I'm a Procrastinator

I am a procrastinator. I start projects with a good idea and never finish them. When I am given a project, I wait until the last minute to get it done. Somehow, I get a good grade on it at times. It ends up being not that bad to end up doing it that way all the time. Either way, the reason I don't start it is because I am not neccesarily into what the project is. There are those projects that you get and dread doing. For example, when I was in 8th grade, I had to do a history project about this American inventor I had no interest in at all. We had to write a research panphlet about our inventor. For me, I dread these kind of projects when they are given to us. I'm not into it at all. I would rather write a screen play about a scene about the inventor or making a colorful collage. The fact that I have to write a research paper about something just is not in my style at all. This is just for certain projects that I come across. Other projects like posters and power points I procrastinate about because I get easily distracted. It first starts off with me gathering up all of my ideas like your supposed to. Then, it's me trying to make a decision about which idea I like the most. Personally, I am not the greatest decision maker out there which is why I push it further and further away. I think that by giving two decisions I need to choose over some time to think about, it makes me choose the right one. Thus, it leads to distraction to me never getting it done in the end. Turns out that minutes will turn to hours and I will be up at midnight with out a project because I got easily distracted from not doing it.

Usually, I tell myself that I can watch for half an hour my favorite show. Ya know, relaxing before I get started. Sooner or later, the half an hour is up and up comes a new episode of  one of my other favorite tv shows. So, because I am so comfortable on my couch, I feel the sense to not get up. I convince myself that in another half an hour, I will get started. Basically, this kind of way for me to have some relaxation time does not help at all. This makes me get easily distracted about not getting my work done. This usually ends when something boring comes on the TV. After that, I have no idea what to do nextvwith my project. So instead, I sit on my bed and think of more ideas of how to my project. Usually, this concludes to me passing out. In the morning, no project. I am that kind of person that can't stay on one task to get things done. When I have to get a project done, and this is when I actually want to just get it out of my way, I go into intense isolation. This means that I shall lock myself in a room for hours on end until I get what I need to get done finished. Apparently, it is very hard for me to get anything done with a little sister who bugs you every second she gets home from afterschool. She puts on full fledged interviews wanting to know everything that happened about my day. She instigates everything I do. So, my solution is to lock myself in a tiny room and get it all done. Either way, it always works.

Fear of : Improv

I have always been that kind of person that loves to take risks and try new things. If you told me to jump out of a plane, I would most likely do it.  I would be into the whole feel of being adventurous to try new foods and visit new places. I do not like the feeling of being held down to just one place. I love to explore and to notice the world around me. When it comes to my art however, it turns into a whole other story. I would like to act and I want to pursue it one day as a career. On that note, I have learned that a skill that actresses need to have is improvisation. Improvisation is making up something as you go along. So, in that type of actiing, you would be taking the risk of seeing whether or not a certain scene would work out. For me, I have the fear of this because whenever I take on a cast I haven't been workimg with for a while, I suddenly freeze up. It puts me in a state that I am not used to and scared in fact if I got judged for messing up an improvisation. I kmow that in this kind of industry your going to be judged, but for now I need to be taught on how to take those punches. Now though, I just want to build a sense of trust with the cast that I work with for future shows and hope to get to know them better. This would lead to me being less fearful and more relaxed.

In the high school, I have been easily intimidated by the outstanding actors and actresses to take on the stage there. These fellow cast members have had more experience then me obviously. If I were in an improv scene with one of these members, I would not know what to do. I would fear the fact of messing up in front of them. I would not want to do that in front of talented kids themselves. I would practically look like a joke. The fact that I fear the chance of messing up is insane, but true. It just involves intimidation of a new area I do not have any familiar times with. At the same time, in the middle school I felt free to do anything that came to my mind. I had been working with the cast I loved for the last three years. People would come in and go , but I still got used to having those kind of people around. It made us one big dysfunctional family year after year that I have done the musical. Every single time that I was in a certain improv scene, year after year my confidence grew. I was taking the risks that I has always had imagined of doing. I thought of new material with the snap of my fingers. Last year was one of my greastest years in being the older kids in school. I more freedom to work with what I had. It felt amazing. Yet, when I got to to high school, it all changed. I was at the bottom working my way up with an unfamiliar director and cast. At this point, it was a long road ahead, but I would need to get used to it in order to one day pursue what I would like to do.

So all in all, I fear the fact that I am easily intimidated in a new environment that involves my art. I want to be able to do anything when it comes to an improv scene. I want to not care what anyone thinks.  I want to gain confidence in what I do and how I do it. I am a ristaker. For me, I want to overcome my obstacle in facing the stage with confidence. That this should involve not caring about what others think about what my improv is whether it ir weird or not to an extent. I want to learn how to take the punches one after the other. I want to ready for it. In the article that was given to me I quote, " What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don’t, quit." I care about comtinuing on and pursuing what I would like to do. I need help with learning about how to deal with the road ahead for how to deal with the entertainment business. At this point, I want to be the kind of artist that moves ahead in my art discipline to say ," You know what, it was all worth it."

Chapter 10: My Thoughts

You have to enjoy the simple things in life. Like the author talks about in the book, on how he was just waiting in line, with his son wondering around the store looking at Spider Man balloons and the gumball machines in the supermarket. He had started to talk about how we should enjoy the wonders in life. Since I am very inexperienced with the world around me, it makes me think about what it's gonna be like when I go out in the world alone. I don't really know what is gonna be out there for me, but I have a sure idea of what I want to do with my life. When I went to the city by myself with STAC, I started to notice the world around me more and more. I noticed all the forms of art around me when I was alone. It seems that whenever I am alone and free I always imagine certain things and how they are. When I am controlled,  I can only have those certain moments to myself at random times of the day that seem so small for me to recognize the world around me. I enjoy the small moments that someone would do something for me, or that I would do something for someone else. The world around me is changing rapidly. It's my time to seize it.

