A Lot of Exciting Things to Mention // The Story of Five Sixteenths

A year ago today I posted on how frustrated I was that I wasn't able to live my life, the name of the post was Nothing Exciting to Mention.  I posted that I'd moved out & found a job but I was finding that in order to live my creative dream, I had to put my dream on old.  This dream was to continue to blog, to continue making art & turn it into a business.

This time last year I was working 2 jobs I despised & not finding time to do anything at all, including blogging. This Nothing to Mention post was a turning point where Five Sixteenths started becoming what I wanted it to be.  I started posting more quality content & less stuff from around the web.  I learned a bit more about design & less about worrying.  Eventually I found a job that allowed me to get by & found a house right down the street from it.

I went from having a day off every 3 weeks to having regular weekends & Mondays off.  I found time to do what I wanted to do, for the most part.  This year (2012), I've made nearly twice as many sales in 6 months in than I did last year total.  That is a crazy idea for me - actual success.  Well, sorta success.

I now have time to create so much content, each day could have two posts here on Five Sixteenths.  It amazes me how I've developed as a person & as a blogger since graduation.  I started my day job about a year ago (in fact that's the interview I was talking about in last year's post!) & have been incredibly lucky to be able to be extremely creative in my day job.  I've made a cohesive look for the school I work for with a brochure, school application, catalogue, business card, letter head, etc and am very proud to add that to my design resume.

Photos edited on iPhone with Instagram, Camera+, DuoMatic & Snapseed.

I can't believe that a year ago I was so frustrated with how my choices seemed to be making my life go.  It's funny how things end up working out, how all my choices though leading into a difficult path were the right ones.  And now, a year later I am making another choice to move, another choice to challenge myself again...and I'm scared I'll end up in the same predicament.  But at least I've done what this blog was here to do, be a diary.  Because I have last year's post, I know that I can get through this next year.

There was one point where I changed & grew too much to remember who I used to be & where I came from.  I changed my major to art & set of to develop into who I wanted to be....to finally be me.  I worked hard, was chosen by fellow students to be in an (all be it crappy & extremely undergraduate) exhibition, attended a ceramics conference, a paper making conference, was published in our undergraduate achievement catalog, received strong feed back in my art classes, & discovered who I wanted to be.   I got so devoted to developing these things that when I finally looked back on it, I realized I'd become the someone I wanted to be but was confused as to if it really was me.  Then I realized, I didn't really keep track of this change.

I somehow became who I wanted to be & lost who I was at the same time.  It was then that I sorta struggled with an identity crisis: Was I really this way, was this the real me or was I pretending?  Eventually I accepted the new me because no one really knows what they are doing & life is about creating yourself & not waiting for things to happen.  It really was the me I'd always wanted to be.  I realized that this 'me' was someone the old me would have looked up to so much! I remember feeling normal & like I knew what I was doing.  But along the path of becoming the new me, I lost that girl some how.  I lost the girl who was normal, who would do what everyone else did & just be normal.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. - Mark Twain
image created in Phoster

Sometimes I feel like she is an old friend that I never talk to anymore, a cousin I rarely see & often forget about, someone who never writes or phones.  But the worst part is I can't ever get her back.  I blog because I didn't blog about the changes in my life in that time.  I blog because I don't want to forget where I came from or the struggles I faced.  I blog because I want to look back & be able to chat with the me I used to be.  I blog because I am someone I am proud of.  I blog because no one believed I could do it.

I also blog because I want others to be the most awesome person they can be.  I want to share with you my journey, though it may not be all of it, at least you may know there is someone out there like you, attempting to do the things you want to do, too.  

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