Onward to the 90th

My apologies for the quietness lately. My work here at Arcosanti has eaten up almost all of my time for anything else—and when I do have downtime, it is usually spent trying to gather energy for the next day, rather than write, make art, or anything else—including writing blog posts.

That's not to say it's bad. I'm producing a lot of content, and I'm learning a lot about the print aspects of graphic design as I go. While I am experienced in some areas of graphic design, there are certain areas in which I'm lacking—namely, printing. But that area in my portfolio is quite quickly filling just within in the time I've been here.

Most of this is for the upcoming 90th Birthday Celebration for Paolo Soleri. I can be very task, deadline-driven when I need to be, and at this point I have my days entirely outlined, task by task, up to the ninetieth. Hopefully everything will fall in line as it has to in order to push out all the content we have planned. This includes t-shirts, signs, an alumni packet, a ten-foot banner that I'll be producing next week (it will actually be hand-painted), and any other random little things that need to be done before that like bathroom and camping area signs. It's a shame that all of this is going to get crunched into the space of two weeks. We'll barely have time to concentrate on Juneteenth, the music festival that's happening this coming weekend. But I can't complain—most of the work was self-inflicted, being ideas I came up with or ideas that other people mentioned that I later decided to run with. If anything, through the stress of it, it is only fun, and it is a lot of learning. And if everything does fall in line it might not be as hectic as I first thought. I had to re-write my whole schedule for the upcoming two weeks this morning because iGTD and iCal didn't sync properly (iGTD seems to have its issues on occasion). And I'm wondering if the schedule looks more empty only because I re-organized it better or because I missed something.

So expect me to be quiet the upcoming two weeks. I'll try to update you with my progress—there's a lot of entries I've been meaning to write on a variety of subjects—including a series of entries on the various facets of Paolo Soleri (architect, artisan, philosopher, urban planner, ecologist, etc.).

I've also chosen to stay here through my originally planned date of late August up to the winter months. So I'll be attending Univeristy of Maryland in the spring, rather than the fall. The decision came with much deliberation (almost indecision) over the past few weeks, with many people giving me advice on both sides. But I feel I've already gained too much in the short time here, and stand to learn too much that cannot be learned in a University, no matter how good, while more "official" education may be on standby with no major deadline for me to return, either in cost or in season. After all, the original reason to finish my degree was to simply make me more viable for job hunters. I find it ironic that my time here at Arcosanti is preparing me to be a professional graphic designer far more than a piece of paper could ever signify—I wish people would realize that a piece of paper needs to mean something before it becomes valuable as a prerequisite.

Ah well—society isn't perfect, isn't it? We only make it what we want it to be.

And to leave you, I will end with this bit of wisdom from Shakespeare that happened to find me, by fate or chance (sometimes I can never tell which):

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.