18. Rule 5: One size does not fit all.

 

I’m starting to think I should include dates in this thing.

Okay.

30/06/2014

 

Is that helpful?

Do you feel fulfilled, satisfied?

I’m in a weird mood. Family. Jealousy. Stuff.

My cousin whose younger than me is buying a three bedroom house with her boyfriend whilst I’m still living at home sharing a room with my little sister and desperately trying to get some recognition for the nonsense that I produce whilst waiting very, very patiently for a response from Olympia or any of the others I’ve sent stuff to. See. Weird mood. I’m snapping at everyone today as well. Anyway.

I did have an idea though. It’s a long shot. I was thinking about starting an artist blog.

I have a blog already, two in fact, which I kept up with meticulously for two years until I didn’t. There is a reason. Let me explain by telling you a story that I probably shouldn’t. I’ll tell it like a fairy tale, ‘cus then maybe I’ll just about get away with it.

 

The Princess and the Trickster.

 

Once upon a time there was a princess. She had lots of brothers and sisters and lived in a huge castle where they all lived in happiness.

One day a vicious dragon moved into their kingdom and began to terrorise their people. Every day he would go into the town and carry off a young girl back into the dark forest where he lived.

The people begged the king and queen to help them. Saddened by the suffering of their people, the king and queen travelled at great peril into the forest to talk to the dragon and convince him to give back the girls he had stolen.

After much discussion the dragon agreed to give back the girls if the king and queen would give him one of their daughters.

The king and queen agreed but could not decide which daughter to sacrifice; they loved all of their children so much. Days went by without a decision, and the princess’s began to argue amongst themselves.

“You should go,” said the eldest “I have studied the herbs and healing rites of our land and can administer medicines to our people. The kingdom cannot afford to lose me.”

“No, you should go,” said the middle princess “I am the wisest of all of you and can govern and teach our people. The kingdom cannot afford to lose me.”

“No, you should go,” said the youngest “I’m just a little girl, who knows what I’ll be when I grow up. The kingdom can’t afford to lose me.”

There was one princess who remained silent. She was just a little older than the youngest and had not studied like her older sisters. She was not the cleverest but she was the bravest.

Whilst her sisters argued and her parents wept she crept out into the forest and gave herself to the dragon.

And all was quiet in the kingdom.

Time passed and the princess grew accustomed to life with the dragon. During the day she would cook and clean and at night she would remain still as he dug his huge claws into her and breathed his fire through her.

She sometimes thought about running away, when the pain got very bad and she would sometimes hope that the dragon’s vicious blows would kill her so that she wouldn’t have to endure anymore. But as the years passed she found that she couldn’t leave, the dragon was all she had.

The princess and the dragon had four daughters, but this did not make the dragon happy. He wanted a son, an heir, and so he blamed her for denying him what he wanted.

So one day the princess and her daughters went for a walk in the forest. They kept walking and walking until the princess was sure that she could never find her way back and there they stayed. But the princess’s daughters missed their father and blamed their mother for taking them away from him. So one by one, as traders, knights and princes’ passed through the forest, the princess’s daughters were married, leaving their mother who they had grown to hate behind.

The princess lived in the forest alone until a man she had never seen before wandered into the forest. He told the princess he was a king from a great kingdom and had come into the forest to find gold and jewels to bring back to his queen and daughters at home.

He paid the princess handsomely to be his guide in the forest and as weeks and months passed the king and princess fell in love.

The princess was so happy, she had never been in love before and it was such an impossible, incredible feeling. She convinced herself that the king would soon leave his wife and daughters and that the two of them would marry. But as the months turned into years and the king went back and forth from his queen to her, she began to think it was just a trick she had played on herself.

She began to hear stories about the king, stories that told of the king taking a mistress before her and fathering a child. The queen had found out and been enraged but forgave him for the sake of their two daughters.

Yet still the princess stayed. She was in love and she had always thought that there was never anything wrong with love.

After four years the princess gave birth to a son. She thought this would make the king happy and that soon he would leave his wife and marry her. But the princess had underestimated the king’s love for his wife and daughters, he would not leave them, and he would not risk the queen finding out. So he hid the princess and their child away in a secret place where they could not escape.

He would visit them and bring them gifts whenever he could get away, and the princess decided that she was happy with this, because one day he would leave the queen and marry her.

The End.

 

Did you like that?

It’s a true story. I have lots of them. It’s this whole thing. Because I’m quiet people don’t really notice me, or if they do they think I’m stupid, so as a result, I notice everything else. I know a lot of things that no one knows I know. It makes me feel privileged. So when they start saying absolute crap to me like, why don’t you do anything with your life? Why don’t you have a boyfriend? Blah, blah, blah, I just think about their lives and say to myself, ‘What and end up like you? I don’t want to pretend to be happy, I want to be happy.’ But that’s not the point. That’s not the moral of the story.

Why kept at something that’s fruitless, why keep going when you know in your heart you’re going nowhere. I could say that about my career really, but instead I’m saying it about my blogs. I started writing them after the whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing. It started off as a blog and a publisher saw it and offered her a deal, or at least that’s how I heard the story.

After two years of daily, weekly, monthly updates I gave up, publishers weren’t reading them, other desperate bloggers were. So ,I found Behance through LinkedIn, same problem.

So, I listen to:

Why don’t you do anything with your art?

You’re not doing anything, what do you do just watch TV all day?

You should go out; all you do is sit in the house all day.

Don’t you want a boyfriend, a partner?

Don’t you want to get married?

Well, you don’t do anything do you.

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.

 

And I smile. I nod. I agree. I sent work to publishers. Apply for competitions I can afford, and think about starting a new blog, one specifically targeted at artists in the hope that galleries and dealers and critics actually visit those ones, in the hope that I’ll be seen, not invisible anymore, that I can be more than I am… so that I don’t have to listen anymore.

 

ENEMIES ARE JUST TEACHERS IN DISGUISE.