Chapter 9: My Thoughts

You must enjoy the journey of travel, for that is also an art that it being taken away from the world today. For many people when they walk around, their faces are always in their phones, looking at a screen for hours on end. What is the good  of looking at a screen instead of looking up at the fellow people's faces around you. This relates to what Walter Benjamin was talking about on what would happen to people if they were to ignore art entirely. It is not that art itself is getting ignored, it is that people would not really need to see the orignals that famous artists made. They would instead see recreations of it or buy them for their own homes. By the twentieth century, people started to see traveling art exhibits at the Metropolitan, etc. It would get packed and packed with people that would  want to see these new exhibits. It was especially good for art lovers that lived in the city to have the advantage to go to all these different art museums at their own fingertips. As much as the art world is improving, I feel when people could just go online to see a painting instead of going to the actual museum to see it. It scares me to know that people will not be able to enjoy the art of the world around them at all. This had all happned because of screens set up in the own comfort of your home in order to do work. Soon enough, it will be to see paintings and works of art. Musuems could go potentially go out of business. I would not want to see the Metropolitan Musuem of Art shut down. At the rate that Americans look at a screen, it's time to sometimes shut down and look at the art around you like old times.

Chapter 8: My Thoughts

Philip Pearlstein ( a day to day artist) reminds me of my cousin who lives in Italy. Her name is Paola and she is a fellow artist herself. She reminds me of Pearlstein because of how they have the same lifestyle. The author, Kimmelman , was basically restating what my cousin Paola does day to day in her studio. She has her own unique style of doing things. Paola has inspired me to trybti jump into making art, but every single time I try to, I could never actually do it. My art that I would create on a canvas could never be as original as hers. She has that certain stroke that wraps the whole piece of artwork together. All of her paintings have stories about them that are from her previous experiences and adventures in Italy. Though she spoke about telling me her adventures, but never got to it. It was all about her artwork. Her artwrok is a always a specific style that she gets inspired from in a mood that she would be feeling that day. Back to how she reminds me of Pearlstein, she always lives day to day with creating her original artworks. If you were to see what she creates, you would be enchanted not knwoing how to explain it. It would be that confusing to try and figure out. It would be a puzzle , just like how I think that Pearlstein's works are like. Working day to day in routine makes you more committed to getting a piece of artwork done. It shows a deep a passion that makes you want you to get it done once you start.Paola I believe has tried to do nudes before , but I have never seen them up close. So, I do not know if she still has them or not. I think that Paola is the next generation of Pearlstein by how close in working the same that they are.

Chapter 7: My Thoughts

I had to keep rereading the second page of the chapter to actually realize what Douglas Mawson ( an Australian explorer) went through on his expedition to Alaska. What he did was so insane to not only go on the most treacherous route on the expedition, but to actually have limited people with you to travel on that route. He had one of his men die with most of the supplies, so him and Xavier Mertz ( an experienced mountaineer) to survive on only so little food. What would be the whole explanation behind all of this? It was all for art. Mawson chose the form of art that he would be remembered for doing by being the most brave to go to Antartica. If he survived the trip that he had all planned out, he would have one heck of a story to tell. One story that would be his own original creation, his own work of art that he wanted remembered. This turned out to be more dangerous than picking up a chisel to make a sculpture or painting on a canvas. A 35 year old man survived in the Antartic for more than a year with struggling to survive and having fellow workers die all for his orginal creation of art. Once he told his story, people had kept him remebered as the one of the greatest explorers that would be remembered forever. The thing that I do not understand is that why would he do this in the first place? To me, he may have done this to keep himself from going insane. Yet again, I could be worng. With other famous artists, they did complete certain pieces of art in order to go on the brink of being nuts. Well, would you look at what art does to you.

Chapter 6: My Reflection

Women have an effect on the art world, such as how Charlotte Salomon,( a young Jewish - German female writer) who taught the world about love before the Holocaust. It makes me so proud to have women finally come to mind instead of men come to mind when it comes to independent modern artists. Women never really got the same respect that men always got during those certain centuries that you lived. However, when women started to get more respected around the world, people undertsood how highly improtant a woman is. We always would remember a man's name for any thing in history such as our Presidents, war heros and people that changed the way America was about slavery, etc. It makes you realize that women never got remembered for any thing like that. Instead they were the average housewife, taking care of the children and waiting for their darling husband to come home so that he can eat her pork roast right out of the oven. Now that I read this chapter, Women have started to make their mark on the world, the art world, one word or one stroke at a time.
Also, the fact that all of these old artist who painted masterpieces can have viewers of these documents see soemthing fresh every time. Every decade that the art world changes, these old time favorite works of art spring back to life to show today's artist the history of art. They connect with a painting that they see and that makes them connect with their work more and more. Artists that have lived many years ago that leave their legacys behind in their work let people have insight of how art once was. Modern artists today take risks in the art world which gives them the ambition to see how people will act when they see a different kind of art. For example, Pollock took the risk to show his original work of art to the world by creating art of dripping it onto the canvas. Suddenly, that sparked a new era of how the art world changed forever. The same thing that happened for women to create an new era of art forever.