I am sure like most of us, we reach a point in our lives when we question ‘what are we really doing?’. Without getting too physiological about it, we all have a moment in our lives when we question wether we should take the risk of doing a full 360 and following your creative heart or sticking to what you are currently doing with your life, the old, the familiar, the stability.
It all started with Disney
My journey began when I was only five, watching the Disney film ‘Snow White’ on VHS (yes, proud to show my age ahem.. wisdom). A short clip was shown after the film which depicted the process of how animation was made. It changed me. I watched the recording of this over and over again, according to my mum. I remember vividly telling her one day while viewing, ‘When I grow up, I want to do that’.
I seemed to gravitate always towards learning to draw. Not sure if it was just me, but there was this one library book I use to love reborrowing from the school library and it was the most random art book. Of course, it being the 90s, the internet for us was virtually non-existent, physical books was the go to. So trying to explain it in words the best way I can, this book was about (get this..) a book about how to write in bubble writing BUT make the word also look like the word it spells (I have awkwardly added a visual drawn by me below..please don’t hate me).
Over my primary years I experimented with the generic acrylic paints and Crayola colouring in pencils, ‘connect-a-pens’ and of course the occasional wind up crayons. Drawing cartoons was my genre of choice. I just had a fixation to draw what I loved. The older I got, this developed into video game characters and manga style drawings.
Art was that one thing I grew up thinking ‘hey, I’m actually ok at this’. I didn’t actually consider that it could become a part of my life until I got into high school. As a teenager everything seems so static that any other option for a career other than art was foreign. I remember my year 9 English teacher who was lovely yet meek tell another student that ‘Dani should become a writer when she finished school’. I didn’t believe it at first and it wasn’t until I aced creative writing and getting full marks that I started thinking I am ok at this too. I never really looked into a career in writing besides random phamlets they give teenagers about various career paths. Being an author was not even an option, just a career in journalism (which at the time for some dumb reason I thought only involved writing about crimes or unfortunate events). So like the Tamogochi I had impoverished and led to tourturous starvation back in the 90s after the 00s came about, my idea of being a writer went with it.
So back on the creative path, I continued to think about my works of art hanging in prestigious galleries around Australia, for some reason never internationally, but whatever. I kept working hard in my art classes, getting A’s and B’s in my reports and now experimenting with a range of media’s like lino printing and clay. So of course with full confidence I went into my year 10 parent teacher interview with full certainty of what I wanted to be in my life, ‘An artist’.
‘There are no jobs in art’
‘An artist? There are no jobs in art, how about being an Art Teacher instead?’. This was the response my Visual arts teacher had when I disclosed my one true passion in the world. An art teacher? Could I be? At the time I thought, well it has the word Art in it, so why not? and looking back now, anyone who could just tell you what you should do is easier than having to decide for yourself? The worry of not having a job was scary to me, so art teacher was my new motivation.
My UAC (University Admission Courses) manual was my guide. Highlighted was rows and rows of education subjects. One university stood out at me and I strived hard to get into it. Unfortunately, I started to gain my stride a little too late to the study party and by the time I started to develop a genuine love for study it wasn’t enough for me to gain the marks required at the uni of my choice. Disappointed, although my individual study marks where good, subjects like Ancient History and Visual arts wouldn’t rank high enough to reach the cut-off for education.
Stuck with my third option of university, I went into the first day confused, bewildered and wondering why I was in there in the first place. The whole world of university was new to me, no one in my family ever attended and finished at that point so I virtually had no one to ask questions like ‘What is uni like? How does uni work?’, how do you read a timetable?’
For two whole weeks I went into tutorials not having a clue what on earth was going on. I felt like there were conversations going on that I previously missed out on. Like what on earth were people on about?! To top it off, for some reason I was enrolled in Geography, English and Italian, I think I missed some cut off and was thrown into the subjects they had availability in.
