Week five was crunch time. I had struggled a lot in motivation and energy the entire project. Still, it was now or never so I got in gear. I also did something I should have done from the beginning. I made the project something I wanted to do. Originally I had shot for a project that would have been doable in regular circumstances. However, I failed to take into consideration that these were not regular circumstances. I wrote entirely for pleasure. Instead of putting super high standards on myself, I sort of treated it like a diary. I wrote my thoughts on this time and fostered more of a conversation type of tone instead of prose. This released everything. Finally I was writing and enjoying it again. I had finally made enough headway to feel confident that I could finish my project. Sarahi had been constantly drawing and when we switched to a personal feel, she began drawing small moments we have had together and brought the zine a really cute and personal feel. Overall, we didn’t create a radical piece of art, but instead a testimony to our teenage years. Truly, it was what we needed. After a rough path we were able to get all of the content out and the last week before exhibition we formatted and finalized. We didn’t go according to our plan, but taking everything into consideration, it was silly of us to think we would even stick to a plan in the first place.
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During the fourth week I began the work I should have been doing the entire time. I pushed myself to start writing little by little whether I liked it a lot. I also tried to start working through how I felt about everything independently from the project. I wrote out a document basically ranting to no one and airing out my thoughts. This is something I do a lot, especially when writing about deeply personal things. In writing everything out I allow my brain to begin to make sense of all of my thoughts and turn them into something tangible and hopefully beautiful. In being patient with myself, I also talked to Sarahi and Danielle and decided to cut the zine series and just focus on one zine, the coming of age edition. We had gotten no submissions and we hoped narrowing the focus to something all of my peers were feeling would encourage someone to want to share their experiences as well. Sadly, this didn’t work and we ended up filling the zine with work that was only our own. Although we did want this to be a collaboration with the community, it also gave us more creative freedom to truly create whatever we wanted to create with the zine.
Going into the midpoint of senior project, I wasn’t doing too hot. I was still struggling with focus and writing as well as a lot of personal issues going on with being isolated. This week I came to a big lull that lasted far too long. I managed to complete the required work and tried to get as much out of these things that I could. I really enjoyed the readings and they seemed to energize me in a way. They all covered things that really got me thinking and often led me to write little by little and helped me finish more work. However, there was still the fact that writing drained me. The situation became I was able to start several pieces but not finish anything, or if I forced myself, I was so unhappy with it that it further discouraged me from writing. This usually caused for the largest gaps in writing. However, I talked to Danielle about my struggles and attempted to set a schedule. Together we came to the conclusion that a large part of my lack of motivation was self shaming for not finishing my work. Moving forward I chose to focus on what I had done and uplift myself for that instead of trashing myself for not being focused during a pandemic.
For the second week I focused on writing. I soon learned this would be a lot harder than I had anticipated. Last year I had a zine project as well and I was also able to choose my topic. I chose a topic close to me and it ended up being very difficult to have to think about and produce work for a grade. I was able to do it in the end but it was a very difficult process. I found this pattern repeating. Not only was it sad to think about leaving my school and the feelings that come with senior year of high school, but it made me angry and hurt too. I realized I hadn’t addressed how I felt about losing my last semester of high school and milestones I had been working towards my entire life. This made the process of writing very difficult. I would get writer’s block, feel uncomfortable, get emotional, or just flat out do anything I could to avoid writing. I realized that I had to address this if I was going to be able to write about this. I saw Sarahi making steady progress and working towards our mutual goal so I knew I had to do something to make sure I didn’t let her down. From then on I focused on self care over forcing myself to work. I ended up getting more done and feeling less pressured.
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