$75 b.s.

Rather than sleeping (like many college students), I spent my morning on hold with unemployment refiling my partial unemployment claim. I had to refile my claim which is just a long ass, bureaucratic process. The whole fucking thing is bureaucratic! Well, kids I’m here to say the extra money ride is dry. I’m eligible for a whopping $75 a week! I work three jobs so it’s safe to say I just wasted their time and mine. Exactly how does the federal government, and every other person running the show expect me to live on less than $200 a week (which is what I make with three jobs if I’m lucky). It is total bullshit. What am I supposed to do, drop out of my master’s program and get a fourth job flipping burgers rather than doing something that will actually pay me a living with skills I could use to get said decent job?!

I’m college educated, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. I work three jobs but that isn’t enough either. Here’s my “American Dream” going down the toilet. I guess I’ll try to at least finish out the semester if I don’t go broke by then.

I’d like to thank the United States government,  I hope you end up on unemployment and have to know what it is like to live on less than $200 a week. I think that should be mandatory for anyone entering into politics, that you have to live on less than $200 a week for a year then you can run for any office you please. No fancy cars, suits, haircuts, dinner or vacations. I can tell you, it fucking sucks. Don’t think about dating or a social life because your not going to have one. Get ready to learn about the art of masturbation, because you aren’t going to be getting any either. Don’t hope for a better future for yourself that may come sometime in the next 10-15 years because it probably isn’t there when it seems the government and the universe are against you.

I mean isn’t it enough that your stupid fucking laws separated me from the person I loved, who just they happened to have been born in a different country?!  Because even with that extra $50-70 a week that partial unemployment provided me, I could jump on a plane and leave the country even for a visit.

I had hope, a small bit of it when I entered into my master’s program and hence got two students jobs out of it. Now who knows… it’s all ruined, just like this country’s economy.

the long days ahead.

I spent the past several months worrying about school, school work, and trying to have a life between work and school. I had a million things going on at once and I was lucky I could get a sketch in here or there.  Now, finally, I can do my own art work. I don’t have to worry that I’m ruining my façade of an art career by going back to school (well until September when I can think I’m jeopardizing my fake art career again by doing school work instead of artwork). I should feel free.. instead I feel listless. I have all this freedom to do my own artwork and stare blankly at my sketchbook… and be incredibly frustrated in the process.

After much staring at the blank page, I came up with this one today.

Of course the biggest part of my frustration might actually not be making art but a big change in my life (other than school) My non-American girlfriend left the country. That’s right, I wasn’t dating a U.S. citizen and if you don’t like it you can stop reading this blog. I personally think people should be able to live where ever the hell they want. The government seems to disagree. Of course, if the president or some high-ranking official were seeing an immigrant of the same sex, things would change and we all fucking know it. But there isn’t, so all of us in a same-sex international relationship are just plain fucked. Unless your wealthy, then you can leave to go be with your international hottie. I can not. I am broke, did I mention my fake art career?

I have my paintings, drawings and photography to pour all my blood, sweat, tears, frustrations, and longings into, or not.

Working poor.

The United States has the highest rate of poverty and the widest gap between the haves and the have-nots compared with 17 developed nations. Developed as in not third world.

I wonder if, like other possibly more superior nations, that there could be a system to get people off unemployment and out of poverty. There just seems to be a cycle that one finds hard to break free of. Sure you can get another job but you’re already behind on bills when you get the job. Or maybe it doesn’t pay much at all and you work just to pay some bills but not all of them.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could close the gap between the haves and the have-nots? Of course people would actually feel good about themselves, get good jobs, not spend hours on the phone, on hold, with unemployment, they’d pay their bills, and they might get out of the crap cycle of poverty that put them there! I have heard that its worse in a developed nation to be poor, because not only do you feel the debilitating effects of not being able to help yourself, but people think you’re a bum, even in this economy.

