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Dear reader, I’d like you to know some things about me. One, I hate this assignment. It serves no greater purpose than existing for the sake of having assignments to turn in and the design of Padlet as a website is flawed at best. None of the things I’m writing about are actually important to me and the rigid structure of this is just tantalizingly open enough that you think you have choices to make but you really don’t you are incredibly limited and will end up lying Two entirely about things you don’t care about., what defines me as an artist is my choice. I care about my art because I choose to. I have realized throughout my life that there are many times where other people feel things that I don’t. They care about things in ways that I don’t. I’ve always felt like my emotions are on the wrong wavelength from everyone else. They’re not bad, just different. I have to be much more intentional with my thoughts, feelings, and responses than anyone around me. Thus, my role as an artist is entirely a role of choosing each day to care about my work. I don’t care about anything else, that’s why I chose theater. I choose to care about theater because it is either a choice between that or not caring about anything at all. I care because that’s what makes life worth living and without the caring then living is hard. I dislike dishonesty and I insist that I want to be truthful in all things. I think this goes far beyond whether or not you verbally spread lies. I act authentically in every aspect of my life because I don’t see the point to existing as a person that I am not. If people don’t like me, then at least they don’t like me because of who I am, instead of a personality that I put on. If people don’t like what I do, they are well within their rights to, and accepting that is a part of life. If people don’t like my art, at least it is my art that I wanted to make in the first place. The decision to care and the decision to be authentic define everything that you need to know about me as a person.

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For my work, I had no aspirations and goals, and now, I still don't. Just kidding. I had a great time this semester getting to create works with no stakes or standards for the sake of creating work. It made me realize something, I like creating for the sake of it! And that's a goal enough for me. I think I would always hold myself to some weird standard of perfection and constantly comparing my work to others, when there's no point to that! Let me write my silly little monologue about playing videogames with my brother, is it very good? Who's to say! Not me! I'm just the maker of this silly little monologue. Writing was the best solidifier of this mindset for me. Mixing two very different monologues together for a mediocre result? Mind blowing. World shattering. I had fun and fun should be a goal at all times. Life is too short to not have fun. This is why I laugh so much. Why shouldn't I? I aspire to create for the sake of it and my goal is to think about it in comparison to others as little as possible. To me, it is beautiful to see art that exists just for the sake of it. People argue that humanity is lazy, and we only do things for extrinsic rewards. And we as humanity have proven that wrong time and time again. Creating for the sake of creating is fulfilment enough for some people. I find that admirable and I have enjoyed chasing that high of being able to enjoy creating something for the sake of it. I do not do a lot of creating of my own and this is not something that comes easily to me but I think it’s the most valuable thing I can take away from this semester is that it’s nice to just make things because they are fun and you want to make them.

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I built this in Minecraft. The silly little sandbox game about blocks. This is art. I made it for fun. At the end of the day there is no real world value from this. But I built it because I wanted to. This is art. This inspires me. This makes me want to make art.

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I can't think of any better example for how my working relationship with inspiration has changed than by discussing my groups final project for this class. Previously, I would say the best way to describe how I approached being inspired was to largely look at projects or pieces of work that already existed and were similar to what I wanted to do and use them as a baseline for inspiration and starting from there, with relatively large building blocks. I’ve done this for years. For the final project, it couldn't have been any more different. We sat down and word vomited whatever came to mind at the prompt of "interconnectedness" and our list started with eye contact and ended with fish and I have never had a more productive brain storming session. It felt vulnerable and open, and I wasn’t scared to say something. There were no dumb answers, just answers, we all worked together and had fun doing it. Inspiration to me now involves being able to think freely, think on your feet, and think without fear. Both times we met to work on our final project, my group ended up staying late over our time because we'd gotten caught up in how fun it was to simply have ideas and see what they feel like, versus worrying about a polished end product. We all were just working together, with the same goal in mind, and enjoying the process the whole way through. To me, inspiration is now a process of fun. I wish I had known sooner how easy it is to really make things happen. It’s possible to just have ideas and bring them to life! It’s crazy. It’s so beautiful to see how much easier that becomes too when you bring other people in to the process.

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I took this picture and wanted to use it as an example of inspiration. I really love this shitty star wars parody musical I got to co-SM in 2018. A high school girl decided she wanted to write it, a friend directed it, and altogether a bunch of high school kids managed to put on an actual entire full length musical with costumes and everything. It was objectively bad. And I loved it. This was one of my favorite projects to date and it really opened my eyes to what can be done with the right ideas in place.

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The results of my values in my work in this class has varied greatly from section to section depending on the context of the work I am being asked to create. I notice that when I am given more control of the project I am working on, I naturally find more value in it as there is more responsibility and freedom. And I thrive in situations where I feel the weight of my work on my own shoulders. I value hard work and consideration of how my work affects others. In Rusty's design section, I felt challenged to come up with an idea that was meaningful to me. This was both terrifying and exciting. I had the opportunity to be vulnerable, and I chose to take it and suggest something that really mattered to me. Because I had such a blank slate opportunity to create, I was able to create something I was invested in, my New Works pitch for an art installation inviting festivalgoers to experience the day-to-day life of the chronically ill through the model of understanding known as "The Spoon Theory." (Ask me about it sometime!) This naturally resulted in me creating something that lines up with my values, a piece of work that is extremely out of the scope of what I have done before, which will require hard work, and something that will educate others and spread awareness on a topic that is deeply important to me. I’m glad I took the opportunity to suggest something that actually mattered ot me, I have a tendency to assume that if it’s my idea it’s a bad idea, but people clung to my project, and it ended up growing even more into something I hope to produce. Basically, I'm saying when given the chance to freely create, my creations naturally lined up with my values.

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I made this painting of a spoon because of my spoon theory project that represents my values and because I am disabled and tired and just want to be done with the semester. My project from rustys class was the thing I value most and this is representative of that thank you very much goodnight.