1: What the hell am I doing?

The question above is one I imagine runs through the heads of all my friends and family (potentially many other people, too). Honestly, what in the hell AM I doing? It generally depends on the day; the environment; my level of unmedicated ADHD; if I got high last night and doom scrolled through Pinterest; if the sun is out; if I can open my windows. I mean, “what the hell I’m doing” can get pretty nuanced. But I suppose there’s a beginning to every evolution. Let’s travel back, shall we?

I was an extremely challenging child, but from the beginning, I always wanted to be creating. I recall my mom’s dining room closet filled with shelves and filing cabinet drawers full of unfinished art projects (and obviously in no organized fashion). I always wanted to work on something new because I would stumble across an undiscovered medium and immediately need to use it. Unbeknownst to 9 year old me, my world was expanding, embracing materials and experiences that one day would become my career. Shall we consider this The Big Bang? Oooo, I like this metaphor! Analogy? What’s the difference? Someone tell me and then I’ll forget again even though I’ll convince myself that this is the time I WILL remember.

Well shit, now I have to keep this metaphor/analogy going.

As supportive as my mom has always continued to be, there was a disconnect between my creative/ADHD behaviors and my mom’s analytical, structured lifestyle approach. While my mom was over there charting out detailed constellations in an Excel spreadsheet (which I became an expert at later in life, ahem), I was space debris shooting around, chaotically half-forming planets, “don’t worry, I’ll totally finish it later!”, as I expand over to the next galaxy never to look back again. Aside from my unmanageable childish creativity, there was a lot of other trauma going on in my life that made me significantly more difficult to handle. All of this, then throw in middle school and puberty, caused me to turn inwards and be much more self-conscious about my abilities or skills. 

After a year of university, I was politely told I could not return due to having never gone to class -  so I took a gap year. That was an important time for two reasons: 1) I felt like a fucking dumb ass; 2) it gave me time to actually think about what I needed to do next. Here we encounter the first major “what the hell am I doing” moment. So I went into my mom’s dining room closet, gathered up all my stardust and took myself off to art school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

That experience really shut me down. My cohort was so much more talented than me! Their work was equivalent of those images we see NASA put out of colorful novas while mine looked like that bird of paradise meme: 

So after one semester of art school, that’s right, didn’t even make it a year, I switched to criminal justice with a concentration in criminology. The first state of “what the hell am I doing” didn’t last very long. This next phase of my ever-expanding universe lasted for 12 years. I finished my undergraduate degree in 3 years, went off to graduate school and entered the fast-track PHD program towards a degree in criminology. Instead, I ended up working in a career of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing. I thrived in the banking compliance industry. I was an outside thinker, creative-minded in a fairly rigid environment. I created policies and programs that were implemented in multiple institutions. I became an Excel wizard and developed forms for database entry. I was frequently promoted and encouraged by upper management. 

But with each promotion came a new wave of anxiety. Dun dun DUNNNNN: imposter syndrome. Not only that, but we were literally trying to prevent things like drug trafficking, human smuggling, sex trafficking, and terrorism. Fuck me, if the programs I’m developing overlook critical indications of illicit money moving through our banking system, that’s directly my fault. Queue the blackhole phase. 

For years I had debilitating anxiety. I would stare at an email on my computer screen, paralyzed, unable to craft a response that felt “right”. I would have panic attacks where my vision would tunnel, my hearing would go out, and my heart would pound so hard I could watch the veins on the back of my hands throb while the front of my hands drenched themselves in sweat. I knew I couldn’t survive like that for much longer (I also didn't seek any professional help, so… my bad). “What the hell am I doing?” 

Through the wormhole I went and from a career in regulatory banking compliance, I started making paper flowers. It’s a classic move we’ve seen time and time again: anti-money laundering investigator turned paper flower sculpture artist. I worked hard and got those goddamn flowers to near perfection. I did this for about 2 years and then, what would you know, I got bored of it. But what I learned was that I enjoyed creating again. I developed a sense of accomplishment and confidence, even if it was limited to just the paper sculptures. This feeling allowed me to branch out and look for other opportunities. 

Then in late 2019, a good friend of mine and I started a custom art installation business. It was the perfect timing for an event-driven business model - not. In the beginning of 2020 we were making big plans and developing partnerships, right up until COVID hit. Then it really was a “oh fuck, ‘what the hell am I doing?’” moment. But we survived and came out on the other side of the pandemic successful. We created a lot of things we were both very proud of and it taught me to really think differently about how to use materials in unexpected ways. 

Are you catching a trend here? I couldn’t do it anymore. Between my ever-growing, untreated anxiety, my imposter syndrome, and my unbridled ADHD, I needed to move on. But this time, I had a more defined goal: I wanted to show other people how to make things, too. Take all of the equipment and experience I had and share it with anyone who wanted to listen and learn. 

I used all my Big Bang energy and put it into The Makery - intentionally named to match my constantly evolving creative endeavors. Everyday I walk through The Makery and say “what the hell am I doing? Who am I in this space and is this actually going to work? Do people even want to come learn how to make things like I do and do I really have the credentials to teach them?” They are valid questions, but at the end of the day, when I’m turning off the 1,000 lights that I’ve plugged into every outlet, I glance around and see just how many different things I can do. The other day my best friend made a comment about how I am always “scheming”. She didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. It was meant to describe how I am always dreaming up plans that may or may not actually come to fruition. But she’s right: I am a schemer. I’m a dreamer schemer. A schemer dreamer. 

My friends, what exactly the hell am I doing? No one knows. Not my mom. Not my friends. Not even me. We don’t know how the universe formed and we don’t know when it’ll stop expanding.