diamonds are the new deers

All the cool kids are drawing/wearing ironic diamond/bling drawings these days. Have you noticed?

Not to rank myself amongst "the cool" but I have a super-great shirt from threadless by ray fenwick (I think he is from Halifax?) with a HUGE, multi-faceted diamond that says "more more more". Not only does it remind me of that Billy Idol song but I think it is a cool commentary on the ever-increasing desire for ever-increasing bling. It might be easy to say this applies mainly to the hip-hop types but I think all types are prone to it. I bought it as a reminder to myself to curb my material appetites (yep, that noise you just heard was the hand of irony slapping me across the face again; buying something that reminds you to stop buying stuff!! sheesh!! but it does work actually...)

Anyway, this post is not about my t-shirt - though it is awesome.

It is supposed to be about how it is hard to resist the desire to do/draw trendy things in trendy ways. I try not to but sometimes the quest to try to be original feels way too much like putting a big, greasy damper on the fun of living in the moment - the zeitguist (if I'm going to use these words I should know how to spell them - but oh well!!)

I'm not actually very creative or original considering I'm a "working artist". I consider myself more of a visual problem solver. I would like to free up the creative side a little more but I always tend to get into these absurd conflicts with myself about what to do ... then I proceed to do nothing ...

I have trouble "doing my own thing" - even though I am a full-fledged adult. I thought I would grow out of caring about what people think of what I'm doing and be a really bold, brave person by this age. I don't really mind standing out in a crowd/standing up for what I think; the issue seems to be that I still don't know what I think about most things.

I think I don't think much at all.

I feel a bit brain-dead most of the time ... to tell the truth.