I have three jobs, in theory. I don’t work every day and one job was underwater, literally, it’s being renovated. I am a full-time graduate student, studying to be an art teacher. I just reapplied to unemployment for some sort of extended benefits. That’s right, three jobs and still on unemployment. I’m also considered to be living below the federal poverty line for a single person. I’m thankful I don’t have a family to worry about.  I’m thankful to have a job. Though I do wonder how I am to pay my bills plus better myself. There is help for students to pay their tuition, and books but not any sort of help to help yourself: pay rent, bills, for food, gas for your car to drive to work or school. One is supposed to be able to “help themselves” through unemployment— in theory. In reality, you only get a percentage of what you previously made at your last job or, if on partial unemployment, your current job.

It feels like an endless cycle. Because one feels so dehumanized by being on unemployment and because unemployment dictates that you take any job offered to you.  You spend hours, months and possibly a year or more applying to every possible employment opportunity. The interviews are few and far between and the whole thing feels like a complete waste of effort. Finally one is able to take the almighty, “any” job and that one may not pay what you used to make, it most likely pays less and its probably minimum wage. And how is one to rise above their situation when they’ve probably been unemployed for 6 months to a year, are in debt and now only making minimum wage? How do you bounce back?

Are you down with your right brain?

The fun, rewarding part of partial unemployment is free time. But free time can also be your worst enemy: you have nowhere to go everyday and no money (esp. when you can’t get paid because the unemployment payment system has been down for two fucking days). Of course, free time does enable you to go to classes. Unfortunately, classes cost money and you still need to look for a job (Good luck with that, by the way. I’ve been looking since January. I’ve only managed to score a part time one).

I still enrolled in classes regardless. I threw caution, and perhaps common sense, to the wind. How will I pay bills while doing this? I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Against what many would consider common sense, I’m taking graduate classes in art education. The book I have to read for introduction to art education is going to tell me all about how great having a creative mind is and how it’s going to change the future of the world. It’s  A Whole New Mind: How Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. I have to admit the title alone made me roll my eyes.  I was thinking this book was in the same realm of the ridiculous “get in touch with your right side of the brain” drawing technique a professor tried to force-feed us undergrads at CCRI. She kept harping on a book that taught how to draw using the right side of your brain. The book also claims that anyone can learn to draw—I’m sure there are plenty of working artists who feel relieved at this news. I refuse to read the book till this day and cringe at the mention of it. Honestly, I believe some people are good at some things and others are not. It’s just a fact of life. (A math teacher can harp all day to me about math, it doesn’t mean I’m going to excel at it, ever.) If we were all good at the same things, life would be boring. It doesn’t mean that some skills are more important than others.

However, A Whole New Mind is actually interesting. Pink brings up some valid points. (And since my professor made us write a book report, I am going to exercise my—gasp— creativity and talk about it in a manner I couldn’t have done in a homework assignment, creative curses and all!) He refers to two different ways of thinking: L-Directed thinking, which is literal, analytical, and logical (exemplified in people with MBA’s, lawyers, and accountants); and R-Directed thinking, which is emotional, intuitive, and nonlinear (exemplified in artsy-fartsy types). Until now, society has embraced L-Directed thinking and frowned upon R-Directed thinking. For instance, people used to ask me, after hearing that my major was graphic design, what I was going to do after graduating. I typically refrained from a sarcastic answer: “Live in a cardboard box in Central Park, like Jean-Michel Basquiat!” However, using just L-Directed thinking is no longer enough in the job market, you have to combine that with R-Directed thinking. This is good news to those in creative fields.

Daniel Pink, explains why L-Directed thinking is becoming less important due to abundance, Asia and automation. The abundance of material goods has caused the middle class to desire things—from children’s clothing to toilet brushes—that are not only functional, but also well-designed and beautiful.  Wouldn’t it be nice to go on a Target or Kohls shopping spree and buy all that crap you don’t need? But, is all that stuff going to make you happy? As Pink insinuates, no, it won’t. Look at the surge of interest in yoga, meditation, and spirituality. People are looking for something other than the crap they consume for fulfillment. Yet, oddly enough, they keep consuming it.  Here’s a scary fact for you from page 53: When we can’t store our many things, we just throw them away. Polly Labarre notes, “The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world’s nations.” Besides abundance, another cause Pink talks of is Asia. The job market is changing, and many jobs are moving to countries where people can live on less money. These foreign workers are just as knowledgeable as US workers but the standard of living in their countries isn’t as high as in the US and they get paid far less: an accountant in the Philippines makes approximately the same amount of money that I do with my part time job and unemployment checks and lives far better than I do! The average income in the Philippines is about $500 a month. I’m thinking I’d be a fucking millionaire if I lived there. The final cause is automation. Robots and computers are now doing jobs that people used to do. Enough said.

