Easter 2024 - Peace

May this Easter Day bring you much peace, joy, & love!

Art(ing) again

Drinking, rehab, hospitals. These things don't leave me much time or mindset to be creative or do what I want to do. I love to sketch, draw, paint, and make art of some kind. I've been outta my creative world for a while now, but the last few weeks I have jumped back into my creativity with a plague of passion. Soul on fire! Been taking a bunch of sketches and digital art I did while not drinking heavy and updating my artsy social media sites, which I never put the effort or passion into that I should have. Making myself really push and promote my work on a daily basis, as well as creating and being creative as often as possible.

I even opened a Redbubble shop where I can put my art and designs on t-shirts and other cool products and sell them. Been wanting to do this for a while and I finally have a few designs up and running. If you want to check out my shop you can view it here.

I'm not gonna win any awards for blog post titles but, I wanted to use the word "Arting". Wasn't sure if that was a word, doesn't matter I would have used it anyway, but I found a definition that said - verb /ɑː(r)ting/ 1. 'the action or skill of using art to become more powerful'

Wow, That's exactly what I'm trying to do.

All we have is now.

I am always trying to live in the moment... right here, right now. Very hard. 

Finding a job again

Covid times killed it all, right?

Well, I can't blame all thats going on in my life on covid... honestly it didn't really effect my life much at all except for giving me more time and anxiety to drink. But the one thing it really effected was my job.

I had a great job, I hated it, but it was a good job that paid well. As soon as Covid hit, myself as well as most of the company went on temporary layoff, the beginning of having nothing, no real work. Long story short, I went about a year and a half only doing small little assignments here or there. I was applying for other jobs during this time, also freelance stuff, because I didn't want to go back, I wanted a new job and a new start. But there was nothing but Covid.

I'm a designer, a creative...no one needed this type of work during a plague. 

As time went on and the world was saying, "Fuck all this, let's get back to normal," I still was not hired back to my current job nor getting any steady work from it. So I kept sending out applications and resumes to current job openings, but absolutely nothing. Am I too old? Is my work outdated? Or do I just suck at what I do? Still nothing.

Fast forward to about January of this year, I'm starting to again become an anxious, drunk, sloppy mess after getting my shit together a few times. So I pull it back together. My current employer now seems to be getting back on track. Work is slowly trickling in, people are now back in the studio working full time, and the big news is the company has been bought out by a giant worldwide creative group based out of England... Great, Right? Not so. They came in, took over, set their demanded rules, and now have a foothold in North America. I work in the Detroit office of the company and it was an employee mass exodus. All employees left except myself and 3 other people. My boss was fired and the physical Detroit studio shut down. Meanwhile, I'm drinking like a fish, not eating, and ended up back in the hospital and then rehab shortly after.

I ghosted.

Fast forward, forward... I have ghosted from this job. I'm in limbo with them. They are not reaching out probably because of medical reasons, and I have not reached back. This job was a huge stress in my life to begin with and certainly didn't help my drinking; and now everyone I worked with is gone, the office is gone, and the firm who controls it is across the Atlantic ocean.

This is a new start. A new me. Not drinking but still fighting not too, still with anxiety, still with a shit ton of problems, but needing to start fresh. My goal is to work for myself, I will one day soon but I need the starting capital for equipment and software.

Until then, I am continually searching for a current, awesome, and creative job. Don't get me wrong, a job is a job, there is always stress and problems, but my current situation is a toxic mess! So new start.

Of the billions of applications I have put out there with no luck, Ford Motor Company is one I have sent into a bunch of times for a bunch of creative positions, and always get a "sorry, no thanks" right off the bat. I was told a few times by a few different people that I would not even be considered without a degree, even with my years of experience. So, found this one today and figured I would give myself one last shot at Ford Motor Co. Please see my cover letter above.

Wish me luck!

If your interested, my portfolio: https://dougdutton.carbonmade.com/