Pi - In the Face

14 March 2012

I watched Elisa's two younger kids for her briefly this morning while she dropped off her two older ones at school and ran to the store real fast. When she got back I went straight from her house to my brother's house because my sister-in-law was called in for jury duty and they couldn't find anyone else to watch their kids. Now mind you they live an hour away, which is fine. And they have seven kids, which is also fine because most of them were at school. So I didn't get much accomplished in the way of myself today. I was babysitting from about 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. when my brother and his wife both got home.

Because it was Pi Day today I made Shepherd's Pie for dinner, but that is all I was able to do. Oh well, there is a Pi Day every year, so plenty of time to do all of those fun Pi Day activities I would like to.

My brother has been my idol in the realms of art for as long as I can remember. My friends tell me I am a great artist, but that is because they have never seen my brother at work! He can do anything her puts his mind to. Drawing, painting, sculpting, graphic design, advertising, logos, anything! A few years ago he even helped my other brother add light sabers to a film he had made with his boy scouts. Pretty neat.

Well a package had arrived for him while he was out and when he got home and opened it he was as giddy as a schoolboy. He showed me that it was software for Adobe Aftereffects. Then he showed me all the cool things you could do and they more he showed me and the more he explained, the more I felt like crying.

You see, all day yesterday I had worked on designing those bookmarks for Elisa. I was using Microsoft Paint, because my Adobe CS5 doesn't work on my old, slow computer. All the cool stuff he was doing was so out of my league right now I felt like everything I had spent so much time on and was so proud of yesterday was like preschool scribbling in comparison to what he was working with.

I know he is the oldest of the six kids in our family and I am the youngest, but I was so envious, and have been for a while, of all the tools he has at his disposal. I don't even want to try art right now because I feel so inadequately equipped for it. I doodle and sketch, but in this digital world, if you can't get your art onto the computer to be sent by email then it may as well not exist. Rather depressing considering I feel this way about so many subjects. Math and science and language. But at the same time it burns a fire of hunger. I want to know more, to do more and be more for myself and my kids. I can do it, I just need to stop wasting time being idle during the day and get to work!

We ended up spending the night here too because it was really late by the time my brother had finished showing me all the cool things he has been doing that I was not in spirits for the long drive home. It has been a very long week away from home. I plan on going home tomorrow and not leaving for a couple days at least!