That day came on Weds and what do I do? First break I get I goto the Smiths across the street and buy myself a bottle of Jack and proceed to be highly inebriated. It’s all good. What the funny thing is I didn’t even know if I was genuinely insulted. But knowing who the teacher is, it was most likely yes. So I roam around school asking fellow art students what they think of my work and they all say its okay, it’s not horrible. But I still couldn’t help but get that sense of “yea girl, you ain’t bad, but geezus, you ain’t GOOD either.”

Come on now, i’m kind of conceited. A “good” would have kept me satisfied, but to get an “ok” sucks. It’s like when you’re in a calc class and you think you have a C, you’re not good, but you’re not failing. Come report card time or grade check up, you realize you have an F. HOLY CRAP! Ya know? Then you stress about it and calculate in your head how. Then you realize why you have an F after you take a long hard look at all your test and hw assignments.

Well that is what I did to myself with my work. Took a long hard look at it. It’s not good. At all. I have to remind myself if I want to be like some of the GREAT graphic designers I know, I need to think like them. If I expect master pieces from them than I need to expect a master piece from myself. I need to create the heavens…earth…sun..moon haha Okay, no I won’t go THAT far but you get what i’m saying.

I’m gong to calm down a bit and maybe take a few days to  not think about design. Just to pull myself together and my inner confidence again.

This isn’t one of those things where I’m begging for compliments and I want you to say “well, I think your work is awesome!’ ect. This post isn’t about that at all, just a mere vent. Although a lot of you have left encouraging words and I honestly appreciate it. It’s done it’s job and made me feel a lot better. I’m just simply saying from here on out, i’m going to be better, period.

Thats also why I love my job so much. It’s the only job i’ve ever had where I look foward to being there for 8 hours or more. Cause I know for a big chunk of the day I don’t have to be anywhere else and I don’t have to think about anybody or anything. Just me, the customer, and design. Work is truly my sanctuary. It’s where I feel safest…and most at home lately.

Design…it’s the only thing I can fully give myself to and not care about anything else anymore. I feel like everything about it is changing me. How I perceive things. It’s teaching me to control what I want to see and what I don’t want to see.  It’s teaching me to focus. But most of all it’s taking me away from bad things, bad people, and bad feelings. It’s forcing me to look at myself, for what I really am. A girl who has turned her soul into something ugly and disgusting. A girl who has ruined her heart… At one point, my heart was bigger than anything in this world. Maybe one day it’ll be just as big again.

Some where and someday, i’m going to have to learn to forgive myself for all the things I’ve done….for all the ugly ways I acted, and for the ugly things I temporarily became. Each day as I distance myself further and further away from all the things that use to be routine in my life. I find that I can breath better. I can sleep better. I can like myself a little better. I don’t want to go back to what I use to know. I don’t want to go back to any of those feelings. The things that made me hate…for once in my insignificant life, I knew what hate was. I’m so ashamed of that.

Design is my passion and my love. It’s giving me the chance to change and leave behind all the bad habits and bad things that were getting me no where. It’s taking me to a place I had long forgotten. That place where I once actually liked myself and respected myself. For the first time in a long time. I feel like I can actually smile and mean it. I can laugh and mean it. I can be genuinely happy…even if its only for a little while.

I’ll learn to forgive myself…and everybody else one day. But it starts with me first.

1. Get out of my credit card debt BY the end of 2010. It’s do-able. I just need to do it. I don’t make much but whatever I do make, I put 50% of it into my debt. Cause to be quite frank, I don’t have too many expenses since I live with my mother. (I tell you, its so hard to click that button and “authorize” the payment each time)

2. I would like to be able to sit down and have nothing fold over BY summer or END of summer. I’m not even going to use weight, cause adding muscle screws up that kind of weight loss mentality.

3. Launch off versatiledesigns.wordpress.com . I want to commit to it, make it grow, and break into this damn competitive blogsphere.

4. Become a better designer, period. Learn more techniques. Enough to where I don’t have to always depend on tutorials. Heck, maybe actually do some free-lance and get paid.

5. Forgive myself and tell myself its okay that i’ve been emo for the last few months and virtually drank myself away because of  my ex-boyfriend. Majority of girls do this at one point in their life. Move on from the embarrassment already.

That’s it. No lame shit like “become a better person.” All of those are specific (cept for the weight one, but close enough) and definitely accomplishable.

As a designer, everything I make and everything I do… I want you, the consumer, to FEEL something. I want you to look at my work and stay with it for awhile and get lost in it. Feel something. I want you to actually LOOK at it. I went to the portfolio that my school has at the end of the quarter. All the graduates display their work. There were a lot of booths. Some I skipped/walked by/looked at for less than a minute (I did this to A LOT) and there were some I stayed with for a while. That is what i’m talking about. I want to make something that makes people stop and look…to NOT skip over.

