Out All Day

I sold a lot of my stuff online today. Some leftover distro stock, but a lot of personal stuff too. Tonight, I borrowed Heather’s car to scrounge up cardboard boxes to ship these things in. At the gas station where I found most of my cardboard, I also found a couple. Homeless, fucked up. Not totally unlike me a year or so ago. They wanted money and I told them I had none. I gave them a couple cigarettes and used my food stamps to get them something to drink. They wanted a ride and I told them that it wasn’t my car. They had a pretty great sob story about why they couldn’t walk. I told them I’ve fucked up too many things in my life. That I was sorry, but I can’t give strangers a ride in a car that I’ve been trusted to borrow.  I can’t take any risks.

It was sad and it sucks but it’s also [whatever]. It just is. And it’s not a big deal. But I’m proud of myself for saying “no” and for being honest about the reason why.

Says, “I was out all day. No one told me I had paint in my hair ’til 11 pm. I had a shirt with me in case I went to the library. I couldn’t be happier.”

This was only my second piece done entirely with markers. My first was “Powerless Over Flexeril,” but since then I’ve done more. While on tour, I made “Lost in St. Louis” and “Fear is Killing Me” and more recently I made “Still Sick,” one of my largest pieces to date.

A couple hours before I made this, someone told me they liked my outfit and I thought they were making fun of me ’cause I barely wear any clothes. She was serious though. It made me think about how I really like the fact that I have the sort of life that rarely requires a shirt (and even more rarely requires a shirt with sleeves or a collar). I like the fact that I have the sort of life where I can have paint on my hands, on my arms, my face, and my hair, and – not only is it not an issue or a problem but – it’s not even something that anybody comments on.

As anyone that saw my painting from last night (“Blueprint For a Successful Evening“) can probably guess, things were a little off when I got up this morning. But I went about my day, did my own thing, didn’t stress about it, and everything worked out perfectly.
I’ve said it before, but it’s still true – so long as I’m cool, so is everything else.

By the way, it’s not easy leaving white space on the canvas. So – you know – be REALLY impressed by that AMAZING feat.

(This next part – don’t get me wrong: I’m not majorly bumming out or anything like that but) I am feeling just a little bit sorry for myself tonight. Or I was earlier today anyway. With all the traffic to my webstore today (people buying records and books) I’d have thought that I’d have sold at least a little bit of my artwork. But I didn’t. I can think of a lot of reasons for that (some are a little more disconcerting than others) but like the couple I met tonight at the gas station, the reasons don’t really matter. It just is how it is. And my life is still pretty excellent. And I need to remember to be grateful for that. I need to focus on all of the good things. Lucky for me, there are a lot of them so it’s not all that difficult.

And if there’s something in my life that I’d like to be different, then I need to be bold. And brave. I need to take healthy risks and I need to take responsibility for actually making change happen. I don’t just get to have the life I want. I have to be the person I want to be and do the things that… that I need to do. I have to work at it. Whatever [it] might be.

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Signed and numbered 9×11¼” prints of “Out All Day” are available in my webstore. The original sold in November 2013.