I never went to art school. I didn’t go because I didn’t believe I was worthy, I could never just go to school fulltime I have always needed to work, or try to work, and art school seemed financial impossible and practically foolish. Yet for me as an artist I always feel less then because I don’t have an art degree. I feel like I don’t know as much as those that have their degree in art, I don’t understand all the tidbits about art history that I should, I don’t know some of the technical terms, I just wing it when it comes to composition and color. Now everywhere I look I feel a bit frightened because I don’t have a BFA or the coveted MFA. I feel less capable, less smart, less talented and it is stopping me from moving forward. As I get stacks of rejection letters, and then as I have now entirely given up, I wonder if I had just gotten my degree if I would be able to do what I love, art? I wonder if I had pursued an MFA instead of a MBA if I would be magically successful. I feel like an MFA would somehow be the key for unlocking a wonderful future. When I talk to other artists with a degree, I feel a bit like I did all through school, not good enough, and not smart enough. I feel like NO MFA, NO ART DEGREE is boldly marked across my forehead like felt I had LOSER plastered there through out school.

I know low self-esteem isn’t attractive, being confident is. I have lost things because of my lack of esteem, early boyfriends (that worked ok), jobs, and many other opportunities that have slipped through my fingers. I am just not sure how to change the way I feel. Sometimes I wonder if everyone else is really that confident or if they just pretend. Like people from high school, do they really have it that figured out; are they really that happy with their lives? Maybe it is just that I am never content or maybe it’s just that I need validation from those I respect.

I try on different career ideas, and nothing ever seems to fit perfectly. Is there a perfect job? What about a perfect place to live? Does Utopia exist? The fact is being happy for me takes work, life takes work, pursuing dreams take work and I get worn out and then I fall down. There is so much I want to do with my life and every where I look I seem to be failing, falling short of my own expectations, I am frustrated, tired, worn out. And yet I know this too will pass because life is a bit like the moon its shapes and sizes shifts, coming and going in cycles. My insides are conflicted.

Last night I dreamed about a trip to see a doctor in his new facility in Florida. I guess my ankle had been bothering me (sort of true) and I decided to fly out in the morning to Florida with a ticket home that night. I had no appointment and so I didn’t get in to see the Doctor, but they were worried about my swollen ankle and said I must be cast before I left, I told them it was ridiculous and that I didn’t have the money to do that. They said they would not charge and that it wasn’t optional. So this guy started putting a cast on my foot but it was loose and strange and they made it so my foot was dropped down, and then my pain increased and I couldn’t walk. Since my wrists are pretty much useless from years of crutches I told them I couldn’t use crutches and that I needed to go home, and that they needed to take the cast off we argued back and forth and then my alarm went off. I woke up all shaken, thinking about doctors and hospitals and how they really are the only place I have ever really felt at home. How hospitals and medicine filled most of my childhood and without its constant presence I feel sort of lost. I keep being pulled to the healthcare field, I am just not sure where I fit in it or where or how my art fits in my life either.