This Week. The end of August.
Phew, this is the first time all week I've had a moment to take a breather...Thursday night at 11 pm.
Joel's out celebrating some killer work accomplishments with his team and I'm in bed, writing like I'm Carrie Bradshaw. Tiger's with his grandparents up north at his favorite place and I'm missing him. He usually lays right next to me when I write. This week was nuts. I figured it would be but nothing can really prepare you for starting two new jobs after working in solitude from your home studio all summer.
Monday and Wednesday I had my first two classes as an adjunct design professor at GVSU. I'm teaching typography and print design to juniors and boy are they antsy to get in the field. It's interesting that people say Millennials and younger are lazy, entitled, and purposeless. The students in my class so far are ready to take on the world and motivated to pursue their design careers. They want to learn everything. Some students have already come up to me with personal matters and while I'm surprised at the openness, I also felt a purpose in my class I've never felt before. I don't know what will come of it but that feeling, wow it's a beautiful thing to feel.
August Moodboard by Emily Bode | Emily Bode blog
A lot of new this week
Then Tuesday and Thursday I started working at a print shop in town. We print a lot of blueprints and signs for the construction industry but I'm the "graphics technician" which means I do the more detailed print jobs like making copies of artists’ original works, color correcting, and printing them on high-quality art paper. It's miscellaneous and the atmosphere is so relaxed and I'm surrounded by paper and ink all day. It's not fancy or stylish and I love it. I'm basically doing what I'm teaching in real-time.
Today I scanned all these photos of presidents of the Women's Literary Club. The club dates back to 1888 so there were a lot of president’s pictures to scan! I noticed all of the women's names were "Mrs. [husband first name, husband last name]" up until the late 90's presidents. It baffles me why married women didn't go by their own names. Did they feel like they had their own identity despite being called Mrs. John Walker? Why, as the president of a female club, did they put up with that? I don't know, it was something I was thinking about after editing all these women's photos today. We still get mail that says Mr. & Mrs. Joel Bode and it pisses me off. MY NAME IS NOT JOEL. I AM MY OWN PERSON.
That's a full week in and of itself and then we had a few events after work that kept us out late. I co-worked with Kherington for a bit tonight. It was great to catch up with her and chat about our projects. She has some awesome partnerships coming up and is just so easy to talk with. She helped me see I'm more than capable and experienced to get compensated for working with companies in town. I do this all the time with my design clients but when it comes to my blog, not so much. I usually shy away from it because I don't know how to go about the conversation or I don't want to come across inauthentic. But I think I can be authentic and still be compensated for a lot of the work that I put into this space of mine.
My Aunt texted me this the night before my first class. Perfect. Timing!
There's so much change going on right now, which makes me anxious and want to cry from exhaustion a little. The people I love and adore so much have supported me so much with thoughtful texts, snail mail, phone calls to just listen to me ramble on. To have angels let me be me and cheer me on makes me really happy.
Midwestern fall living room style | Emily Bode blog
I'm loving these Jesse Kamm pants right now, a wish list item for sure. I'm thinking a lot about teacher style and pinned some inspiration tonight. John Mayer's instagram is reminding me why I love his music so much. Found him from another instagram I'm loving, What Kate Finds. Anything using this typeface. These illustrations from Duvet Days are on my list to get for my studio. I'm working on the newsletter for it to launch in mid-September. This book is my next purchase and this book is on my nightstand. Y'all might have helped me save this chair.
I'm so ready for bed now! Thanks for being here. xo, Em
