I see them and complain not, and am content with all
-"Faces," Walt Whitman
Things have been kind of wonky for me lately. Grown-up summers seem to have that effect on me. Do I find another job? Do I get an internship? Do I make something? Do I hide in my room watching every season of Monk on Netflix avoiding all responsibilities? It's definitely not the last one, by the way. I just have this urgent, overwhelming sense that I should simultaneously be doing everything possible to work on my career and everything possible to be creative and interesting. I mentioned this in my last post, but I applied to a couple of internships and didn't hear anything back. I haven't written anything at all, not even just a bad poem, in at least a month. On top of that, I got a long-anticipated rejection letter from a literary journal. So, I guess you could say my double whammy summer mission was going exceptionally well. I needed to do something though, anything. It couldn't be writing, because, for this moment, the thought of trying to write a poem makes me want to throw my computer and journal into an oscillating desk fan, and it really couldn't be another job because no one wants to hire me. I guess it could have been my current job. Uh. But it wasn't. Let's just say it couldn't have been that so I don't feel bad for not applying myself? Okay, good then. So yeah, it just COULDN'T have been those things. So, I covered my room in felt. I wanted to make an Edgar Allan Poe out of felt, because Edgar Allan Poe as a person and as an author fascinates me and makes me want to weep for days and days, and when someone makes me feel those things I want to immortalize them in felt, apparently. While attempting to give him the perfect fabric-y pout, I thought to myself, "Poe face, you should be a brooch, so I can carry you around with me wherever I go. Maybe that will make you less sad?" The hot glue fumes may have contributed to this conversation. So, brooches I made, and Poes I hallucinatingly conversed with. Then, last night, I started an etsy shop called Faces and Faces.
Faces and Faces is kind of built on the hope that there are other people who want to wear an author's face on their chest so that other other cool people will say, "nice brooch, man!" And that even if other other cool people don't say that, they have the personal satisfaction of having a mini version of their favorite author in a wearable form. The name of the store is a reference to that Walt Whitman poem I quoted at the top of this post. Not only is it relevant considering the brooches are all faces, but I like the idea of seeing faces, getting to know people, and maybe, idealistically, people getting to know each other after bonding over one of my brooch faces. I'm not going to lie - if no one buys a brooch ever, it's going to suck, and I'm going to pout a bit. But there is a bright side - at least I'll have a whole lot of cool brooches to wear
Until tomorrow,
Nicole
