Anita

My current dream or fantasy is to move out of my parents house and travel, as I have told you before. This is something I have really thought about for the past few years – something I wish I would have been more enthusiastic about years ago. In order to do that, I’m going to need to save up some money or try to score another teaching job in another country – seems doable, the only thing that is holding me back is the money situation. Why do I want to travel? Why did I even start becoming obsessed with the law of attraction at 19 in the first place? Escapism, probably. I just want to move away and escape from my life at home. There is nothing keeping me here – not close with my family, no personal relationships or commitments to hold me back, not many friends to speak of. But I am also aware of how tough it is to live in another country on your own when you barely speak the language because I’ve done that before.

Another dream is to be self-sufficient – I’m well aware that the idea of financial security is a complete myth but I just want to be able to earn my own money – enough to get by and then some.

Another dream is to carry on making my illustrations and handmade books – I’m well aware that being an artist is difficult in this day and age and it is very difficult to find work in this industry. I’m well aware that there might be times in my life where my art things will have to be put on the back-burner. Maybe I would love to write as well but again, the industry is pretty darn saturated with illustrators and writers.

I’m not going to lie, sometimes I do have fantasies about being a rock star but this will never happen (I can’t even play a musical instrument for starters, except for the triangle).

If any of those things are going to happen, I need to work at them and put effort into these things – something I’ve been telling myself over the past few months – whether or not I succeed at these things isn’t important, what is important is I just try. They are not going to appear out of the ether all by themselves.

As for the final dream, I want to reach a point where I feel like I can be at peace with myself and everybody else I know. Year of Joe is still happening but there are still the odd ugly moments.

Do you think these dreams are doable, Anita? Or am I just indulging in some silly wanderlust fantasy I have when I stare at the ceiling wishing to be anywhere else but here? Am I chasing another rainbow, putting all of my hopes into these things?

Joe

Wisdom

I guess I still often wonder the same thing – does it only work for certain people? What do they do differently? Why are they so lucky? I still think most of what is in ‘The Secret’ is a load of old cobblers and I don’t live by it anymore, but I guess sometimes I still wonder…

If attracting what we truly wanted was easy, we would all be living the life of riley. Who doesn’t think about what life would be like if they were lotto winners? We all think about it but very few of us get to live it.

I’m just currently reading through some of the testimonies and stories on the secret website.

Anita

This was something I scrawled in my sketchbook this morning. I’ve been reading about the neurological condition known as synaesthesia, which I found out about a few weeks ago. I’m interested by this all of a sudden because I have realised that most people can’t hear colours, but I think I might have been hearing colours all my life and I didn’t really think much about it. As far as I can remember, every time I hear music, especially certain types of music, I just perceive that particular song or tune as “being a purple song” or “being a yellow song” and this brings about lots of strong vivid colours and imagery in my mind. I had always assumed everybody did this – I was telling my mom about this last night and she just stared at me as if to say “what are you going on about?”

It sounds really mad, but it’s just always been normal for me. I’ve only read so much about this interesting phenomena. I’m not saying for certain I have this characteristic – it could be something else entirely. Maybe my mind just established neural links between certain colours and tunes as I grew up, I don’t know. I’m no scientist. I still find it fascinating!

But maybe this is why I’ve always found certain types of music to be really inspiring when I paint.

What are your thoughts on this Anita?

Joe

Anita

Maybe I’m not sure what this metaphorical pot of gold contains. I guess for me it’s just this need to always want to be somewhere else, a point in the future where we might find happiness or that thing we have dreamed about for so long (travelling, the nice job, the slice of cake etc). We stress the importance of these things and liken them to this pot of gold. Maybe we do arrive at these things and we may believe that these things will bring everlasting happiness but we just want more of what we have found. This idea of chasing what we crave is a wild goose chase…The pot of gold is an illusion…

Joe

Anita

Waiting…I guess that’s a word that resonates within me (I feel as though I should speak in 1st person for this now haha) – I think Eckhard Tolle once said that it’s not uncommon for people to wait for their lives to begin, or something to that effect.

I guess I have been doing a lot of waiting…Waiting for what? Waiting for when things will go my way again? Waiting for the things I hope will bring me happiness and fulfilment? Waiting for my escape? Waiting to leave? Waiting to escape the past and move forward with my life? Do I carry on wallowing in this sandpit of my own making or do I find some way to engineer an escape?

I’ve met many people who have described me as ‘neither here nor there’

And I must say, I really enjoy our posts together – I am always fascinated with your ideas Anita 😀

Joe

Anita

Joe agrees that it is very fun to write about oneself in the third person, maybe he should do this more often! As for things Joe wants to write about, he would like to write fictional short stories and semi-autobiographical stories based around some of the people he has known and things he has done. I will be sure to write many things about the mental travels I take every time I daydream.

Joe wants to travel to many places – for the past year or so he has been thinking a lot about travelling through Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, America and particularly would love to visit Iceland or Norway to witness the Aurora Borealis. There are many places in the British Isles he still hasn’t seen, especially Glastonbury, Stonehenge, rural Ireland and Scotland.

Currently Joe is at ease with being single and free of a relationship as this means he is free to do anything he wants, but Joe would love to learn to love and be loved at some point in the future – he wants to try and conquer himself first.

As for the kind of paintings and illustrations Joe creates – he describes himself as a ‘Joe of all trades’ and enjoys working in many mediums, namely inks, markers, watercolours, gouache, acrylics and digital media. His work is some crazy mashup of all the things that have inspired or influenced him – fantasy, creepy gothic art, surrealism, manga and pop art. He has a sample of some of his work on his Flick – https://www.flickr.com/photos/136271080@N04/

Anita

I think you’re right about meeting your reading needs on this site, and I like what you said about the posts being authentic. I also love reading paper books – smelling the pages, turning the pages and touching the paper (I sound like an absolute nerd!)

As for this book you speak of – ‘The Year Of Joe’, I’m currently at the passive part of the story where nothing of major importance is happening in the life of the main protagonist. Joe is still waking up reasonably early (even on a Sunday), he is still filling most of his time with crazy illustrations made with marker pens and paint, listening to Kate Bush songs a lot and walks down to the library every Saturday where he assists members of the public with computer-related problems and placing returned books back on the shelf. Every night before he sleeps, however, Joe stares at the ceiling and imagines the vast world outside the confines of his small bedroom. He ponders on previous mistakes he has made and how he can avoid repeating them in future. He dreams of wanderlust and adventure in many faraway places he has never been to, and thinks about what needs to be done in order to make those dreams a reality. He also thinks back to where he was 10 years before and sometimes this causes him to worry; it’s gone by pretty darn quickly and he worries that if time just keeps passing him by and he doesn’t start to put more effort into what he wants, he might never get to do the things he wants to in life.