Feeling depleted I remember one of my enthusiastic tutors sat us all around a circle and asked us all to introduce ourselves and why we want to go to uni. Not caring at that point I responded ‘My name is Daniela and I don’t really know why I am here, I want to quit…’ Taken a bit aback and trying to be encouraging my tutor tried to mention that this was all new and I’d get through my feelings’. Now hopefully I didn’t start some trend because the person after me introduced himself and said that his attending uni to ‘shut his f*cking father up’ and the one after him said they weren’t happy being there either. I have no idea what happened to that tutor, she fell silent after all those responses and I guess I would have too. I wish I had more happy things to say in that round circle, but in reality, I wasn’t happy.
‘Sorry mum and dad, I quit’
From being in a confused state of mind one week to certainty in the next, I had made up my mind firmly that I was leaving. The line outside the door for the ‘quitters’ was long and slightly embarrassing, watching students sure about their futures and their lives strolling past you and looking like they had it all together and I sure didn’t. We always seem to look at the negative in life. Seeing those people smiling and congregating with friends made me feel like a loser. But not once did I ponder that although I felt singled out, that those people I was lined up with had also made that same choice. To quit. As humans, we don’t focus on that. I just felt like a failure. I also felt extremely sheepish as I had actually found out the day before that the reason I was confused for two weeks in the tutorials was because I hadn’t attended one single lecture. I had been given only the tutorial timetable. So just to ‘have a go’ before quitting, I attended a lecture which was about geography and the world. One subject I despise more than anything in the world (no pun intended) and that in itself helped me secure my choice in leaving.
Leaving uni didn’t go down so well at first with the parents but I assured them I would go back but in a course I would feel comfortable in. Not to keep me lazing around the house, my parents made sure that I should at least get a job. Not soon after, I ended up finding a job as a receptionist at an independent local real estate agency. Being a small business everything was done from scratch. They didn’t have fancy programs or devices like the bigger agencies had. So any new listings that were advertised in the window was created using a very generic and boring template the boss of the agency created in Microsoft Word. I always enjoyed using computers and quickly discovered I had a knack of acing the templates and even had created print out pamlets, formal letters for advertising the agency with fancy boarders and even fun Christmas printouts we stuck on the office window. I was really starting to enjoy this. My boyfriend (now husband) was telling me at the time that there was this program called ‘Photoshop’ that graphic designers use and that I probably would enjoy using it. So I thought ‘why not?’
CS3 and a Mac Computer later..
With little savings I had, I bought Photoshop and a Mac computer and went back to my creative life which I had abandoned for almost a year and went back to experimenting. I started playing around with the tools and found that I was really enjoying the process. I loved learning and seeing the changes I made on screen. That is when I knew there was something more to my creativity than sitting behind an office desk, over watering the only plant in reception (to it’s sad demise).
Next minute, I enrolled decided to enrol into Graphic Design, because, why not?
I was presently surprised I had to admit with the flexibility and finding a space where there were other like minded people who thought the same way, who shared a passion for creativity and people who were genuinely down to earth and wanted to have fun! Look, did I take advantage of my freedom and skip a class or two to go and watch a movie at the local cinema? mayyybe… but they are parts of my memories in my foundation in learning the world of Graphics.
Now it wasn’t like today with fantastic Ipad tech and Apple Pencils, we had learnt our graphics on the old and bulky Mac computers. There was one Mac computer that had a consistent ‘circle of death’, a happy spiral of colours spinning to eternity. When we asked the tutor what was happening she just made us aware that ‘it had been spinning for as long as she can remember’.
As much as that cursor was spiraling its happy little life away, I started questioning, ‘Can I be something more?’
Pivot like its real good
When I announced to the group that I had decided to finish up Graphic Design with a Certificate IV and not a Diploma, there was a general sense of sadness. Not only from the group but from myself. Once again I was questioning myself and my future career choices, ‘Is there flexibility in Graphics?’ ‘Do I want to travel on a train to the city everyday for work?’ ‘Can I be something more like I’ve always imagined?’. By this stage as my graphic design life was short lived, a new possibility awaited. University.
