New Beginnings

I've always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I guess I picked this tactic up pretty quickly when I was bullied as most children do during their primary school lives. It was my belief that these hardships from when I was seven or eight years old made me a more resilient person when it came to similar situations later on.

At the end of last year, I was ready to go to art school. I was more than excited to spend most of my waking hours on creating new work, organising photo shoots every week and achieving things that I wasn't able to while completing high school last year. However when the semester started, what I had imagined the previous five months were entirely different to my reality. There wasn't as much time for me to work on all of the ideas I had put onto the back burner last year to complete my high school education. I spent my time creating a few pieces of work for the subjects I undertook and catching up on my constant sleep deficit when I was at home rather than sourcing inspiration for other projects I wanted to complete. It seemed as though I was more productive juggling weekly photo shoots, model test shoots, inspiration hunting and promotion while I was sitting in class from 8.30am to 3.30pm and preparing for year 12 exams. Which, thinking back on it, is absolutely crazy. 

I pondered whether being at art school was still beneficial for me, at this point in my life,  for the good half of three months. I was in Melbourne five days a week for twelve hour days on average. It was exhausting, to put it lightly. I would wake up before six in the morning and I would get home at about seven at night and fall basically straight into bed. I was constantly tired, constantly falling behind in other areas of my life and more importantly, not really doing what I wanted to be doing. I had zero time to work and earn money, zero time to photograph for leisure rather than assessment, barely any time with my family, whom I live with and zero time to look after myself physically and mentally. I decided that what I was missing out on was much more important than what I was studying. I felt that my knowledge gap was not with photography but rather with other interest areas that I had thought about studying long ago and I made the decision to withdraw from my course.

So, I'm taking the next semester off from studying to look after myself, my family and earn more money. A gap year was the last thing I wanted but now, it seems more important to me than ever. Everything happens for a reason and I truly believe that this past semester has taught me something very valuable that I will never let myself forget.

I have a few things planned apart from working for the next seven or so months. I'm planning on doing a ten week cooking course with my grandma, as a sort of bonding experience but also so that I can rival my boyfriend, Paul who is a chef, in the kitchen. I've registered to run in a 5km fun run at the end of November to motivate me to exercise more and find clarity in my mind through running and of course I have been arduously sourcing inspiration for new experiments and projects that I want to photograph in the coming months. Most importantly however, I am planning big things for this blog.

Over the past year I've been posting and promoting my own work but, my love for writing and my intent to work one day in magazines is making me want to change the content I publish here. I still want to post my own work and experiments but I also want to share what other young artists are doing as I find people around my age to be most inspiring in my creative endeavours. I want to share photographs, music, videos, artwork and writing that inspires and influences me. I want to get out of my comfort zone and try some diy-ing and baking, and design.

There's so much I have collated over my years on the internet that I want to share that I feel this platform would be a fantastic way to do this. So, over the next few days you're going to see some design changes before I start posting all of my new content this Sunday.

If you would like to contribute in anyway please let me know in the comments below or you can email me at carolyn.west94@gmail.com. I want to be able to collaborate with many more people over the next six months and meet new and inspiring beings.