Grit-no gain

The Christmas card note from my uncle echoes the despair and frustration of the rest of the family and just about everybody else I've known, come to that. "When are you going to set about becoming a well-known artist? When are you going to get some ambition?"

I would LOVE all the things that ambition reaps - the house in the country, the studio barn, the horse, the dogs, the travelling....its just the bit beforehand that flummoxes me.
Nearly every New Year I grit my teeth and say 'right, I'm going to GET SOMEWHERE this year". (as in the art world its more who you know than anything; get in with/spotted by a curator/judge/critic/media type etc etc and your halfway there)
I just never ever DO.
My income-art does not contribute to furthering my status as an artist whatsoever. That's really terrible and I don't have a clue how to change things; my agents take 50% but do all the donkey-work including - topically - tax returns.)
The professions of my boyfriends have included ; economics, geography, bio-chemistry, bodybuilding and managing HMV.
None has been even remotely connected with the art world.
That just says it all really : (
On the other hand, I have, meanwhile, created the (unknown/unseen/unheard of) Aftermath series of works and others, whilst my life has lurched from one narrowly averted disaster to the next.

(NB I'm perfectly aware that I will get to San Jose by a sequence of flukes and nothing else. I have great confidence in fate.)

That said, I KNOW that : -

*i will not win anything big
*I will never be rich
*i won't get cancer
*i WILL die of heart/lung related disorder in late middle age
*I'll have a serious accident, which will precipitate (a) slow withdrawal from the world (b) EXIT
*****

I've bloody cheered myself RIGHT up now : (
*****

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Dispenser

Yesterday I successfully bid for an Apple PowerBook on E-Bay.
£325 *K'CHING*
Pleased with myself NO END I then asked for the postage price (actually given, but in tiny writing at the end)
£25 *k'CHING*
Then I had to transfer cash into PayPal
fee £13.80 *k'CHING*
Reading more of the tiny print I notice 'Unit only - no power adapter'
Purchase of power adapter
£22 *k'CHING*

THAT took the shine off slightly.



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