07/01/2024
Fellow Reader,
Happy New Year! It’s the year of the Dragon, as said the year of abundance, opportunities, leadership and self-reflection and as a fellow Snake, I feel there must be a kinship with the Dragon. Next year is the year of the Snake for the first time since I was 12…Finally! Is my universal energy rebirth due, Queen? I try not to delve too deep into astrology and meanings in years because as a romantic with a desire to believe that everything means something and everything is interconnected, I am too easily convinced. All I can hope is that this next year is filled with new opportunities, new experiences, new and old friends, and happiness. I must admit as I have just graduated and the end of the fellowship in mid-April approaches, I am both anxious and excited about what is next. I am looking in a lot of places, applying and planning, but everything is very uncertain, as it always is. The unknown is, well, unknown. The best and worst scenario flashes through my mind. I know I can do it, will the universe let me?
Speaking of graduation, it went great! I am so proud of myself for getting a Masters with Distinction, I didn’t think it would be possible. I actually told myself at the start that it’s fine if I don’t do well since Master’s grading is harder, I’ll get a Master’s anyway. It was a really lovely experience to finally celebrate those successes with both tutors and peers who have been so important to me over the past four years. I was even gifted a dragon brooch by my
Sorry, I have 0 chill. I am a very intense person on the inside.
Everything is the end of the world all the time.
I have been listening to Ins and Outs for 2023/2024 by The White Pube while trying to write this and while I won’t directly do that, I am quite inspired. I even deleted the Twitter app while listening…Am I a sheep? Maybe.
- AIM: Fellowship until April
I still have half of the fellowship left and I aim to focus on developing my VR experience inspired by the objects in the archive at the Birmingham Museum Collection Centre with Birmingham Open Media (BOM) as a part of their Immersive Arts Bootcamp. I hope to build a portfolio of skills through that course as well which will hopefully lead to new opportunities.
final visits to MCC
2. Deleted Twitter (….X)
I’m putting my energy and brain into more meaningful and productive spaces this year and Twitter is not one of them. I’ve been on Twitter for probably nearly a decade and while I have befriended some of the kindest, funniest people across the world through it, they use other apps to keep in contact.
3. Deep diving into learning Latin and Arabic on Duolingo
I quit Duolingo mid-way through 2023 after losing a 100+ day streak. I was devasted. Mortified. Ashamed. No more, I have returned and I am done with German for now. It started with returning to Latin and I found it really really easy as there is a lot of overlap with Spanish and English so I am learning Arabic alongside that. Surprisingly, I am also finding it quite easy to get into. I’m not sure, they just seem to make sense to me and I’ve been able to whizz through to nearly 2k points on both languages in the past few weeks.
4. Continued development of the Book project
As mentioned in the previous post, I am developing a book project with my research group ATHENA. In the past few weeks, there has been a winter break but I’ve been slowly collecting artist references. drawing and slowly returning to reading. It has introduced a bit of academic structure back to my practice and it is something I will need to consistently hold myself accountable for going forward. I have been taught a structure to approach projects with, it’s now time to put that into action without the academic pressures.
5. Pursuing curatorial ambitions
I think this is something I will be doing later in the year but it’s something I’ve been wanting to pursue more and more as I would like to open my own project space/gallery one day, starting with gaining experience from smaller exhibitions, training and DIY projects. Especially within the digital space.
6. Digital Limitations
My mental health has definitely been taking a hit from using my phone too much and I would like to spend less time on Instagram. I’ve set a timer of two hours on Instagram a day to start with and I’m putting my foot down on signing up to any new social media. No Threads, thanks! I’ve also limited other things like gaming time to 2 hours and turned off my computer after 7 hours of use. I was without my phone recently during graduation and it was actually okay. I wasn’t freaked out by it, only mildly inconvenienced by not being able to find my family straight away.
7. Return to drawing and painting
I would like to maintain these skills but I also miss them! It’s where I started and I want to try to draw every day again.
8. BOM Bootcamp
As previously stated, I am pursuing digital practice and job opportunities. The course will run until March and then after I can start pursuing opportunities in this field!
