So Frustrated!

I love Letterpress. I love printing equipment, and looking and other people's prints. Taking in the creations and designs of others helps to stir the pot of ideas in my own brain too. Its fantastic! Well, it used to be.

Lately, I'm so discouraged! I'm starting to feel at my wits end here. Everything that used to inspire me instead serves as a reminder that I've been working so hard and I am still NOT accomplished at anything. I see people who started up 6 months ago who work full time jobs and are STILL somehow able to create, furnish and manage a small press successfully. Why not me? Its true that I have two major disadvantages: money and space - but I'm used to working with what I have, so I can't use that as an excuse.

Thinking back on the last few months, I wonder what have I spent my time doing??? I have some product printed, but its hardly spectacular or involved. And it took me FOREVER to crank it out. Again, not to use excuses, but it is quite difficult to work in a 4x4 room with literally 30 square inches of space to stand. I've used every surface in my apartment as a drying rack, with silver smeary consequences for one of my vintage arm chairs...

Its also so difficult to see so many other people jumping on the letterpress bandwagon. Now, I'm all for preservation and spreading the love, but prices for equipment are driven up astronomically to a point where its just unaffordable and insulting to serious printers like me and some of the people I know who print.

I feel very beaten down with everything I've tried to do the last few years. College: put my sanity, credit and relationship aside, made it through with some good experiences and a massive debt, and then they refuse me my degree due to clerical error. Relationship and credit gone, and I'm only beginning to regain sanity. I move to Saint Louis with the man I love to build a house in the hills and I can't find work so I'm literally penniless to the point of losing my apartment. I find a great opportunity to work with wild birds at a rescue where I thought I'd be able to network, make some friends and it collapses because I have no way to get there. Recently, i thought i found another great thing to be involved in: a captive bird rescue. I worked it out, found a little birdy who needed to be fostered, and now I have to quit that too because we might have to move away.

Everything I try fails. Why is it so diffucult for me? I'm intelligent, personable and educated. I have a strong work ethic and am not lazy. I apply myself and can be very dedicated. How does it seem like every one else breezes by me in life while I feel like I'm paddling up stream?

Gods damn it.