"The good years come in evens and the bad years come in odds."

I used to believe that philosophy up until today. I have a bad habit of thinking too deeply whenever I come into or recollect any bit of adversity in my own life and for some reason; I always end up going into a cycle of emotions. One day, I'm happy and ready to take on the day. The next day, I'm depressed and begin to remember all of the rather thoughtless things I've said and done in the past. As you may have already guessed, these past two weeks have been the latter for me and I know why.

It initially began when I left Santa Clarita to go to North Hollywood for the Art Institute.  I don't think I have opened myself up about my experience at A.I. So if I haven't, here it is in a nutshell: If CalArts was intended for the kids who liked to draw when they were in elementary school, then AI is for the kids who beat up the kids who liked to draw in elementary school.  At first, my family and I thought student housing would give me an opportunity to experience independent living and that I would have my own dorm where I could study and finish my work. I felt like I was going to have my own area of solitude. It turns out I had to share a shoddy two-room apartment with three other people. Because, you know it's not like I've had that experience living with my family or anything. To make matters worse, I had no place to work or study aside from the school building. During the first week, I didn't have any problems with my roommates, they seemed like nice guys and they were willing to share their stuff with me when I didn't have anything. As stated before I did not have any problems with my roommates…until they busted out the bong. I don't think I've told anybody this but I'm a bit of a flake when it comes to drug-use. If you like doing it, I don't care. Just as long as you're not doing it in front of me or if it's at school.

So, as you can probably imagine, my stay at that room didn't last too long, so I had to move to another apartment. That was when I started having problems with my roommates. One of them was a humorless navy veteran majoring in filmmaking who was even more socially awkward than I am and the other was a freakishly tall 18 year-old hood-rat majoring in Media Arts and animation with a huge collection of manga that he never reads, and constantly using the word "swag" more times than a normal human being uses a comma. Both of them were the same "color" as me and always had a problem with the way I talked and the way I acted. Even when I did absolutely nothing, they had a problem with me. Things didn't get worse until our fourth roommate moved in. He was also a navy vet but was about two decades older than all of us, had an eleven year-old daughter, and constantly goes out in the patio next to my room to get high. Things became even more torturous, whenever he would bring his (obviously drunk) girlfriend over every night to watch movies. Among those occurrences there were two nights I remember the most. One night involved me having an argument with the navy vet when I asked him why he had a problem with me. He told me that I was "unrealistic" I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but I could only hazard a guess that it was probably because, I spent most of my studying character design and animation than I did trying to have a social life or developing social skills. That was something that I would carry with me later on. The following night however was the straw that broke the camels back. It was February 14th (Valentines Day) and while my time at student housing was bad, my time at the school itself was only a minor annoyance. The only two classes that I had problems with were Color Theory and Perspective and Proportion.  My experience at Color Theory made me realize that I sucked at traditional media and the only problem I had with perspective and proportion was that the professor himself acted like a bit of a douche and that his teaching methods felt a bit flawed to me.  I had just gotten back from my perspective class, extremely stressed out because of the amount of work I was given and the fact that it was Valentine's Day.  I didn't want to deal with any bullshit from my roommates in any way shape or form, so I thought I'd just take my pills (for my kidneys) and got to bed. After I took my pills I had to use the restroom while I was gone the 18 year-old was handing my pill-container over to the 40 year-old. This got me furious, because they had told me that they didn't want me touching any of their stuff but all of a sudden it's okay for them to touch mine. Long story short, we both ended up going into a physical fight and I ended up getting punched in the jaw and stomach. I told my dad what had happened and he came over to sort things out. After that, we immediately kept to ourselves and decided not to speak to each other after that.

When I talked to the campus counselor about this, I had come to the decision that I should leave and try to pursue my academic goals for CALARTS. She and my parents reluctantly agreed and I was relieved to know that I will be moving back in the following month. However, doing this made things complicated for my family financially. During my stay at A.I. I never received financial aid. I even asked students who had been there for two years when we would usually receive it and they said they haven't gotten it since they had registered. Which lead me to believe that the school was abundantly ripping their students off and expect them to pay off their loans regardless of wether they stay or not. For those of you who don't know, my family and I have been having financial problems as recently as last year. My parents currently work at LAUSD which (for most of you who keep up with the SoCal news) doesn't exactly pay that well and I've been living off them for as long as I can remember. I know it's a bad thing to do, and that I should go out and get a part time job. But searching for a spot in the work place in my neighborhood is pretty complicated. The only part-time area  I have any qualification in is in the food service industry and even then, I couldn't find any work. I thought I'd make things less stressful for myself and my folks if I got my own credit card. As I found out this month, it only made things even worse on my part.My time at A.I. was the icing on the feces. So, in order to make up for lost time, we had to make more sacrifices. Letting my sister stay in my old room was one thing, but it didn't help us any.

I've been trying to pay off my credit card debt by taking commissions, but have received little to no takers.  I've told a few friends of mine about my situation and they've gone out of their way to advertise me on Facebook, DA, and FA. While I thank them for their participation and their generosity, I'm afraid to say that it seems like either everybody is going through the same financial problems or my art isn't truly developed enough to be commission worthy. This would eventually lead to both of my bank accounts becoming inactive because I was unable to pay off my debt on time.

Things didn't get any better when my tablet died two weeks ago, leaving me with nothing but a  bag of heavy thoughts most of them asking why my art hasn't truly improved. After having a conversation with a friend of mine about the animation industry, he told me that "As long as you have a great sense of draftsmanship, you'll be able to master any media". That's when I started looking back at my artwork and asking my fellow colleagues about draftsmanship. They have all told me that my work looks "good" but it's far from a developed style. That being said, I think it's best if I don't try to do commissions anymore, at least not until my art is developed.

While my time at A.I. and my issues with money were definitely proof that my "Even years good, odd years bad" philosophy wasn't true. It did introduce me to somebody who definitely proved to be more of a friend to me than anybody else did at that school (You know who you are). However, all of the memories from student housing still remain and for a while I've been looking back at my own life and start to reflect on how people perceive me, how I am "unrealistic" and I begin to look back at all of the times where I would just be myself and people would be angry about it and tell me to "shut up" or label me as "weird"... I begin to wonder what my life would be if I did conform to society and become something other than an animator or an artist...

If you have ever had that feeling let me know...