Tiny Steps

Today I did something I've been wanting to do for over a year. Today I threw out the project that haunted me and nearly drove me to murder at Central Saint Martins. I never got rid of it for fear that, I dunno, I might suddenly fall in love with it later on. I unceremoniously shoved it under my bed and glared at it every time I happened to catch a glimpse.

Remember this horrible thing?

No you probably don't, and that's a good thing. It was a two person project and I got teamed up with my favourite person in the whole class. She and I worked out asses off, doing every step of the project together. She designed and printed the muscle-inspired dress, and I designed and printed and made the skeleton-inspired cage over it, printed with a photograph of hair and skin.

When it came time to present the entire class was impressed with what we had pulled off in ten days. I hated it, and it wasn't well made, but at least it was done and it looked just like my idea. However when it came down to grading, my partner passed and I failed. We were graded by the Evil Tutor, who adored her and hated me.

I was so furious and defeated at that point I gave up. I stopped feeling any semblence of optimism and began assuming the worst- which did indeed come to pass. This project marked the beginning of the end in my mind.

So today I pulled this piece of shit out from under the bed, pulled the dust bunnies off of it....

Carried it downstairs looking like a hairy, curled up dead spider.....

And happily threw it into the skip, never to be seen again!
 

It was incredibly liberating! I look forward to going through my other projects soon and tossing them out as well!

The Anxiety Dream of CSM

Last night I had the strangest anxiety dream. It didn't have any of the normal trappings of an anxiety dream- in fact most of those classic things happened, but I wasn't worried about those. What I was worried about in this dream was not being helped when I needed it most.

So my dream began on the morning of a project presentation at Saint Martins. I had worked my ass off and created an epic presentation, a beautiful dress to show, and I was nervous, but ready. We had to present in a theatre, mic in hand, to an audience full of people. That didn't bother me.

The dream skipped forward and I ran up on stage, grabbed the mic and began to banter with the audience and tell them a little about my project. I was ready for my model to come on stage. But no one came. It turns out that my classmates/friends didn't feel like trying on my dress, and just decided not to model for me. So I had no dress to show, and the rest of my presentation rested on having the model out there on stage with me.

I turned it into a joke on stage, and ended my presentation without actually presenting anything. Backstage, I was furious! I looked at my group of tall, skinny classmates that had agreed to model and demanded to know why they just caused me to publicly fail my project when I had worked so hard on it. They answered with, "we're tired," and that was that.


I woke up feeling let down and untrusting.