Striving for Imperfection

I'm in chipper spirits today, not really sure why. I overslept by a few hours because I probably forgot to click "save" when setting my alarm last night. I had gone to bed really late after a loooong evening, and probably needed the extra sleep.

 I had my first session of modeling for Sweden's largest art school, "Konstfack" yesterday evening. It was kind of an intense experience, but not bad at all. The nudity really wasn't so much the issue, as was the difficulty of standing still for 20 minutes at a time. Man, muscles can really get cramped that way. In a sitting pose my leg fell asleep so badly that I had to massage it for 5 minutes before I could stand on it again. The heating lamps and spotlights were also a bit annoying, partially because they blinded me and made me feel like I was going to pass out or fall over in dizziness, and also because they made nice trickles of sweat roll down my butt. It was out of my control though, and that's exactly what I wanted from this experience; to have all control and no control at the same time. I had to control myself to be still and poised, but also accept that my body would continue to function as it would.

There was obviously nothing I could do about sweat running down my back and that made me feel human. I'm so sick of being a perfectionist. I actually hate that about myself, but I think I've come a long way in the past 2 years. I just want to be okay and accept myself as a human because I'm so tired of never meeting the unachievable standards set for me by my mother; and following her lead, by the standards I set for myself. I feel like I've never been allowed to make mistakes, and I've never been good at accepting myself when I did make mistakes. In my mind, nobody accepted me if I made mistakes, which is absolutely ridiculous. It's not like sweat running down my back is a mistake, but somehow I have had it in my mind in the past, that that is not okay. It's not perfect, therefore I failed somehow. What the fuck, that's a seriously injured mindset. That's exactly why I'm making myself do this; it's a sort of self-therapy that doesn't involve me crying on a couch and sniffling to a stranger about how my mom tried to turn me into a robot princess, or turning to the wine bottle.

In any case, the poses were long and strenuous, especially under the glare and heat, but the part about me standing naked in the middle of a room with a circle of people staring at me for 3 hours didn't bother me so much. It got a little bit awkward during the breaks, because I had absolutely no idea how I had gotten from the changing rooms to the atelier and couldn't really find my way through the cold, grey, warehouse-style halls of the university. So I just paced up and down the halls and waited in the room with the artists. They didn't make any attempts to talk to me. In fact, they didn't even look at me, which was kind of strange. That made me feel less like a human and more like an object, but it also kept everything very professional. No creeps. Nothing inappropriate.

It was a bit scary though, because I had no idea what I should have been doing, and I got no instructions from the artists, nor from the teacher, who was super scattered, stressed and kept clonking in an out of the room in clogs that didn't really fit him right. Most of the time I actually had to take charge of the class myself, which consisted of artists who were all older than me. That felt really weird. A 20-year-old naked girl asking the modest Swedish artists what kinds of poses they wanted and for how long. I felt kind of like my art teacher from high-school. Not that he was a 20-year-old naked girl, but still... I definitely spaced a little bit during the sessions and drifted down memory lane to all my art class and teachers. I wonder what they would have to say about this. When everyone expected me to go to a really good university and become a doctor or "do something" with my good grades, I ended up quitting med-school and working as a nude model in Sweden. Hahahahahaha. I love it. Now that is rebellion to my past perfectionistic life. Probably not so uncommon though.

Well, the experience was fine. The pay is good and it's a job that doesn't involve freezing to death in a kitchen (cafe on a farm, no hot water for the time being... brrr, it's only 3°C) or coming home smelling like onions and grease, or chapped hands from constant dishwashing and food handling. Yeah, I'm really ready for a break from café work. I applied for a job at a circus today, temporary thing involving face-painting, leading horses and selling popcorn. Yup. NEVER going back to med school. Don't even try to make me. I REFUSE!

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Anyway, the original point of this post was that I'm in chipper spirits, despite the fact that I overslept and was pretty late to work (didn't really matter though, as I was just baking cakes). I'm chipper and it's dark outside. Like pitch black and it's only 6:30. And this morning a wonderfully torturous, icy wind sliced through my scarf and engulfed my neck in a good kind of pain. It was probably 4°C outside but the sky was so härligt. So heavenly and blue and god, it was wonderful! The trees have really started to lose their leaves, but in my chipper spirits, all I could do was thank them for dropping their leaves, because it made the wonderful blue sky more visible and invited the light into everything. Now is not the time for dark umbrellas...

I easily lose myself in the patterns of the leaves paper-mâchéd across sidewalks. They could be pages ripped from I-spy books and blown up to realistic proportions. I love fall. I love that fall has fallen and that the wind is cruel in a super sexy, teasing way and that my gloves are striped and my boots are cool and that I have the choice to let this change of season and weather affect my mood in a positive or negative way. Honestly, I can't find enough negatives to way against my days. I feel like I am unfairly happy and that this high wave I'm riding should be illegal or something. Two years ago I felt like drowning myself in the toilet or just laying down on the side of the road and dying in the snow. But today I feel so wonderfully upbeat; humming, smiling, laughing at life for no reason. I've started to find myself again. I think I've been AWOL for the past 9 years. I don't remember having such joie de vivre since I was 11. I think I've slipped out of the brutality of adolescence and my domineering family and reconnected with myself, my long-lost self. Hello there, Julia... where have you been all these years? Now I'm reading again, writing again, singing again, actually enjoying my life again.