Life Post-Art School
It's been 45 days since I graduated, and admittedly that doesn't sound like that long but the reality is that it feels like months already. So what is life like after leaving university? Well... in all honesty it's one hell of an anticlimax.
After spending 4 years of my life in an environment where I was surrounded by creative people working from early morning into the late of night in a studio at least 5 days a week, it's a very big adjustment to now have that amount of free time and not really know what you want to do with it.
Of course there's the part time job that you start picking up extra shifts at just to ensure you can pay the bills at the end of the month - let me tell you, council tax is a very scary thing! But other than that, what do you do with all that time?
I came out of art school thinking 'Great! Now I can do whatever I want and make whatever I want! YAS freedom!' but after a few weeks it sank in that I don't really know what to do with that freedom. I don't know if I even really want to keep making art. With all these questions and no answers and no goals left to achieve (I didn't plan past art school in my grand life plan) I find myself wondering was it even worth it? Did I just waste the past 4 years on a degree that's kind of useless?
Don't get me wrong - they were great years spent meeting some amazing people and travelling and making memories - but I can't help wondering what the hell do I do now?
On my days off from work I sleep until it's afternoon, then I lounge about my flat with no plans to go anywhere or see anyone (not because I don't have friends but because our schedules are all mis-aligned with different jobs and moving). Some days, like today, I don't even leave my flat because I have no reason to. Then comes the part where when people ask you to do things with them, all you want to do is turn them down because you've gotten so used to your own pyjama-wearing company... like I said, a massive anticlimax.
Most of the time I'm on the internet either: job-hunting, watching tv shows or films, or falling down the bottomless pit that is youtube. Sometimes I bake cakes, sometimes I read, and I recently started taking photographs on my film camera again - one excuse to leave the house - but it's a slow-paced existence. Trying to rediscover who you are and what your interests were before you went to art school or even trying to remember why you wanted to go in the first place.
I guess I'm just in a weird phase in my life where I don't have any answers and I don't really know what I want to do next, and I feel like nothing prepared me for this unknown-ness. Nobody tells you what it's going to be like when you leave that art school bubble, nobody tells you that you're really on your own and that you have to find the pieces to make your life feel complete. There's that old saying of 'do what makes you happy' but what if you don't really have a clue what that even is?
Trying to answer that one just leaves me with more questions that I don't want to answer: What do you want to do? Um...curl up in a ball and sleep for the next decade? Not really a reasonable answer is it?
Until I figure out what the hell it is that I do want to do netflix and chill seems like a viable option. And when I do figure it out believe me you'll be the first to know - until then you can find me in my pyjamas hiding from the real world of career aspirations and people that do things.
- Melissa