Entries Tagged 'Bureaucratic nonsense' ↓

I am feeling the stress of pre-travel.  There seems to be too much to do, but if I break it down into tasks, there really isn’t.  It seems to be a matter of use of energy more that actual work.  Here is what I am doing before I leave in March…

1. Finish my editing work for the new magazine.

2. Ready work for one, but possibly three shows to be hung before and during my absence.

3. File two sets of taxes.

4. Pack a large box of clothes and gear for the trip, to be sent on ahead of my arrival.

5. Arrange my finances for the 3 1/2 month absence.

6. Have a staff meeting here at the house and make sure all the tasks are delegated.

7. Let go, let go, let go….

What it comes down to is my happiness.  How happy do I want to be today or am I so stubborn that I need to be right all the time?

Johnnyboy

Much has happened in the past few days.  The 14th Colony Photo Show went up without a hitch and the six b/w medium format pieces I submitted look lovely on the wall.  To top this off, I have sold one which makes me very happy.  I am here to get my work out there, not make a million bucks.  By the way, if anyone ever asks you about the difference between “b/w photograph (non-digital)”, “silver print” or “silver gelatin print” make sure you tell them there is no difference.  The fancier name was dreamed up by museum currators who felt that “black and white photograph” was too plain sounding and the  ”silver gelatin print” sounded more important.

There is one more group show this month that I am in and that will be it for me until next summer, unless someone invites me to be in a show, that is.  Plus, I am off to Greece in March for more work at the Aegean Center, so that will pre-empt any shows I might be in.

After five years of hard work and ceaseless toiling through a byzantine bureaucracy, I have graduated from the State University of New York with a BA in Historical Studies.  I am amazed and really don’t know what to do with the feelings: relief, joy, pride, etc…I also have pretty much visited most of the places on my to-do list.  This brings an end to my first Five Year Plan so I need to develop a new one.  What will it be?  I’m taking suggestions…Perhaps life will, as it does,  show me the path to take and perhaps I am already on it.  ”Keep going” my father said.  I will.

In a couple of weeks I am off to “Serenity by the Sea”, probably the largest LGBT AA Round-up/Convention in the country.  It is being held, as always, in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, and the organizers expect hundreds of folks from the sober queer community to be in attendance.  I’m pretty nervous, actually, so we’ll see what happens.  In any case, I hope to get some good shots of P’town, a place I grew up with and a place where as a sober man I can now travel safely and well.

Johnnyboy

I have finally finished all of the paperwork needed for my final 12 credits in school.  What a horrible and humiliating process this has been; to justify the work I have done in one school (far superior to the one I currently attend) to a bunch of pencil-pushing bean counters.  Just plain stupid.  If I didn’t know better I’d think I was the subject of discrimination!  We shall see.  I’m pretty sure they’ll find a way to fuck me in some fashion.

I have been invited to be a part of an arts community here which makes me enormously happy, but nervous.  They like my work and want me to be in with them.  This makes sense for some reason.  All of the other traditional paths set before me this summer have come up short: the wedding work–a dud–the work with the pro interior guy–fizzled from nothing.  So it seems like my HP is saying, “Get out there and do it yourself, and take the help when it is offered, but don’t count on it!”  So be it…

I have joined our house up with a local CSA in my little town.  This way we can get a box of assorted veggies every week for the next 13 weeks and be part of a community group at the same time.  I went last week and I was saddened to see that although many people have signed up for and take advantage of this great resource, there were no names on the list of real locals, except us.  The rest seemed to be folks who have transplanted themselves from the city or elsewhere.  This means that many townspeople are still shopping for produce at large supermarkets and buying truck veggies, instead of locally grown and seasonal stuff.  It all comes down to education, in my opinion, and choices.  Without knowledge one cannot make choices.  Knowledge is power.

I have to admit, though, that when I walked into their little store and met the man who is running the operation it made my choice easier…hot damn.  I could crawl over that thing for a few hours…Nice eyes too.  Apparently he’s already dating some other guy, though.  I can dream.

I qualified at my local gay AA group the other night and it felt really good and whole.  Very comfortable and they were able to get to know me a little bit better.  Some good responses.  It felt nice to be able to be ‘out’ in a way that I cannot at other AA groups in the area.  Still, the fellowship rocks and I am slowly getting out in the world.  I attended a dinner last night with some AA and non-AA friends.  the food was superb and I had a good time, but I was a little put off by some of the conversation.  Some of the guests had a lot in common, namely the Big City club scene from the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Not my thing-and I was busy working and practicing my drinking at that time, but I felt envious and left out of the conversation just the same.

OK.  I am off to do some shopping, hit the gym, and take some pictures along the way.  Tomorrow I take my mother to se ‘Oklahoma’ at the nearby Three Corners Art Center.  This will be fun for her-and me too, I hope.

Johnnyboy

As former GSR of my AA homegroup I am still on the mailing list.  This means that I have received the applications for the 2010 International Convention being held in San Antonio, Texas next July.  I am going, and have only to mail my registration and book my room.  I’ll do that today.

