Sequence of Events

May 2013 - (ten months ago)  -  graduate from community college with my associates degree

June 2013 - (nine months ago)  -  receive acceptance letter into public university. Sign up for English / creative writing classes to pursue BA. Turn 25 years old.

July 2013 - (eight months ago) - receive increased student loan approval letters.
Aquire art studio. Get rid of apartment.

August 2013 - (seven months ago) - University classes start. Move into dorm on campus to pursue studying writing and begin working towards earning credentials to start pursuing career after college. Drive across state to art studio on weekends to create art and think outside the box.

September 2013 - (six months ago) - Go to classes. Some lectures are interesting and insightful, others are pointless and designed and exist only to fill time because you paid for them and your course of study requires them to exist. Most classmates are 18 years old and will never be the kind of writers they dream of being because their main interests, hobbies and passions in life involve watching crappy television shows and they will mainly lack genuine life experience until they die. Their most traumatic experience is the death of a family dog. They do not think for themselves, or outside the box, and the university is not teaching them to think outside the box, taking their money (and my money), putting us in debt, giving us no promise of careers in the future, giving us little valuable information, and promising to give us a piece of paper we can tell everyone we earned if we remain docile and keep being proponents of their system. I do not have much time to spend in my art studio, even on the weekends.

October 2013 - (five months ago) - I stay very busy on the university campus. I have many tests to take and papers to write. Tests on shallow facts I am supposed to memorize so I may forget later; Papers conformed to "neat" creative styles I am told to adopt and use. Deciding to conform to pre-conceived styles and guidelines are not my idea of a creative process. Nor is being tested on my ability to memorize and regurgitate various facts chosen by someone else. As I am expected to participate in my classes, I share my opinions and views. I open some eyes and furrow some brows. I am told I have a bad attitude. I begin to fail my classes. The few friends I have made living on campus all begin to shun me and keep distance. My teachers begin to shun me. I make it a priority I begin to spend more time at my art studio during the weekends. Soon I begin to spend time there during the week, too, writing and exploring my own creative process and studies, instead of taking tests, writing shallow papers for shallow reasons, and being shunned and ridiculed. I am absent for more and more class. I have alot of fun and I gain alot of experience. Art is created.

November 2013 - (four months ago) - I write, I paint, I record music, I edit video. I continue to study the artwork, style and creative processes of various artists, of my choosing. I am in a creative art conducive environment that I have shaped. I am asked to produce a band's first music video. The job doesn't pay, and it has only a budget of fifty dollars, but the band has a decent following and will be great learning experience as well as a potential gateway to paying jobs in the future. I spend large amounts of time racking my brain trying to figure out how to turn my art into a paying profession since the university failed to do that. I officially withdrew from my classes. And begin staying in my art studio, with no kitchen or shower, all the time.

December 2013 - (three months ago) -  Time is flying by. I'm working on several art projects. The music video shoot I agreed to produce takes alot of energy to plan, but I want it to meet its full potential to satisfy the band, the audience and myself. The video shoot goes very well, there are several hang ups, but we get past them to capture excellent, unique video in a unique venue with a great cooperative crowd. Still, no jobs are paying. The video will take two or three months for me to edit, and I will be out of money by then. I do not stress very much, hiking things will work themselves out, opportunities will present themselves and I will do my best to work well with them so I may sustain my artistic life without having to get a shitty corporate job that will wear me down and stress me out. I feel very in tune with the world around me.

January 2014 - (last month) - I start writing this blog.

February 2014 - (this month) - The end of the month is here. The power is off in my art studio as of this afternoon. I am still behind a month on the rent, and I have no money for the next month's rent due in the next couple of days. Obviously, I could have made more sound financial decisions and have avoided running into this bleak period of instability and uncertainty of what the future holds. Its stressful, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do yet. After the initial shock, and beyond being able to shake the feeling of fucking up, being irresponsible and generally failing at life, a feeling of rock and roll creeps in.
Anytime I've gone shopping for music equipment, I always start by exploring the local pawn shops to marvel at their vast, cheap selection. I always try to picture the sort of musicians that hawked any random, sad looking piece of equipment on the shelf. Looking at the various articles, I wonder what sort of life these crazy musicians could be bringing them to the point where they bring their equipment to a scummy little store to sell at notoriously shameless prices. Now here I am, surveying my equipment to select what I only use intermittently and may bring in the most, little amount of money from a pawnshop to at least get my power back turned back on, while at the same time pondering how many days I may float my rent buy paying it with a rent check whose routing numbers are more than less illegible.
Bike Week is coming up very soon here in Daytona Beach, which has granted me an interesting, well-paying work opportunity I will be taking advantage of. I have also secured a small, freelance internet television broadcasting gig.
Gradually the feeling of despondency fades. Everything in life, always comes to a balance, even if sometimes its awful and taxing. Every action has an equal reaction, and even inaction is intense action, The only life that does not get to experience these qualities of life are the those led by the securely neutral lives. The backbone of society, standing solid and unswayed while we, the limbs, flail around in a mania. Opportunity is everywhere, and I will keep writing, no matter what.
One day, maybe I can find opportunity to be paid for writing.