Oops

On taking a break and loosening the fuck up

I have been taking an accidental hiatus: from writing (I’m sorry!), from answering emails (I’m sorry!), from dialing out to talk to family members on the phone (also sorry!). It is easy to get overwhelmed. Sometimes I imagine that I do not have a cell phone. In July 2023, I left instagram and I haven’t been back. For a while, I fell into scrolling on other apps: on reddit (deleted) and pinterest (which became boring after the algorithm started catering specifically to lesson planning). Now, I don’t scroll. But I do stare at the screen. I will it to give me something new. I stare at my empty email inbox. I stare at the same five aggregated news article headlines in Ground News without clicking on them. 

At the very end of March, I took on a month-long gig at my partner’s high school, stepping in for an art teacher who has been out on leave. Before me, they’d had a sub without a background in art. I had to start from scratch with them, even temporarily. Trial by fire, my temporary supervisor called it, and then they liked what I was doing enough to pay me overtime to write a unit for the next substitute. This experience took up all of my brain space. I couldn’t look at my cell phone without becoming overwhelmed. I couldn’t look at pinterest without searching assessments assessments assessments or any other webpage without replacing it with the search results to “which style of pants will teenagers find cool if a millennial wears them.”

I was reminded of when I do my best, emotionally. It’s when I have no choice but to keep doing and doing and doing. It’s when my days have tired me out and when I get home I have no time to second guess myself. When I was unemployed, I was making the most art of my life. But now, I am finding that I am making deliciously ugly never-show-a-soul art. My students dwelled in this space, where they had goals and enthusiasm, but not skills. They made assemblage sculptures that most other teachers would turn their noses up at, but not me. I love ugly art, where it comes from the idea first, and where the aesthetics come next or later or never at all. 

Ugly art is where I relax. Ugly art is where I fuck up and look back at it in a month and realize, “Oh shit, I’m literally a genius.” And also ugly art is something that I can sporadically come back to in between relaxing. I am relearning to loosen up.

We are on spring break right now and in a little under a week, I will be back in a classroom (elementary this time). I am trying to loosen up in all ways. I am cooking meals that are easy. I am playing five to six hours of Minecraft at a time. I am taking out my oil pastels and gouache and colored pencils all at once and throwing them at the page to see what sticks. I am bending wires, bending them out of the shape of my BA, where I became so very constricted, so very disciplined, so very un-loose. 

I used to scroll to unwind. But that was a trick. Now I try not to wind up at all. I drag a long string of yarn behind me, let it tangle and knot.

Here’s to the yarn that gets longer and messier and more confusing forever. Here’s to real brain breaks and to the ugly art that comes out of them. Here’s to the shattering of an art education that gave me so many skills but so little space. Here’s to stepping into a classroom or an art studio or Minecraft server and having no fucking idea what to do next.

Up Next…
TWO monthly playlists for the paid subscribers who I disappointed and angered last month.