Opening up that admissions letter that day I was excited, nervous and a little scared. The way to this point was never easy and nor was it even a straight line (like most misconceptions young adults believe their life will actually go). ‘Congratulations! You have been offered a place in a Bachelor of Education/Bachelor of Visual Arts!’.
The next part went like a whirlwind
Finally, after years of switching up, questioning my life choices and being a ball of confusion, I finally felt like I found the right path. That straight path into the education rhelm. I found a surprising happiness in reading Syllabi, marking papers, writing essays about the picturesque, sorting out lesson plans and reading about positive reinforcement. I did have this profound new love for education and a love to make a difference for growing people in society. Imagine making that much of an impact! My life for graphics disappeared for a while and was replaced with smelly stickers and teacher inspired stationary. My Mac was filled with Word documents more so than my artworks. It was time to focus on being a teacher.
On the Education Train
I had been lucky enough to be involved in a Teacher Graduate program which allowed me to get a job in a school as a Visual Arts high school Teacher. I went in with the whole world on my shoulders, a preconceived assumption on how teaching would be, a happy go lucky attitude and the idea that ‘I can be the best teacher in the world!’.
Entering my first class, I was lucky enough to have the best 16 year 9 students, a class of all girls funny enough who were the quietest bunch I’ve ever met (and probably the only class I’ve ever had like that!). I walked in, Term 1 all guns blazing, ready to begin. I stood there, they all stared at me, waiting for me to talk. I remember bumbling across a few words, the nerves were real! Then a wave came over me and said in my head, ‘come on! you are here now, no time to be nervous’. And that was it. I jumped onto the education train and didn’t look back.
This train ain’t stopping…for now
As my confidence grew, I found solace in the relationships I built with my students. All unique, quirky, different and smart in their own ways. I started to change things up a bit and started to notice what students actually wanted out of their art education. As much as we as teachers love the classical artists, contemporary kids were so no into that. So I started implementing artists that were cool, different and challenged the world (which made it so much easier to thrown in a random classic artist in the mix, because you can’t avoid them forever). We found more and more students chose art and photography as subjects and the more I could spread creativity the better!
At this stage I had started to think about my skills in graphic design. Could I throw in some old knowledge into my every day career? I went home that afternoon and pulled out all my old Graphic design workbooks, my notes and drawings. A sense of nostalgia came over me as I realised that my time in graphics was probably not a waste of time and something I could use as an advantage.
I implemented the Adobe Suite in the programs (which much debate with the Assistant Principal who wanted to make sure it was worth the money in the budget). The students absolutely loved it, making posters for advertisements, I found a new passion for graphics again that I realised I had never lost. I started to wonder if the life of personal creativity I left behind was really gone forever?
Time for pivot number 3, all for good reason!
Thinking about my life choices at that point in time was unnecessary as I discovered something that overhauled all of that. I had become pregnant! Now thoughts of my teacher life and graphic design days were over and all I had in my sights was sleepless nights and nappies! With the end in sight (my official maternity leave date) was close approaching, I decided to make my final year as a teacher, the best.
I will admit, I had a great time knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about the deadlines and traffic on the way to work after the baby was born, and again as I usually had in my life, unrealistic expectations of what it would be like to be a mother, taking strolls through the park, meeting other mums for coffee every day and putting up your tired and weary feet on the lounge as you sip a pinata collata watching repeats of Days of Our Lives. Not because you want to watch it, but because you can. How wrong I was…
You can be a writer!
Before I could get bitten by the reality bug, a few months out from my leave, a teacher I worked with who actually is an accomplished writer and published by than none other than Scholastic, announced he was organising a writing competition amongst the teachers and a prize was available for the winner. Seeing as it was my ‘yolo’ year being pregnant, I decided to enter. I typed up my creative writing response and submitted it for the competition.
For the life of me I cannot find or remember what I wrote or said, but I ended up winning (by default) and lets not mention I was only one of two people who entered the competition. The teacher who had organised the competition handed me the prize and said ‘have you ever considered getting into writing?’
And we do a full loop-de-loop
