The big bad future

I'm pretty good at planning things out, in general. But sometimes I wonder if my method could use a little madness.

Work is going OK, although I've been put on flameworking an insane amount of beads and almost no furnace glassblowing, which is a downer. I haven't blown a single thing since the goblets class. I miss it terribly. I've talked to the boss-lady and asked for more glassblowing time, but no one else has admitted to bead-making skills, although somehow everyone seems to know how to make a pipe. Go figure.

In any case, I'm making the best of it, and my flameworking hands have gotten fast enough that one of the fusing girls is calling me spider-fingers now. I'm renting some time with a co-worker in the flame shop and trying to scavenge some borosilicate tubing from the classes so that I can practice blowing glass on the torch. If I can't afford to constantly be blowing in the hot shop, it might be worth the initial tool investment to make a switch for part of my time. Hot shop time in Philly was, at it's absolute cheapest, $35 per hour. I'm pretty sure I can get a torch for a solid day for $40. As I remember it, blowing on the torch was one of the most frustrating things I ever did try. So I'm all over it.

I'm also working on getting visitors up in this joint from Philly to blow glass with me in the hot shop, which isn't seeming likely. On this subject, I think you Philly people are all insane. Who wouldn't want to rent a couple of solid days in the summer in Corning, NY? The weather's beautiful, and so is the shop.

I applied for a job back in Philly for the first time tonight, as a research associate. And also for a shop tech gig up here in Corning, which isn't likely to materialize for me. And a non-existent Simon Pearce glassblower gig in Vermont. (A girl has got to dream.)

I never believed that life is perfect, I always figured that we do things the best we can with what we have available. If life was ever perfect, what's the point of striving this hard? I don't think this ever ends either, I think I'll always work like this. There's always something to pursue, we are never fully-formed. It's just that when I imagine what life is going to be like come September, I have this insane hope that, for a little while at least, I can make a living by pursuing glass and design. But this thing has worked out for people who've worked every bit as hard as I have for it, people who were working in studios, living and breathing it, and not offices, doing glass after hours. And I've never held my breath for this, since there's rent to pay, and without the cash to pay for it, I won't be making glass at all. And the pros think I'm happy being a hobbyist when I was really waiting by the phone. But I was never happy like that.