Pressure's on.
Really, what am I doing?
I've been invited by my alma mater to give an artist lecture on Friday, September 7.
While I feel extremely honored, it made me question what it is that I'm doing that caused them to ask me to address a group of students getting ready to enter the world of graphic design. Looking back to my very first typography course at Kansas State University and tracing that to the work I'm doing today was enlightening to say the least.
So I've decided to appropriately title my lecture, "What am I doing?" Here's the summary:
"We tend to ask ourselves this question too often — or not nearly enough. It's an uncomplicated question with a complicated answer. In this presentation, Brooke Francesi will disclose her obsession with documenting feet, nonsensical word poems, and magazine cut-outs. She'll invite you to challenge what it means to fail and discuss how one simple question can impact the creative process."
Thanks to Vince Francesi, Hunter Stark, and Victoria Montgomery for their contribution.
Ambition and excuses
I'm scared of failure. That's really what it all comes down to. My parents taught me the value of finishing what I've started and it's served me well. It doesn't matter if you're tired or don't feel like it. You finish.
I've accomplished quite a few things in nearly 27 years, things I'm really proud of, but I've also got ambitions. I've got ambitions of doing something bigger and better than what I'm doing now. I want to make a difference and there's one thing I've realized - when you want to do something bigger, sometimes you just have to fail. It's a tough pill to swallow and one that will probably take a while to get used to.
If you'd ask me now, I wouldn't know exactly what to say I want to do. I'd probably say that I want to get my Master's degree and maybe even a Ph.D., I want to live in Europe, I want to teach people new things, I want to work in an environment where the creativity isn't stifled by clients, I want to experiment. Maybe I'd make all sorts of excuses about why I'm not going after any of those things right now.
Maybe I'd just be a better person to admit my ambitions and pursue them rather than worrying about whether or not I'll fail.
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*Special thanks to The 99% for getting me to think seriously