"I'll know I've made it when..."
My friend’d just recently got her first-ever designer bag and wanted to show me: The little Coach shoulder bag with the fish and coral appliques. I’d never seen or heard or anything about designer brands, let alone bags. They seemed like something to weigh you down, I don’t know. The way my mom always wore hers, she only had one, was like a prisoner ball and chain. It was from Target. The one she’d had before – the strap would no longer stay attached with superglue. When I’d go to the mall with friends, they used bags, but I’d carry my zero dollars in my girl jeans that had the perfect-sized pockets to fit zero dollars.
I really do not know what came over me when my friend showed me this bag – I thought it was ugly (I still think it’s ugly), and I had no concept of brand names at that age. I was twelve. I never even had any Abercrombie.
But I was mesmerized. It felt sturdy yet dainty – like you could chuck it like a football but you wouldn’t because it was something you wanted to hold on to. I’m pretty sure she had the matching wristlet, too, which was also beyond my understanding – why would you want the same design on multiple things? What is a “wristlet”? Do you mean a wallet? If it’s for your wrist, then why are you putting it in the bag? Why not just use the wristlet, then? How do you decide when you’re going to use just the wristlet vs. put it in the bag and use the bag?
It fit perfectly, though. It was obvious the company designed them to fit together – they were like LEGOs.
Anyway, something came over me. What a purse could be! Something you love and get to always carry with you and that also happens to have all your treasures inside, too…! That you could play with like LEGOs!!
I’m gonna skip ahead to the part where we’re on her parents’ computer to teach me about designers and purses, and she showed me Louis Vuitton on eLuxury. The most expensive bags ever. I also liked the candy colors (Murakami multicolore) better than fish and/or coral. I also liked how the flagship bag looked like a briefcase (the Speedy). I loved my dad’s briefcases.
“I’ll know I made it when I buy my first Louis Vuitton,” I thought for the next nine years, at which point…: I bought my first Louis Vuitton.
That was now over ten years ago, so I’m due for a refresh on what “living the dream” looks like.
I don’t know, I like having a vision I’m heading toward, you know? The last few years have been a whirlwind. There’s obviously been other aspirations, goals, achievements outside of buying a Louis Vuitton bag. The thing is, a lot of those things happened for me sooner than I’d expected they would. And we had a pandemic. And then, you know, there’s things you joke about how you’re going to pull it off one day – the things that are fun to joke about because they’ll never actually happen and you also have no intention to seriously pursue because they’re so outlandish? Those things happened for me in the last few years, too.
And it’s a really weird age, right?, when we’re supposed to be transitioning away from believing we still could be…, I’m not sure, to be honest. I have more experience at this point in making incomprehensible things come to life, so I’m not convinced, I guess, that anyone ought to close his mind to believing he still could be what he joked about twenty years ago.
Even so, it turns out that when I think, “I’ll know I made it when…,” it’s some pretty concrete, practical, self-focused aspirations I envision.
My ideal day-to-day life that I was already fortunate enough to have lived involved wearing cute clothes, carrying my briefcase every morning on the train downtown to a desk on a high-up floor in a tall building, a floor so high up that my ears pop every elevator ride; and having cute friends and going to cute places after work – new rooftop bars, pop-up events, art galleries. And on weekends – concerts, shopping, specialty coffee roasters. I loved all that to death and would probably still be loving a day-to-day life like that to death for another, like, five years… if the pandemic hadn’t suddenly made all that outside the norm.
That’s the day-to-day life I dreamed of since I was seven years old, no joke.
In comparison, this refreshed ideal that I’m cobbling together presently is quite improvised. Everything is fluid, it’s fine; I’m excited to have any clarity on any of this….
I’d like to have a desk. In fact, I’d like to have probably two. One for traditional art and one for my computer. I don’t have that today. I don’t have a desk chair. I don’t really have a chair, period (just barstools). For makeshift working areas, I balance gator board on an open drawer or on top of the stove or on my lap sitting up in bed, etc. Suboptimal. I look forward to the day that my ScanNCut – that it’s where I use it vs. bringing it back and forth to usually my floor. I’ll know I’ve made it when my work spaces don’t exist only in transience.
