Miz Shoes makes no pretensions about her age: she is older than dirt. I graduated college in 1975, when most of the readers of this blog (if there are any left, that is) were still in diapers, if not in utero. I have worked as a graphic designer, a paste up artist, a web master, a sales girl on the Apple store floor, a nude figure model, a (very bad) camp counsellor, a piece-work painter of cheesy wind chimes and a commercial photographer. I have been a creative director, an administrator for an outreach campus of MiamiDade Community College on South Beach back in the 80s before South Beach was rediscovered and made over, and a college instructor of photography and graphic design. I have milked goats, tossed bales of hay and weed, run an unsuccessful political campaign for a loathsome individual who would have been a disaster if he’d won, done titles and special FX for non-theatrical releases & commercials and held a union card to do it and one of my t-shirt designs (for the Y2K non-event, to be exact) was accepted into the Smithonian’s permanent collection. I have stayed at jobs for as long as 12 years and as short as a week, but since I graduated college on my twenty-first birthday (one of the universe’s more piquant jokes, I feel) I have worked. Full time. The longest vacation I took was 2 weeks, and the longest period between jobs maybe 6 months.
All of that comes to a rather inglorious end on Tuesday, August 13, 2013. I quit my job, and the ten days notice I gave runs out on that day. At 5:30 pm EDT, I walk away from the corporate world and into my studio, there to make what I like to consider my art. I have been collecting art supplies and tools since 1975, stockpiling against this day when I might have the time to create, but not the money to buy the raw materials. I have enough fabric for three dozen quilts, enough wool for pounds and pounds of yarn, and enough yarn to knit a hundred sweaters. I have patterns and silks and oddments and ornaments. I still have my eyesight and my hand/eye coordination. On August 14, I will have the time.
Where do I begin? With this, my blog. I have loved writing and telling my stories for as long as I have had a voice, but knowing that the Big Brother of my corporate overlord was watching my words for me put a huge cramp in my style. That ends on August 13, too. So welcome back to the monkey house, my gentle readers. Buckle up. Now it’s going to get interesting.