I brought the applications to the meeting last night and made the announcement, held up the flyers, etc…Then I saw that the registration applications went into the chairperson’s notebook, which means they will never be seen again.  This makes me sick, and opens my eyes again to the apathy that surrounds me in this program.  This group is full of people with long-term sobriety who do nothing outside of coming to one meeting a week (maybe two) and leaving it at that.  How sad.  They have lost the gift of desperation and in doing so dampen the exciting fire of sobriety that I felt when I came into the rooms, and still feel at certain meetings.  They no little or nothing of the 12 Traditions (which are not suggestions, like the Steps), and to top it off, I found out last week at a business meeting that the current treasurer (15 years sober) had no idea what a prudent reserve was.  Once again, puking time is upon me.

In any case, their sobriety is not my own, and they can do what they want, but they give the impression that it is OK to just go to meetings and so forth.  They take it all for granted.  Blah, blah, blah…listen to me go.

Good news is all around me…Mom is doing much better (reading, with it, etc…) and the world still spins on its wobbly axis despite my disappointment with a bunch of whinging old ladies.  I am going to finish my thesis and photo class by the end of next week and move along in life.  This, I declare, is my goal today.

Johnnyboy

My mother has come back to ground after 5 weeks of wandering in her mind.  It can be frightening for her, and dismaying as she is sometimes aware of what is going on. The past week, however, has seen a smoothing out of the rough edges.  Most of the time she knows where she is and, thankfully, she has not forgotten who I am or her other family members.  Her condition is called ‘sundowning’ and it causes her to become disoriented in the early morning after waking and beginning around 4:30PM until about 7:30PM.  I think much of it actually has to do with light and stimulation to her eyes.  Her attitude towards this can be upsetting for her, but she seems to be taking it in stride.  In short, she knows that she is safe and loved and at home.  What a relief.

In my academic life I am up against another bureaucratic wall.  I am currently finishing my history thesis and working in a darkroom for an independent study–this you all know.  After this summer is through, I will have only 20 credits left to fulfill, all of which are electives.  I have submitted the changes to my degree plan.  One of the changes is a possible 12-credit semester in Greece next spring at The Aegean Center for the Arts on the island of Paros.  I have visited the school already and met the director, John Pack.  I would be taking Digital Photography, Figure Drawing, and The History of Photography.  That would leave only 8 credits left before graduating.  The ACotA has a credit exchange program with a huge list of colleges and universities here in the US and abroad, including several from  the same state institution I attend.  It is also accredited with the Association of American Colleges and Universities.  This seems like a no-brain-er and  it would be except for a woman named Milly Dean (not her real name). She is on the academic assessment board at my school and probably one of the reasons I had such hard time last year with my Prior Learning Assessment for culinary arts.  She says that since the Arts Center is not “regionally accredited”,  Empire State College cannot transfer the credits.  She has also denied any of the changes I have made on my degree plan.  I have finished my major; the only credits left are electives, which I am taking in the arts and photography in preparation for trying to get an MA or an MFA.

My mentor is working on this for me and I will go above Ms. Dean’s head if I need to. The worst case scenario is that I transfer all my credits to SUNY Purchase and finish my BA there.  I have been told that there are two reasons Milly Dean has it in for me (and others as well).  The first is that a creative strategy for learning does not fit into her neat little unimaginative box.  The second is that ESC receives no money if I go to Greece.  It comes down to the fact that Milly Dean and others like her have no imagination and, maybe, but only maybe, are even jealous of those who do.

It is sad to see that the world of education has been co-opted by the bean-counting idiots who sit on their fat asses and eat chocolate all day.  This is true.  I’ve seen it. They have fat asses and they eat chocolate all day.  The counting of beans is an idiomatic statement.

I have school tonight, so in a few minutes I’ll jump in the Mini and head off north to Fort Orange and college…When will this end?  I am very close, so close as to smell the ink on my diploma, yet the college is holding me up over a technicality:  They will not accept any of my credits (not to mention the Associates Degree) from my previous school because it is a “technical college”.  What horseshit.  If I had spent two years in the army and learned how to kill…But I’ve said all this before.  How boring.

I panicked this morning when I realized I hadn’t finished my homework for my “Page to Stage” course.  I scrambled and had that and a re-write for my thesis statement done in about 2 1/2 hours. Too close for my comfort.

Mom is doing very well this morning. The exhaustion she has felt seems to have just gone away. Tomorrow she gets a check-up from the MD…

My school has changed so much since I first enrolled, and not in a good way. It has become a place for bean counters and people whose asses expand as they sit for hours on end in their office chairs and eat donuts and chocolate. Not that I have anything against any of those pastimes, but mixed together they are a bad thing.  Gone are the days of Knowledge for the Sake of Learning.  Most pof the current students are there to get one or two courses and move up the executive ladder.  Each to his own, I suppose.  Live and Let Live.  Que  sera, sera…Blahblahblah.  I have 24 credits left to complete, provided the school sucks it up and gives me the credits I am asking for.  I am finished with my required courses…well over, actually.  The rest of my time will be electives.

I hope.

Johnnyboy