I’m not exactly sure if reading this book makes me want to laugh, cry, or rejoice. The author makes all these grand statements about how an MFA is now the new MBA. How companies are now sending recruiters to art schools across the country to hire creative people to work for them. This sounds amazing! It sounds like everything a partially unemployed artist wants to hear. But the book was published in 2004—it was published four years after I graduated with an almighty degree in fine arts. Every art related job I’ve had has laid me off, except for my volunteer position at Gallery X. I have been on and off unemployment for ten years! I could think I’m a shitty worker, if not for the dozens of other unemployed or underemployed artists.  Maybe we artists haven’t looked in the right places? Maybe we’ve had shit for luck in the job market? I can’t decide.

edited by AC Martínez

my message for today and every day there after..

I just don’t understand hatred, bigotry and ignorance…
who cares who you love, does love harm others? Who cares how you chose to express your gender?  Who cares what religion you worship? Who cares what country you were born in, or what language you speak or don’t speak…

lets coexist. no one is better than the other. no one is better than the other. we’re equal, remember that. we all end up in the ground, much in the same way we came out of the womb. we live. we die. we eat, fuck and sleep.

Pissing and whining

“Antes morrer livres que em paz sujeitos”
(“Rather die free than live subjugated”)

I have a gripe. Just like “Vince the Destroyer” on the PopIcon and the Cocktail Club podcast. I have a gripe. And its a big one.. and not everyone is going to enjoy what I am about to blog about…

There are a shit load of things wrong with the United States.. maybe I 1 just set about making a list rather than write in an essay form.. so here goes:

Dear Catholics, despite being a big organized religion, I’d like to inform you that You are not the only organized religion in the United States and maybe you should try being tolerant of those that don’t follow the same religion. Just because they are different doesn’t mean they are “wrong.” Maybe they think you are “wrong.” And until we all die and maybe, meet our maker, none of us know whose “right” and whose “wrong.” Diversity makes the world go round. Unfortunately diversity sometimes breeds a feeling, by certain individuals that they are somehow morally superior to everyone else.

Which brings me to my next point, you shouldn’t blame your god for your ignorance and intolerance. You, yourself are ignorant and intolerant and responsible for your own personal ignorance and intolerance not your god. Also, I’d like it a whole lot better if religion wasn’t trying to control the laws in our government. I think the concepts of “right and wrong” and “fair vs. unfair” to our citizens, all citizens, should control what becomes a law. Gays are people and should have the same rights as every single person in the United States. Are we not the “land of the free?” Or is it the “land of the free… for some?” Dear, United States government stop letting religion control the laws. There is still a separation of church and state, right? I don’t want to have to pay taxes if I can’t be treated the same as every other law-abiding citizen. Do I get a tax break for being queer? I shouldn’t have to contribute if you don’t see me as a citizen with the same rights as everyone else.

And more on intolerance. Immigration. There’s a whole shit load of intolerance here. So what they weren’t born here? Your ancestors, unless your Native American, weren’t born here either! And, unless your African American, your ancestors stole the land from the Native people, so your ancestors are thieves! Get off your high horse, Arizona and everyone who agrees with them…

I have absolutely no issue what so ever with those honest folk who come here and are just trying to make a living. Hey I’m here trying to do the same thing. My great-grandparents did it. My grandmother’s parents and siblings came here from the Azores not speaking a fucking word of English. My great-grandparents, amazingly got by in life by never learning the English language. Do I think myself morally superior to them? No. I don’t. Would I look down on others who are just like them? No I wouldn’t. Would you look down on someone who is deaf, they can’t hear the language being spoken and not everyone knows sign language, should we deport them?! Should we discriminate and be intolerant of them? No you’d be called a douchbag… so stop being one when it comes to people who god-for-bid weren’t born here. Half of them end up in low paying jobs that us native born Americans wouldn’t want anyhow, so stop being a douchebag and saying they are taking our jobs.

that is all for today.

namaste.