In the nine or so months since I’ve last shared anything, plenty has changed in my life; new work places, new moves, more non-contact with harmful people, dealing with new and old traumas. But there’s no need to linger on those things right now. I’m in a better mental and physical place than I was when I exited a micromanaging and toxic environment. Part of that was thanks to the cows, but another discovery helped get me through unemployment and job searches, and it’s something I never thought I’d get any attention doing.
Turns out, with some practice and openness, anybody can be an artist somehow. Even me.
After I left my micromanaging implementation job, I was searching for something quickly, and was thrown into a call center position through a temp agency. It was a bit of mind-numbing, clearly-temporary malaise to pass through until something better came about, so while I took it seriously, I didn’t take it THAT seriously. It was work I’d done before, just with different screens in front of me, and a flimsy headset to finish the experience. On my first day, to prep for training, I was given three things: a notebook, a generic Bic pen, and the single smallest sticky note pad I’ve ever held in my life.
The only thing I really had to learn those first few days was the office software they were using (Odoo, which I hadn’t heard of before then), and while my training group of about 10 people was getting used to it, I found myself bored to tears. So during the downtime, I used that little sticky pad, and doodled myself a little dinosaur.
When I was a kid I was discouraged by an art teacher at the local community center, who said I hadn’t been taking my drawing seriously enough. It was a comic book character class, and I was maybe 12, so even while I was actively trying, their face and those words stopped me from drawing anything more than a smily face or the “cool S” so many kids learn to draw from their friends. But that was it. I had officially learned that I was no artist, and that art needed to be “taken seriously”.
With the tiniest sticky pad and cheapest pen available (seriously, I found a 60 pack for under seven dollars, so mabe 13ยข a pen?), I let myself doodle. Not seriously, not well, just left the pen move across the paper and see where I ended up. There was a lot to draw in my environment; my monitor with the video chat going. The “Exit” sign on the ceiling over the doors I longed to use. Even representations of the people around me. Even the guy coughing on the other side of my cubicle… which is how I likely caught Covid for the first time. About the only experience I was able to take away from the workplace itself.
Within a month I found the job I have now: blue-collar, working with my hands, out feeling the wind in my hair around trains. I’d bought a passport-sized Traveler’s Company notebook with some blank pages on my honeymoon trip to Tokyo, always in my pocket and ready to go, so I kept my sketches going. Notebooks, memo pads (still small, but not that small anymore), even a large sketchbook later, I’ve drawn so many more, everything from the mundane to feelings and sensations I’m feeling at the time the pen starts dragging.
Are they good? That’s not for me to say. They’re definitely rough and drawn by an amateur who flunked out of a community center art class. After getting started, I found myself not only enjoying the experience, but even proud of a few I’d drawn; a landscape of the hills near my last apartment, my own eye (meant as a personal portrait, but the rest of it wasn’t coming together, so I stopped early). Drawing tends to slow down when I’m getting busy or too stressed, but over the last year, I keep coming back.
And when necessary, I got back to basics. No sketchbook with perfect paper, no pencils with different firmness, no “artist” tools even though I’ve bought a few to experiment with. Just back to what I know… cheap pen, small canvas. Can’t mess up a small canvas too terribly, so it’s low stakes, and a satisfying reward.
I’m a bit proud for having started trying to draw something resembling what’s in my head. And I did it at 39. I’d like to think that’s all the more proof it’s never too late to try something new.
Stand Tall, my friends. May your pens, pencils, paints, clay, or whatever you’re creating with make you proud. You deserve to feel happy with your own art… whether you take it seriously or not.