Little Things

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'" -Kurt Vonnegut

So, I've had a lot going on these past few weeks, but I haven't exactly been vocal about it. I was out of Montreal for a week and a half and no one but me knows why. If you've been reading my previous blog posts, they make my life here in Montreal seem like this constant magical adventure where I go around the city taking pretty pictures all day. And at one time I was doing just that and life was good. The truth is after a couple weeks in Montreal I felt deeply lost and depressed. But I promise this story has a good ending, so stick with it:

On top of writing this blog and taking three classes at Champlain, I picked up an internship at this little design studio on the other side of town. It was a forty minute commute one-way for twenty-three hours of unpaid office work a week, but I signed on anyway thinking I could take on the world single-handedly (as I often believe I can do). I was up to date with all my work, my bookkeeping was flawless, I was finding dozens of new contacts, and I thought everything was going well. But none of this yielded one word of praise from my boss. For whatever reason he could not say a single nice thing to me. Rather he would snap at me, he would tell me to finish the job faster, and overall he made me feel useless and incompetent despite the fact that I was doing everything he asked. It didn't make sense.

I can only guess why he acted this way. Perhaps he was under a lot of pressure and he was taking his frustrations out on the most vulnerable person he could find - the quiet twenty-one year old intern. Perhaps it was because of my nationality - I am aware that Americans do not have the best international reputation. Perhaps he just had a natural aversion to my timid attitude. I would have said more, but all the employees spoke French and little English, and the only other English speaker was, of course, the irritable and verbally abusive boss. On the last week at my internship I was having friendlier and livelier conversations with the French designers even though we could barely understand each other.

So, I had to get out. And on top of that, my bank account was wearing thin (and as a result, so was I). I also have an intestinal disease that abreacts to stress of any kind, and so I was in lots of physical pain. And then came the fall. I have a fragile psyche - under numerous pressures it will break down. I'm not invincible. One night my mind just collapsed in on itself. So I dropped out of the race and went back to the states and saw a psychiatrist who threw around the words "depression" and "anxiety" and "bipolar." I didn't need treatment, I just needed to find some sense of order to life in Montreal.

Two weeks later back in Montreal, I quit my internship. And on the day I stop going to my internship, I get a call from the Game Artisans gallery, which is where I originally wanted to intern. It turns out they needed more help organizing events - in particular, a portfolio review event where beginner digital artists met with professionals for critiques, tips, etc. So of course I said yes and I handed out some flyers and we put out ads on the Game Artisans website and facebook and I even convinced two Champlain students to lend me their TVs for the day. It was a Saturday well spent, and as things were winding down around eight o'clock this professional animator comes up to me and asks out of the blue, "Do you want a job as a concept artist?" As in, an actual, well paying job with a well known game company (THQ Montreal), and it doesn't quite sink in, so I say, "WELL, YOU KNOW, I DON'T DO DIGITAL ART AND I'M A BUSINESS STUDENT AND I'M LOOKING MORE FOR AN UNPAID INTERNSHIP." Oh man, do I feel dumb. I sold myself far too short. But then the animator says, "Yes, but you can draw, and that's all that matters." Concept artist? I thought it was a distant dream. Unfortunately, the animator later told me that the position was taken, but I'm going to apply anyway. And just that small sliver of hope and inspiration is all I need. I've been drawing as far back as I can remember, but for the longest time art was just hobby. I think now it's more suitable to call it a passion or an obsession. How I ended up in international business is a long story, but it's clear to me now that I should've changed majors long ago.

Good things come to me when I work at Game Artisans, I think I'll stick around there for a while. In this city with endless streets of bars and stores and sirens and lights and countless faces... it's easy to get lost. It's easy to lose track of who you are, where you are, and what you're doing with your life. But this gallery and these artists... they are my anchor, the proper soil for my roots. I have found the slightest sense of home, of belonging, and with that, I will grow.

The moral of the story...
If you have a job that is dry and fruitless and drains your soul, a job that does not allow you to grow as a human being, then quit. Simply quit (especially if they're not paying you for twenty-three hours of work every week...). Spend all of your time looking for that niche, that one passion that motivates you beyond success, the job where you obsess over the work and stop thinking about the paycheck. A childish, first-world notion? Yeah, it's not entirely realistic when you have a myriad of responsibilities and the bills are piling up. It's not realistic to those in the developing world living on less than a few dollars a day. But here we have opportunities for creative and intellectual growth, and to let a love for art or science die because it's more practical and profitable to work for Corporation XYZ that makes product 123... to let that love die in the name of capitalism is shameful. To be old and withering and look back at all the unfulfilled passions in life... I fear that worse than death. Embrace your passion, but also be willing to adapt and learn something new, find a way to use it and market it to the chaotic mess of the 21st Century.

And that's all I have to stay about that.