Time for one of my very infrequent journal updates.
I should say yet again that I update my blog far more regularly, with both new work and life stuff, and you would all be very welcome over there. [link]

But anyway, I'm here right now, so what news?

Well since I last wrote a journal I have actually somehow managed to secure myself full time employment, which is ridiculously good news, because as you may have been able to tell last time, I was getting pretty stressed out about the lack of it.

And when I say full time employment, I mean actual proper good full time employment, doing design! I'm now working for a company called Prime Education. To give a brief summary, they run a small group of English Language colleges called Kings Colleges, where students come from all over the non-English speaking world to learn English, and/or gain British qualifications like GCSEs and A-levels.
I'm working as an in-house junior designer as part of a small team, and although this means most of the work is adhering to a particular look and feel, it's actually remarkably varied, from full prospectuses (prospectii?), leaflets and flyers to be sent all over the world, bits of illustration and photography, web design, moving image work... generally on a day to day basis I'm doing different things all the time, and that's all you can ask for.

I'm still pretty new, having only been there about a month, and sometimes it can be quite stressful... I find myself questioning exactly WHY I didn't learn so much basic Photoshop/Indesign/Illustrator stuff back in uni, and am incredibly glad to have possibly the most patient senior designer in the world who tolerates me sighing and muttering 'WHY won't you indent?!' and 'WHERE is the align function?!' and general 'AAAAAGGGH' noises much of each day.

I trust that I will improve with time. I certainly hope so anyway!

But anyway... Suddenly, with the weight of joblessness lifted off my shoulders, I find myself reassessing the rest of my life. I remain single, (although for a brief while I went on a few ridiculously fun dates, but ridiculous fun rarely lasts...) and am saddened to find that most of my friends have had to leave Brighton for various reasons. Don't get me wrong - I'm not lonely - some of my closest Brighton friends are still living here, I have a lot of good friends who are always there for me on the other end of Skype, and I've been lucky enough to have fairly regular visits from others, but even so.
Being single and with a limited number of local friends, I'm trying to make sure I stay busy, and don't just fall into a 9-5 routine of get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. It would be a very easy routine to get into, but I know that one morning I'd wake up and the horrible monotony of it would metaphorically cave in over me, and would render me unable to even drag myself out from under the covers.
That would suck.

Last weekend I had a particular spree of activity, and it's doing these kind of things that keeps me sane and filled with a passion for living and creating.

On Thursday I managed to get on the guestlist to see Beardyman at Digital in Brighton. A friend/acquaintance of mine was doing his background visuals, and was kind enough to invite me along. Beardyman is an incredible improvisational performer, and the live background visuals were an experiment in improvisation as well, with live google image search used in a very creative way. Words can't do it justice, but I was so glad to get to see it.

On Friday night I just about managed to get the very last ticket to see one of my favourite photographers Noah Kalina [link] giving a talk. So glad I managed to get in, it was absolutely fascinating. The talk was put on by Garage Workshops, a photography studio in Brighton, and I had been slightly concerned that it would be incredibly technical - all focal lengths and exposure times... But actually it was a delightfully candid, incredible-anecdote-laden conversation about how he's got to where he is now (at least partly via probably his most famous piece... [link] )
Briefly met him afterwards too, which was delightful. Although I suspect I talked at him a bit too much. Oh well

On Saturday (and Sunday) it was the Brighton zine fair. In the afternoon I went to two workshops, one involving home screen printing techniques, the other about how to draw comics. I produced my first screen print... [link] and also did some very crude attempts at comics based on events earlier in the week... [link]
The amazing Joe Decie [link] was hosting the comics workshop, and I've been a long time fan of his work, so it was lovely to finally meet him.

In the evening I had tasty wagamama with two friends, and then we went to a music/art/spoken word night in a basement. There was a lot of incense and paper covered tables for drawing on. We met a couple of men in varying states of drunkness, one of whom insisted on drawing a full English breakfast on my friend's arm, and the other of whom quietly drew some rather nice pictures of me (well, pretty girls with my hair anyway, haha) [link] [link] [link]

And while the music was unremarkable, we succeeded in totally covering our table and playing some delightfully shouty games of pictionary. [link]

Fun fun.
The next day was the actual zine fair itself, where I spent much more money than I'd intended on some absolutely beautiful art, and felt incredibly creatively inspired. I also bumped into one of my old university tutors, who I enjoyed gleefully telling that I now have a job. This made me happy.

It's been a week since all that, and I have no plans for the weekend, but soon enough more stuff will be happening. I've started writing for a local events blog, which means exhibition private view invites and the occasional free gig in exchange for 300-600 words here and there. A pretty fair deal if you ask me...

So all in all, at the moment, everything is alright. I thought you might all like to know.
And soon, spring is coming! And then everything will be even better.


Tomorrow, I buy these shoes. [link] <3