Post-Graduation

I'm starting to make a list of things that I would like to do after I graduate in December. While I don't know what I'll actually do for money I do have an idea of what I want to do instead of homework:

1.) Pleasure reading. While there is hardly enough time to read one single book for pleasure during the semester there are lots of other books I'm reading for something other than pleasure. This would be the act of being responsible. Right now, my book list is about the size of my arm and I'm hoping to accomplish reading some of those books some day. Mostly they are farming/food non-fiction, graphic novels, turn of the century fiction and contemporary international novels. I feel like I have neglected the latter category in an indecent way and I want to rectify that as soon as possible. The majority of my international fiction reading is at least 50+ years old and predominantly Russian and Latin-American (even that is primarily Gabriel Garcia Marquez).

2.) Write/draw a graphic novel. Even if said novel only ends up being the size of a zine and distributed as such I really want to try my hand at this. That or I'll just spend the rest of my life trying to make the best graphic novel ever. (not really)

3.) More big linoleum prints. Card-sized ones are cute but big ones can be much more illustrative.

4.) Photograph underwater. I've been Google searching underwater photography, especially of fashion and I've gotta say, if I ever can make underwater photography happen you better believe I will. This is all to say, that "post graduation" is from December until the day I die. I didn't say I'd be doing any of this stuff soon!

5.) Write substantially. I've been given a lot of encouragement and affirmation regarding my writing recently and I want to do something good with it, beyond just filling out assignments/a thesis and blog posts. I don't know how this will manifest itself but I immensely enjoy writing and don't want to let this fall by the wayside just because no one is grading it or even necessarily reading it.

6.) Figure out the things in life that I really want to do. Where do I want my life to head? Where do we want to live? Joel and I have pondered these questions but haven't come to any good complete conclusions yet.

7.) Spend time exploring. Joel and I do this every once in a while but not as much as we could. I also haven't found much of any mushrooms this year (part of exploring) due to the lack of rain. Apparently the sunshine won't last very long at all and mushrooms should follow soon after that. But I think in the end I'd take sunshine over mushrooms.

While this list has been compiled rather selfishly, they are the things that have been rattling in the back of my brain while I try to study art history or read about the abstracted landscape. And finally having written them out hopefully those specters will quiet their gentle whisperings. And now, back to studying art history.