Week 2: Precedence

This week has been a triumph of exploration.
To start with, I made the acquaintance of some people who share my interests, and have realized which of my friends I cherish most. This is an accomplishment in general, for who you are is in large molded by who you surround yourself with; people influence your actions, which influence your behavior, which influences your being. More importantly, the people you associate with expose you to their world and thus broaden how you see yours. And since I'm looking to expose myself to the world beyond the obvious, I am especially proud of my ability to realize who can help me learn.
Secondly, I am quite honestly proud of myself for learning how to use a sewing machine. Again, I feel that this is an important life skill in general; it one step towards self-reliance, and maybe one day I'll be able to make very useful things out of fabric so I can live more cheaply. I am more proud of learning to sew in that it expands my ability to create, which I believe is an important ability to have as a hipster. Like I said, knowing how to sew enables you to spend little money making things you would normally buy for a lot more in a store, but it also enables me to embellish and improve objects I already have. Take my first project completed with my new-found skill: pockets. Using scraps of fabric that my grandmother would have otherwise never used, I made my shoulder-bag (which I'm not sure makes me hipster or really gay) much more versatile, organized, and functional. I exercised my creativity a little by picking fabrics and threads that complimented each other and using a special needle-point pattern when I created the hem of the pocket (where it opens). I then sewed my new pockets into my bag, and now have three pockets, in which I can place pens, hand sanitizer, keys, gum, all that jazz. I'm very excited to not have to dig through the bottom of the bag to find my chapstick!
Thirdly, I have embarked on a mission to broaden my intellectual horizons. The last books I read this summer (the perks of being a wallflower, Le Petit Prince) have been aimed at gleaning emotional depth. However, starting with Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," I am hoping to glean wit and perception through studying classic and cerebral literature. For my Religion class I'm reading Dorothy Day's autobiography and she keeps throwing out all these names of famous authors and philosophers who have written influential texts, so I'm going to pick a few and start heading in that direction. So far, "A Doll's House" is intriguing and I'm enjoying it immensely. Next, I'm going to attempt to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I've tried before and didn't finish, but maybe it will prove to be a good exercise and help me understand complicated movies I'm watching. Hopefully by the time I get around to watching another Luis Bunuel movie I'll actually know what's going on.
Lastly, I am ecstatic to be applying for an internship with the Public Relations department of the Victoria Theatre Association, which owns the historic Victoria Theatre downtown as well as the modern Schuster Center. Art is a fundamental aspect of the hipster's life...at least I think so. Regardless, it is an aspiration of mine to work in Arts Management, so I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to apply for a position. If I get the job, I will be surrounded with art and people who actually care for it, so I am presuming that the internship would bring me very far down the road of hipster enlightenment.
My journey is finally about to get underway; preparations are heating up. I am learning the skills, finding the people. searching for the environments. Once the semester starts, the trek begins, and I'll be hitting the ground running.
Next week is my final week of classes, and I cannot wait for them to be over! As much as a hipster appreciates his solitude, he thrives off the company of others who share his passions. Plus, I'm more than ready to get my life underway again. Until then, I've got books to read and movies to watch.
Until next week: ciao!
Tucker