I am normally positive to the point of being delusional but occasionally I get into a bit of a flat mood. Work is a little stressful at times but overall it isn’t too bad. What I need is a holiday, yet that also makes me a little nervous. My fitness isn’t too bad but after Covid it needed some work and if I go on holiday I will need to be decently fit. I am working on it slowly because I have a few months before I go on holiday if everything works out and it will be good. 

I entered an art competition a few months back that will happen later in the year. I would love to get selected but it is a difficult prize to get selected for. I suppose I am trying things, I went to a couple of interesting shows recently after my big culture explosion a little while ago. When I look at friends and their struggles then realise that I have to be very careful as life is hard enough and you don’t want to make life harder.

I have a friend who runs a business and a lot of the time he feels like he is being sabotaged by other people running a similar line of business and it is not a particularly supportive or healthy atmosphere to be in. Graffiti and street culture can be the same with people battling over space and styles. Even high end street art can be like a form of organised censorship and control.

In that councils get to pick content, they erase the graffiti culture that was there. The biggest issue I see is the people at the bottom are fighting amongst themselves and never see the real enemies. Even if you decided to ruin every paid mural in Sydney it wouldn’t come to much but just lengthen a police record. Normally people just go after each other. I am not that invested in the mess that is street art or graffiti but I love painting walls.

I am starting to make decent drawings now, I have broken through and if I can get my painting up to par I am doing well and can finally disengage from graffiti. Yet that is why I am a little flat, the grass isn’t necessarily greener in the cut throat world of galleries either. It, like any business is cutthroat and the lovely spaces are like a visual gladiatorial fight for the money and attention of the wealthy.

I came out of graffiti in one piece by sheer luck and got out of the illegal game in good time. It is strange to still be painting legals when there is literally no glory in it at all and people don’t even know what it is you are doing. I suppose you could say it is freedom and exploration but nothing I am making is that exciting. Yet I am interested in it, invested in the work and can’t see any real opportunities anywhere else.

Maybe I am blind to something better but I feel like there is still something for me to do visually in the aerosol space which is at best a complete basket case in Sydney. I think I know why I am feeling flat, I can see the dead end but have always seen it, the world has moved so far ahead that what I thought decades ago were interesting seem so far in the past. The world can’t go back, everything has changed in my life and there are no second chances.

Life is now, where you are now and all of the people who came through my life are mostly long gone. I guess it is like saying what happened? It seems things happened so fast, at least now I just take every day as it comes and don’t plan too far ahead. I am glad I am still here but I think I have to offload the stuff that has disappeared. A lot of things from the past sit in my head but you can’t trace the trajectories, it’s all gone from my life. Maybe this is life without Facebook in a funny way, I know why people hang onto it.

You hang onto some vague memory, don’t get me wrong. I am quite satisfied and happy at the moment, I like the people I know and spend time with probably more than the old vague faces I never really knew as a young person as I didn’t know myself. There were just so many people over the years and it was a place to meet, test ideas, learn and I suppose find yourself so many years later with a few people who stayed in touch. Life just flies along and I need to stay healthy and happy. I think I am feeling better now.