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Soundtrack: Ingrid Michaelson - Keep Breathing

School started with the bi-annual portfolio presentation (where all the teachers and classmates are present and you get to show whatever you’ve been up to in the last six months). Don’t know about the other students but those critiques always leave me in pieces, everyone else’s work seems so much… more. And being an illustrator just never is that punk rock. (Me and my ever-present want to be cool… )

I’ve been veering off the thought of illustration as a career for some time, thinking that design is the way to go, but it keeps pulling me in. Now I’ve decided to make peace with it. Working with illustration makes me a better designer, learning about design makes me a better illustrator. I also start to like more the label “artist” because of the fluidity of movement between different media. More and more I start to dislike the idea of “a career”.

Careers don’t allow us to be fully ourselves; careers take as an index of success money and status rather than pleasure in work and creativity. ‘Vocation’, on the other hand, means ‘calling’, and it is a task that earns you a living and which you enjoy doing. … We have a duty to look into our hearts and discover our vocation, our gift. Once we have done this, we will find that other parts of life follow quite naturally.

- Tom Hodkinson: How to be Free

When I think of it like that, it all seems pretty clear.

(Oh yeah, and I turned 27.)

P.S. Still lots to do with this renewed blog, but at least there’s a working feed now. Sorry about the old comments, they are gone.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 12:09 am and is filed under school, theory.