time for that. No, now I think I will explain what this blog is for, why I created it, and what I hope to achieve and gain from it.
Stuff like this terrifies me, genuinely and intensely. Last year we were asked to keep a blog for one of my degree modules, I built the whole blog and loved how it looked yet when I came to write a post for it I seized up. Frozen with fear in front of an LCD screen. Something about a blog post was different to any other form of social media in such a way that it flipped my anxiety switch and threw me into an almost full blown panic attack. It was then that I decided I needed to talk to one of my tutors about my inability to complete the work necessary of me.
It was decided that I would be allowed to, instead of writing a blog, keep an Instagram account as I was familiar and comfortable with the UI. I felt that even though the content of what I was writing on my Instagram posts could have easily passed for a fully developed blog post, there was just something about the formality of a blog (a blog is something adults have - right?) and the publicity of it, the fact that it was going to be something that someone had to actively choose to read and follow, and not just something lost in amongst all the other artists Instagram posts to be quickly scrolled past on my meager followings feeds. Something about all of that was stopping me in my tracks and sending me into fight or flight mode, and I chose flight.
So now back on track with the task at hand. I created this blog initially because I had to, then let it lay dormant, unpublished, and unloved for a year, until now. I hope to gain not only an online portfolio and gallery for my work as a developing artist, a place to explore the ins and outs of my reasoning's and intentions in creating the way I do, a place to facilitate an open line of communication with artists throughout the world I otherwise would not have had the ability to connect with, but also a place to work on myself both professionally and personally. This will be a challenge for me, but one I will overcome and flourish in, a place for me to call my own and no one else's.
A place for me.
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