Adulthood.

It’s the 12^th today, and it’s only a few steady days until my birthday.

I have heard many things from different people. My parents already expect me to be an adult, but it seems at home because my home is where I act most childlike. Obi says turning 18 is a momentous moment, where everything you think is real changes, one of the biggest changes being that ‘you don’t give a shit, and you won’t take shit from anyone’ and that ‘you won’t waste time’. Enoque tells me it’s like any other birthday, and I shouldn’t be yearning for an age that presumes my maturity and I should just ultimately ‘be’ rather than ‘expect to be’.

Whether expectations are interpreted as naiive or hopeful, adulthood has been something that I have been waiting for a long while. The places where I experienced glimpse of adulthood were also areas of my life that restricted or kept me from truly achieving it, such as school, family, friends, my talents and interests. 

However, these people and activities will still be a huge part of my identity, but it is the drastic circumstances in which the change would ensue. My family will expect different things from me, the majority of my friends will leave to university, and will subsequently make other friends at their new ‘homes’ (I will do the same in art school), my relationships with people will have more depth, and my interests will mature and develop.

It seems that my change in identity is just around the corner, and although undoubtedly excited, I feel afraid. In many ways I am comfortable in my nearly-grown-up-but-not-quite lifestyle. I live at home and have little responsibility for myself. I am financially adept, and I don’t have to take many risks.

I forget that I have undergone many risky things in my life, but there is that next step I need to take. Yesterday night I was sat with my friend Phillipe, both of us stinking of cider and cigarettes in the backmy parents’ car, where he shared a valuable lesson with me that he learnt when working at his new job. He told me that the key to success was ‘going the extra mile’. He told me that small things that he has done for the company, working extra hours, talking to his co-workers, have now made him invaluable in his workplace, which is really special for someone that is only 18, and didn’t finish school. I think this thesis applies to growing up too. For example, I can easily rely on my parents and friends to get me jobs, or even rely on teachers to push me through school; or I can choose to have a better awareness of who I am and what I want, and grasp every opportunity to grow with both hands.

I think this change is inevitable, but time will only tell how soon. More than anything in my life, I have wanted to embody a woman who knows and gets what she wants. I want to take the positive advice I’m given and become someone. Aspiration and courage will get me where I want to be. It’s that first step to adulthood I need right now to do that, and I can’t wait to see what there is waiting for me on the other side.

New Start: New Company

1 July 2013

It’s strange to be writing again, after such a long time. I thought it might be helpful to write, I have now finished school and never have much to do anymore. I am gaining some money for a living, buying clothes and accessories and meeting old friends, but my brain tends to melt and not engage in many activities. I have become a selfish lazy fiend, and I want to attend to some kind of productivity.

Since school has finished, I have endeavoured to try and find my ‘inner feeling’ within my art work. A woman told me that I have not ‘found myself yet’, which was quitter discouraging as I would like to think of myself as found, and many would agree with me. I have tried to paint, draw, and most of all I have regained and reapplied my love for fashion and reinvention. On other websites I have gained a lot of attention from both people I know and on the internet, and it has encouraged me to record my outfits daily.

In addition to this, I have also met up with my ‘brother’ recently, who has started his own business in making T-shirts for skateboarders (Taboo). Most may think that he is naiive to fixate and have so much trust in a business rather than finish his studies, but I’d like to support him as an artist and friend. He noticed my interest in his work and knowledge, (I constantly asked questions and asked him to edit my designs). We may collaborate our different talents and minds to create what I have been wanting for a long time: to put what I have made into drawing and ideas into real material designs that exist in the outside world, instead of hiding in my sketchbooks. I was able to create a design I have wanted to make since my dad went on a business trip to China, and he was able to edit on Photoshop what I had imagined it to be like.  

He reassures me our plan will work. He has established a relationship with a big company (which I don’t know the name of), but we are both highly aware of businesses, but as he has been attending the business side of Clothing for some months, I believe that his business and both of our creativity will blend together well.

Saying this we have immensely different tastes. It’s quite hard to explain. His designs for Taboo are effortlessly masculine, and he is quite simplistic and uses humour to get his message across. It is quite clear in those designs that he is mainly based on skateboarding, and he doesn’t use lots of colour (although he is somewhat obsessed with it in real life.) I am quite similar, but I realise that I am quite feminine, and my designs are domineered on my personal life and thoughts. The designs I have come of up with so far don’t exactly conjure his enthusiasm for my designs, but hopefully he has faith in my artwork and finds them amiable, but as he mentioned, he might not wear it himself (therefore they are secular to certain people).

My intention is to make clothes for the model teenager, whatever that is. Most of my designs I think project the feminist attitude, women wanting to voice a message about themselves and their intentions and thoughts. I think that my designs can also apply to men (and other genders obviously). In this, I have learnt to have more faith in my own work, and be able to be okay with others not necessarily liking or understanding what I am trying to show. I hope the rest of my designs and efforts are just as well as the first. I know my brain never stops working when it comes to art and that comes with that.

When making a fashion line, it is inevitable that I am going to need models for this procedure. I took photos of a dress that I wanted to sell, and sold it within half an hour! My ‘brother’s’ sister (also my ‘sister’) modelled for me and it looked a little like this: (3 selected, the bottom one is me! Haha.)

I hope that my photography will get better, so that I am able to perfectly portray what I am trying to sell, and make it attractive. From time to time I miss the time where I would take photos, calling my friends to model for me in strange outfits and poses. My confidence majorly played a part to this not becoming a habit, and I have made a list of several people who would be perfect to play a part in this.

To finish this first post, I want to add how glad I am for everything going on in my life!

Hopefully this will turn out well for me and my partner.

-Youutterwasteofperfection

Claudia A / Valentina