Once upon a time…

I had a silly idea that I was going to land a brilliant job have an excellent salary and live happily ever after. After having several pretty shitty jobs each with a shitty salary and living with depression for a considerable period of time, I gave it all up. I threw the proverbial towel in said “F*ck it.” Quite loudly and became an artist. I now have an excellent job, which I love, a really good employer. (Me) and a next to bugger all salary. I still have depression, but I am at least happy and don’t have the fag of having to leave the house to go to work at all. if I get pissed off I can walk out and reinstate myself in the morning and I only have myself to face when I decide not to go in of a morning.

Being an artist has many advantages you can listen to music to your hearts content, study pictures of naked women… You can also have the added options of working different hours to the rest of the work force, be argumentative, disagreeable, have paint spattered clothes and as mentioned have a variety of issues regarding your mental health. Experimentation with different illicit substances is optional as is nearly killing yourself through over consumption of alcoholic beverages. You can dream aloud of when you are recognised as a creative genius and the world flocks to your doorstep to buy your work, whilst you hide upstairs pretending you are not in. Dealing with the public being too much like real life and gnashing your teeth for never having found an agent or gallery to do the easy bit for you.

Once upon a time I cooked food for a living, doing 12-15 hour shifts and being stoned for the greater part of it. I even tried being a funeral arranger/ undertaker, I won’t say what happened there but it was quite funny. If I ever find myself back in a supermarket/ retail environment I may actually kill people. As an artist I like drawing quick sketches of imagined scenes from Nazi Germany, I don’t know why. I also enjoy having cups of tea when I want to, how I want them and not be dictated to every five minutes by some box ticking marionette.

I also like getting to spend a lot more time with the cats, in fact the only thing I dislike is getting artists block. It is like constipation but more prolonged and infinitely more frustrating at trying to get anything out.