9. More cleaning, more walks, more meditation for peace of mind
10. Continue learning after finishing higher education
11. Growing from rejection
12. Keeping my phone on loud in order to not check my phone if a notification has come in – it will tell me.
13. Biting my nails
14. Writing my feelings and days down
16. Being my own champion to keep my ambition and drive anew
17. Alcohol
After a lot of reflection in the past couple of months, I have decided to quit alcohol. I’ve never personally had a drinking problem, but its effects on others have caused me a lot of pain and I no longer want to be a part of the British drinking culture. I’m done!
I do feel like I’m going through a weird, in-between time in my life after graduation and before the next big role. Keeping a blog every two weeks was very ambitious, the rest of the blog will be monthly so there will most likely be 3 more posts before the end of the fellowship with the end of January, February and March. I do want to continue this blog in some form throughout the year but maybe monthly, as a monthly text to keep up writing which might be updates on practice or experimental pieces of writing. An aspect of this is that I want the pieces to be longer forms of prose rather than short bits written in hast every fortnight. So to effectively build a portfolio of writing as I aim to do, they are monthly and longer going forward.
Something I have to remind myself of when I’m deep into a maladaptive daydream.
I wish I talked to you more than I did in my mind when I’m self-soothing in my loneliness…
I’m trying to make an active decision to stop living within this world within my head, this world in which I experience things before the event even happens and then I am ultimately disappointed when it doesn’t surmount to romanticised fiction. In turn, I am finding gratitude easier to access and feel when I am actively turning this side of my brain off. It is a seductive state, these thoughts in my head manifest into a being I can mould, befriend, and talk to. She is the Changeling, morphing into whomever I want her to be. Merely a springboard for what is ultimately not and never there. Whoever’s vocal tone was last registered is easier to talk to, it’s like Play-Doh for my mind. But it’s not real and it’s not fair. This Being brought me a lot of comfort, but now I’m not so certain I need to be seduced by the Faery anymore. I once read a Tumblr post screenshot about putting overthinking into perspective as the original poster told their partner that they worry their partner hates them or resents things they do and the partner responded, “I wish you didn’t think of me like that” as it was hurtful to them to be viewed in such a light. This could be applied to a lot of scenarios in which people become reduced to mere figments in their minds.
I recently bought an ancestry test because I caught myself saying yet again, I will do that one day when it costs less. Those situations bug me, you put them off to put them off and then they will always be, put off. Something we want to do, something we might do, but will ultimately never do. It was half off in a sale, so I went for it and while £60 is still quite a lot for me, I’ve said to myself it’s for my research for my artistic practice since I have started to look more into Celtic heritage, culture, and stories. I refuse to put it off any longer.
And it is, for research and for art.
My work comes from a place of meaning. A place of heritage, a search for where it all came from, and where it all ended up (me). It’s not from a place of narcissism…gosh, I hope not anyway. I genuinely feel lost as a 22-year-old fresh graduate, ever defined by other people, and lost in doing my own accomplishments justice. I’ve been pushed off a cliff into post-graduate life, as I recently heard it described. It took about a month to regret not immediately doing a PhD to put this type of responsibility off. I’m desperate to hold on to any of my belongings which now plummet with me off the cliff at terminal velocity, desperately trying to hold on to a sense of who I am. I wish I could say I was being dramatic. So maybe some percentages will help as some validating, existential grounding. Ever defined by other people, to be defined by more, even older people. Isn’t that what heritage is all about?
Something else about art I recently started thinking about again after a conversation with a friend, is that it will always be intensely personal. My tears ebb on the edge of my lino carver, and not just because I stabbed myself and profusely leaked blood on the rubber. There is a desperate connection to the images I draw, the images I will into existence because I need to see them. I need them to exist.
There is only so much I can or will say publicly but I will say that my connection and feeling to ancestry is becoming increasingly less at the forefront of my mind as I find myself more connected to my found families. There are so many things to unpack. So much ancestral narcissism that is unnavigable like a fish in jelly that nothing comes to pass. Generational trauma lays heavy on my spirit and soul.
Someone recently called my art “all rather said, isn’t it?” and it stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t realised the sad girl syndrome I keep on my palette and sleeve until now, it’s like some secret ingredient even to the maker. Do I really want to be her, a sad girl? Pitied girl? Lonely girl? Uncool girl?
When I hear people ask what 2024 should be like, I think Thrive. While 2023 was very much a year of surviving, I don’t think of myself as a survivor and I’m not a thriver yet either. But I could be, and I can be.
All my love,
Mads
Mads Washbrook 