Letters from the Other Side

4. How to fail right royally and not become a famous 'artist'

There really is method to the madness!

When you're an unemployed, fortysomething spinster, you look back over your life and reflect on your mistakes. As one would. In my case; a messy life and some hare-brained choices. Okay, major paw-paw-hits-the-fan-ef-ups.

What not to do is sometimes just as educational, if not more so, than a to-do-list (especially for the one who hasn't goofed up yet). So, here are my pearls, one knucklehead to another.

Dear High School Graduate; don't go to college if you're not sure what you're supposed to study. It does not take Rocket Science. Take a year off. Travel. Work abroad. Get to know yourself. Just. In. Heaven's. Name. Don't. Do. It.

I love those self-righteous jackasses who had an unwavering sense of purpose since they were five. Jerks. Every new school year I wanted to become something different. First a teacher, then a fine artist, writer, animator, fashion designer and finally a filmmaker. 

I stood in that queue and I knew I wasn't supposed to register for my second year of Entertainment Technology (Theatre Crafts). They began to call it "Entertainment Technology" in 1999. I had successfully completed my one-year, national certificate. Why couldn't I just leave well enough alone? The train was going at a hundred miles an hour and I didn't know how to jump off.

Previously, I had completed my three high school years at an Art high school, just like the TV series "Fame" and I had loved it! Not just because I escaped from the butch, female bullies at my last high school but also because I was in a school full of artistic weirdos, just like me. My days of hiding from the girls in the bathrooms were a distant memory, like the vague aroma of flushed flatulence and sewer water wafting away on the wings of the wind.

I majored in Fine Arts in high school. I got A's for everything that interested me (all my art subjects). B's for English. C's for Afrikaans. It basically went downhill from there. I cared for nothing else. I just had art on the brain.