does anybody have a quarter?

i graduated almost one year ago, and i haven’t made anything since. 

the only things i’ve painted since then are christmas ornaments and the ugly spots where the fake leather has peeled off my cheap (free) brown couch my mom found for me on the side of the road before i moved. she didn’t want me to spend twenty five dollars on a worn leather sectional from facebook marketplace. i was upset at the time, but i know she was just worried about my financial security and the seemingly rash decision i was making to pack up and move back to the same city i moved away from less than six months prior to live alone, open a credit card, get a second cat, and “make work.”

i’d be shitting myself if i was her too. 

however, her lack of anxiety-induced midnight phone calls is especially surprising given that, like i said, i haven’t made a single thing that i would qualify as being productive to or reflective of my studio practice, despite that being the whole reason for my move. at first i figured i was just burnt out from a rather surprisingly prolific senior year. i made a lot. i tried a lot. but a yearly anniversary is fast approaching, and i am still without anything to show for my very expensive piece of paper and leather folder that’s hanging out somewhere around here (along with a bunch of damp, crumpled, sad socks because my apartment building’s laundry is coin-fucking-operated and I had enough quarters to wash my clothes but not dry them oh my god who has that many fucking quarters?)

i feel like a failure. i work very hard at my job, and i am very tired, but i make excuses not to make things. i am lucky enough to have my very own studio in my very own apartment, and instead it just smells like cat shit because I keep their litter boxes there. i used to feel so feverish to work, and now i feel genuine dread. i don’t know if i was ever good. And if i was, i fear deeply that i will never be good again. 

i think something i am also fearing is the fact that making things was the reason i survived school. it was genuinely the reason i got out of bed every single day, truly. how lucky am i to stumble on something that brings me that much satisfaction? and to be at school for it? and now i’m not making things, feeling sorry for myself, and i am, admittedly, still living a very enjoyable life. i work, pay my bills, call my friends, go out, stay in, love my partner, read, watch new shows (currently obsessed with Girls), vacuum with my own vacuum cleaner, cook, drink, have sex, take baths, use my record player, rearrange furniture (somewhat neurotically)...and i’m not making anything, which was once very much my only reason for living. This is confusing to me and makes me feel guilty and stupid.

i feel stupid a lot these days. and i used to think i was pretty smart. i don’t delude myself into thinking these feelings are unique either, which makes this post pathetic as well, to a degree, but i guess i hoped putting these feelings to words and exposing them would make them feel less scary / potent / suffocating / would embarrass me into getting off my ass and making something abhorrent.

maybe i’m just a young woman in my 20s – heading into her luteal phase as she writes this – who “just graduated” with a useless degree and a privileged life. it’s probably most definitely that. thank you if you read this.