Step One

Finally… having patience is starting to pay off because I’ve received some wonderful news yesterday. I’ve been invited to meet up on Monday morning to be part of a group of people who will be given the opportunity to study and work at the same time. This in itself is nothing new because there are quite a few possibilities to accomplish the same.

In this case however, the government and a few other organisations expect a lack of psychiatric nursing staff in the next three years so they have invested money in a special project to train people. It means that the required study which would normally take four years will be taught in three years instead, starting with a three months crash course.

After the crash course you’ll be working four days a week and attend school on the fifth day for the next three years to get a bachelor degree. My goal is a master degree because I’d like to finish the psychology study that I started years ago. At the time -causing disagreements- I was forced to stop because of an unwilling/unsympathetic partner.

I’m really looking forward to start the study and try to get another degree. My personal situation and this recession have forced me to think about my future in a creative way. I’ve been lucky to have turned a hobby into a career at the time, but things have changed and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a career that will provide for the next twenty years.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be side projects and I will never give up on the creative part of me. In fact I’m still working on the long-term business plan which involves design and that along with the webdesign business will be the creative outlet that I’ll be needing to keep things interesting in that area. I’ll need that outlet because it’s part of who I am.

Although I’m totally committed and enthusiastic to make this application work for the next three to seven years it will still be ‘a way to pay the bills‘ and live a comfortable life. I’ve to choose security over current instability, people are still getting laid off and no one knows what’s gonna happen next but it doesn’t mean I’ll be giving up on creativity, far from it!

There are more steps planned ahead but for now I’m taking one at a time because that one step will cause a chain reaction once I’ll be on a roll and I’m getting all excited thinking about what lies ahead. It seems I’m finally about to get that long deserved break *wink*

Creative Collector

I have this addiction for colours, paper and ink or to be more precise about the latter: the process of printing. Each as a separate drug or a combination of them will give me my ultimate high. I can’t remember at what age this started but I do remember what it started: felt-tip pens and ‘vouwblaadjes’. At times my mum would take us to the toyshop after nagging her for hours, explaining that we ‘just wanted to have a look around’. My brothers would go for Playmobil or Lego toys, I’d always make a beeline for the craft and art supplies section.

I would be instantly mesmerized by the organised ranges of colours no matter what it was: beads neatly arranged by colour in their separate compartments, crayons or felt-tip pens sets sorted by the colours of the rainbow and 250 sheets packages of square and coloured paper called ‘vouwblaadjes’ used for the Dutch version of origami: paper folding art. I still know a thing or two about paper folding and whenever my mum would buy me a package of ‘vouwblaadjes’ I would try my best to keep it neat and in exactly the same order of colours.

Not just the folding paper, I also had to keep my felt-tip pens arranged by the colours of the rainbow. You see, all these craft and art supplies were treasures to me and of immense value. I wanted to enjoy this for as long as possible which meant you’d have to look after it and keep things tidy and neat. My parents always encouraged creativity over grades: both have amazing drawing skills and my mum has a degree in fashion design and sewing. School was important, just not as important as a natural skill set, the grades were good anyway.

This is how it all started. These days resulting in a large variety of beautiful designed labels: food, whisky and wine, intruiging [Moleskine] notebooks, Talens Acrylic paints, Daler Rowney brushes, Conté crayons, Derwent watercolour pencils, Derwent color pencils, Van Gogh soft and hard pastels, hand-made paper containing cotton fibers and embedded leaves and/or flowers, Joss paper, wrapping tissue paper, rice paper, blue airmail paper, Chinese ink and nib pens, Pilot fineliners, Staedtler markers, glitter pens and my good old fountain pen…

And what I just mentioned is probably not even half of the things I have neatly stored away in my cool chest of drawers flight case… There’s another collection of graphic design tools, like a Pantone Color guides set, cutting tools, drawing tools and lots and lots more. So you see… this is why I could not resist the urge to buy those two notebooks last Saturday, it’s in my genes…

Blame my parents *wink*

Aladdin’s cave: Paper

Aladdin’s cave: Pencils

Aladdin’s cave: Pastels

Aladdin’s cave: Vouwblaadjes