At this point I am going to fully utilize that saying, “I may  not know art, but I know what I like.”  I personally think my preference in type face conveys a lot in my selection of…”art” that I like. I hate grunge type. I hate it. I hate it. I think its ugly. David Carson, I am not a fan of you “father of grunge type.” Nor do I think helvetica is is a form of conformity or that its “boring.” I guess the more and more I learn about this typeface and the two opposing sides and each sides argument becomes clear to me. It all boils down to preference/matter of opinion. Yes, I like simplicity…modern. I like UNIFORM and ORGANIZATION. I really probably shouldn’t be saying this cause I might sound like an ignorant girl but oh ho ho! David Carson did things out of feeling too…and I feel like when I see his style of work made from other people that share his same…preference. I think it looks like sheer and utter SHIT. CHAOTIC SHIT.

Oh this is my real favorite…(sarcasim)

You know what that communicates to me? Pure, tacky, shit. I’m going to end my rant. For some odd reason I just felt the need to express this. I have never been so more excited to further my learning and maybe one day when I look back on my post I’ll sit here and think, “Gawd, you were talking out of your ass Crystal.” (Which I often experience a lot).

I’m a horrible person when I drink. I’m a sloppy drunk and I finally saw myself for what I really was last night. I don’t want to relive last nights moments so I won’t go into it really. All I know is the outcome is bad and I royally pissed off some people, one of which that is actually a really good friend. I just know that I don’t like the way I act when I drink. So because of that I have decided to not touch any alcohol for a while either. It was fun while it lasted. But half a year of binge drinking obviously has not solved ANY of my problems. It was a nice escape, but theres only so much I can run from before everything catches up to me knocking me down full force. 

It’s silly isn’t it? I woke up this morning feeling sad because I’m letting go of FB haha. But truthfully, I feel sad in general. I want to take time to be by myself and just figure it out. Whatever that means I don’t know. I crave routine and solitude. I just want to finish the next two weeks of school. Go to work, gym, and than go home. That’s all I want. I want to self-retreat and not re-emerge until summer. I kind of want to remember what it was like to have fun without boozing. 

I think about it now, about how i’ve known people have retreated. I’m mainly thinking of Amber and Nikki. I love Amber. I am thankful for my times spent with her. I think she’s come out a happy person and I accept in her personality that she’s a private and quiet person. It’s okay to be an introvert. (although deep down, I don’t really think shes that introverted) Nikki, I don’t blame her for disappearing. I don’t know what she went through nor do I care to go figuring out why. But how nice it must me to turn your back on everything you once knew and just genuinely start over. To have people assume things about you when in all reality, they don’t know anything about you. How could anybody know anything about you when you haven’t seen them for months? Or years? Its unfortunate how some people only focus on bad memories of a person, and those memories have some of manifested into you being this horrible person. When the good should count for more? I often wonder if that is the case for me when there are people who have long let me go.

A Fine Frenzy. I love this band, although I just want to say her. Since she’s the front person and theirs only two other people they never show. She’s amazing live and she is quite lovely. A nice reminder of how much and WHY I love red heads. Some have such an elegant and classic beauty to them. But i’m thinking I just dig the pale chicks. Cause I love Emmy Rossum.  But yes, Alison Sudol is quite lovely in every way. How I wish I was just as lovely. But i’ll embrace my not so elegant Asian looks and my inappropriate and blunt personality.

I think its finally time to just face my problems head on. I think i’m ready to move on from a shattered heart and just really accept life as it is, continuous. I don’t need “new years” to start over. All I need right now is peace with myself. To be kind to myself. To learn to live with a battle scar and a heart that will forever be permenately damaged. Live, learn, love, and heartache.

Whether knowing this good or bad? It depends how I feel on whatever day. Tonight I feel.. tired.

You want to know what I believe in? Nothing. I believe that I am a girl who feels what she feels and expresses it openly and freely. So let me express this. I don’t believe true love is real. I believe the heart wrenching pain and tension I have been feeling in my left chest is real.

I’ve questioned God. I’ve questioned love. I’ve questioned people and their friendships. I’ve even questioned my life purpose and all that crap. But I have not once questioned all this pain I have felt. It is the ONLY thing I have known to be REAL. I have NEVER questioned it.

So what do I do? Nothing. It doesn’t get better. I pretend it’s not there and fake it and I smile and take pictures and have fun. I’m pretty freaking two-faced. Just because I’m not malicious to people, doesn’t mean I’m not as fake as they come. Half the time I’m drinking to forget about the fact tgat my life is insignificant. So I might as well party it away. I’ll smile for people and I’ll never talk about it again infront of them like I promised myself. But it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I could care less if they ever knew who I really was or what I feel. They have been abandoned and replaced in my heart. I enjoy the meaningless and quick fix company. But its like guys who just date and sleep around with girls. It’s fun and it’s nice but at the end of the day, they don’t mean anything and they could care less. That is truthfully what has taken place in my heart with a lot of things and people.

I don’t care about being a good person. I refuse to. I only care about myself. I really don’t feel like being fucked over anymore. So I honestly want to say, I really don’t give a damn about anybody but me. With the very very miniscule exception of a “few.” but I would honestly even question that.

Fuck this world for everything. It has taken everything tgat I use to love.. Family…frienships… Love itself. Fuck this world because it destroyed everything I once believed in and held true. Fuck it all because I don’t ever want to remember that I use to care about people. That I use to believe I could love and be there unconditionally. I don’t ever want to remember that girl I use to call, “me.”