Joachimesque

glynnis:

• The awesome news is that I’ll be graduating in May!

Yay for May :)

I should be in South America at that time, slowly making my way to Alabama. I’m just sayin’.

• Speaking of graduation and next semester, here’s the class line-up so far: French phonetics and linguistics, French literature (something 17th c.?), cultural anthropology + lab, Photo 418, and a one hour for-credit internship with Slash Pine Press. Slash Pine will publish a chapbook (handmade) in the spring, as well as organize a poetry festival.
• Post-graduation plans? I’m trying to get back to France for the summer — for the Cannes Film Festival as an intern,

Mmmh, that could be tough to get, an internship at Cannes. My little brother had one because he knew people… I may have a lead, if you need ;)

• but perhaps back to Paris thereafter. Maybe to get certified to teach French, maybe just for a quick visit and a little tooling around town to see friends. All still very much in the works, nothing solid yet. Hello couch-surfing and 99-centimes-baguettes!

It’s not a perhaps. Summer is nicer in Paris. And Summer begets Autumn, and Paris will be better in Autumn. Know why? ‘cause I’ll be back.

• Then to New York? Question mark? If I can find full-time work I will jump on it, but based on what other grads have been experiencing, full-time work means waiting tables, which doesn’t much lead anywhere but waiting in the other sense. So I may apply for more/other internships to get more experience and shove my foot through some doors. I considered grad school, but waiting on all my transfer credit to come through from abroad meant I lost a lot of time. Then, you know…there’s that other bit about not knowing what I want to commit myself to just yet. The smorgasbord goes something like: MLIS, MFA in book arts, art/rare books conservation, museum studies, interdisciplinary art, linguistics. Oh, the future. What a mystery you are.

Indeed. (mischievous smile)

• I’ve got a new gig redesigning a site and publishing exhibition catalogs/photography anthologies for a project here in town (more on that later). I’m taking on a book project of my own, as well; I’m assembling a portfolio of the photography I generated during the year I lived abroad, and have a small budget from one of the colleges here at UA. I’ll be printing with Blurb.com, a self-publishing service, and I’m anxious to see the results and print quality. Do any of you have experience with Blurb’s photo books?

I think my cousin used Blurb for a photo project. I’ll ask him.

glynnis:

“And so it is with luck - unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”

— Be lucky - it’s an easy skill to learn - Telegraph (via amber-rae, msg, ronenreblogs & ericlodwick)

Luck is what you make out of it. Or something like that.

I got a friend in Paris, and the other day, while I was in Shanghai, I was telling her about the buildings, the fog, the people in the street and everything, and she told me I was so lucky. Lucky to travel around the world?

I dunno if I consider it luck. From my point of view, I had a little bit of money and a dream, and, well, just a job and lots of friends in Paris. The job I could quit, and my friends I could Internet, so yeah, I created the occasion to go wander the globe.

I guess I opened my mind to the occasion :)