Learning hardware engineering – at least to the extent that I can repair the wiring in my speakers. (Which I’m under the impression involves soldering, which I’m under the impression is not something you’re meant to just wake up one day and decide to try. You need safety equipment probably, right?) (Oh! And replace the batteries in my Pokémon cartridges!)
As a kid [I guess this is kind of a childhood fantasy after all, huh], I used to look at the screws in everything. The fact that they’re in everything! And, like, while replacing the batteries of something that had a screwed-on battery door, you’d notice all the other screws right there. Can you unscrew those, too? Can you unscrew ev-er-y-thing? Why not? Is it illegal? If you’re not allowed to do it, then why isn’t it illegal? Why would they use normal screws in the first place that anyone’s screwdriver works on? Why not melt the plastic together? Well, what about glue?
…My parents were adamant that I not take things apart and that no one does that, no one wants to do that – so that’s why it’s not a concern of companies that they’re using everyday screws, which my parents said work better than glue (you can’t ‘melt the plastic together,’ enough!).
Sometimes I would unscrew a screw, like on my cassette player. We had a red, transparent kids’ cassette player stereo – like the one in Toy Story. You could already see what’s inside…, so can I open it? It should be fine to open!! They clearly don’t care if you look inside!! It’s already see-through!!
Sometimes I would unscrew a screw but be too scared to pull it out. Sometimes I wouldn’t screw it all the way back in, though, to see if my parents would notice if I tampered with it. Of course not. Sometimes I would unscrew two screws and feel the casing loosen but be too scared to undo all four at the same time.
It wasn’t until I got to college that I met people whose parents were super supportive of them taking things apart, learning how they work, learning how to repair parts. To this day (I’ve replaced a phone battery, upgraded storage and RAM in my laptop, etc.), it’s still so “dangerous” to me – like I’m cutting a tag off a mattress or something and about to be raided.
I’m amazed at people who can restore obliterated thrift store GameBoys. Or upgrade old electronics to be compatible with Bluetooth, USB-C, HDMI. Or just build anything he wants of his own design...!
Bringing me to my next aspiration: learn software for 3D printing. It goes hand-in-hand with hardware engineering – to be able to 3D print casings and components and all that. …I just imagine how much more I can push my art once I learn the things you learn in doing this kind of stuff. I don’t know! Anything will be combinable (in my mind, keeping in mind that I don’t actually know anything about anything)! Look how much fun Sid (Toy Story again) had masterminding art objects!
I want to become brave enough to break things. Convolve.
I’ll know I’ve made it when I’m proud of how I convolve.
But the real “I’ll know I’ve made it when” for me is… I want to have one of those really good (color) printers and never think twice about printing everything. I want to scan stuff in my books to print out to cut up. When I work I love, I need, all my notes spread in front of me. My notes are mainly on my computer right now, collections of textures I’m interested in, things I want to try, reference photos. Stuff I see that I like.
I don’t have twelve different screens or tablets or whatever to use to see everything all at once, you know? And I don’t have a color printer. And I am very stingy with printing. I think mainly because I dread when you are reckoned with the fact you are out of ink. It’s always the shittiest moment. It’s always when you’re printing, like, essential documents for the errand you’re about to run – like for the doctors or the DMV or the post office – and you waited until you were ready to run out the door to print them so you wouldn’t lose them or crumple them. So your cat wouldn’t sit on them where you’d put them next to your bag and now he’s insistent on not leaving the confines of the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch piece of paper so, fine!, you’ll just print it again and remember how you knew you should have waited until you were literally ready to run out the door to print this. And then. That’s when it happens. You weren’t even low on ink the first time you printed the stupid thing. This is how it happens. It always happens.
So, I’ll know I’ve made it when I have a desk or whatever to have a place to put a really good color printer …and submit to the quarterly ink subscription thing or whatever.
Peace of mind.
please let me know if you have any questions or anything on anything otherwise, more to come yours, jansen