2015 - the schmo must go on

So 2015... Some year eh? These are interesting times we are living in that is for sure. I didn't do a 'best in schmo 2014' last year. Because in truth I'd kinda had it up here with the whole thing. I even applied for some jobs... Working for yourself, managing clients, overheads, family and god for bid ARTISTIC CREATIVITY is not easy. In fact the very idea of managing anything makes me want to curl up in a corner and cry. If our systems of management are so amazingly effective why on earth are we in the state we are in today. On the brink on environmental cataclysm, at war on countless fronts and using technological advances to weaponise space, create assassination drones and even experimenting with computer systems that can autonomously kill. It is hard to get on with anything at all... isn't it? I have no answers to the big questions, the west will destroy itself! Of that I am sure! But in the meantime I must keep myself busy with the art, sit at the computer; growing weaker, stupider and poorer. Truth be told, art, music and family are the only things that keep me going. Money: I have no interest in it, I need it but I have no interest in it. I am not in this game for success and I am ashamed to be a westerner, for our greed, our idiocy and our self absorbed vacuum of things and status. I do what I do for the escape it provides, the shelter it provides to my soul. And in that respect it has been a great year. I have done some of my best work ever. Stand out pieces being 'The Voyage of the Hector' and Beecake ' The World of Things'. Works done mainly by hand, in my style with clear and definite symbolic and philosophical artistic aims. I am very proud of these pieces and for that I am thankful. When I sat down to write this narcissistic overview of my year I realised how low my output appears to have been. In fact it has been one of the busiest years ever. Truth is that more and more I have to take on work that I don't necessarily want to tell you about. Maybe because it was a disaster, maybe because it just didn't reflect me creatively, maybe because it's for a corporation with spurious moral bearing, perhaps it was a project that left me feeling betrayed, under valued or just plain empty. I'd love to be upbeat... I'd love to tell you what an amazing year it has been... And the truth is it wasn't that bad. It was a good year in so many different ways. Me and my family are healthy. I have many, many interests and possessions which give me great pleasure and relief. My work this year has also been greatly fulfilling, with projects that have allowed me unprecedented levels of creative freedom and despite the occasional corporate pantomime I still love working in the design hub. Tom, Thor, Misha, Matrix, Valerie and Big John really do keep me sane. Mainly by finding amusement and often encouraging my very deep and convoluted madness. I have my guitar in the workshop and nobody likes me playing it. But I love it. So AYE!what I'm trying to say here, is that it's been a good year, with many highlights and joys. Yes there are times when I want to jack it all in and go live in the woods. But that is brought on mainly by our wilfully stupid, short sighted, greedy, commodity driven society. Maybe I will go and live in the woods. But more than likely I will just keep on keeping on until said cataclysm occurs... The schmo must go on!