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Frustration
Feb. 19th, 2011 09:29 am
I've been thinking about how I feel so purposeless, adrift and useless. Millions of people are probably content to just go to work, come home, watch some t.v., eat, sleep, whatever. They feel they have fulfilling and meaningful lives. I go to work, I come home, I screw around online or play video games, I sleep... but it adds up to very little satisfaction for me. I've always believed I should do something 'meaningful' with my life. However, I lack brilliance or creativity, so I'm starting to wonder if I should stop trying to live a meaningful life and focus more on not giving a shit if I don't amount to a damned thing. Especially since that's where I'm headed.
It makes me think about my piss-poor goal-setting abilities. I can set minor goals, those every day goals like getting up on time to go to work, taking a shower, stuffing food in my head, walking the dog. Everyday, ordinary goals like getting a new mattress (I'm having a harder time than expected with that one because Sears isn't open at 3am, but WoW is), or paying down credit cards. When it comes to long-term life goals I suck. I have no direction or motivation. I did manage to get a degree, only to find myself back where I started from, working graveyard at the castle, losing my mind and my dignity day by day.
When I was a child, my parents and educators were stunned by my giftedness (they'd be stunned to see where all those 'Gifted' classes landed me, too). Everyone always told me that patent answer of 'you can be anything you want to be'. No one pointed me in any specific direction, though. I wanted to be a paleontologist for awhile, but that never went far because a good majority of small children want to be paleontologists and give up after a day spent digging tiny fragments out of a grid under a hot Arizona sun.
Once, I checked a book out of the local library about beginning taxidermy mounts. My mother, in an unusual display of interest in her child's hobbies, refused to let me get any taxidermy supplies. She actually forbade me from checking out any more books on taxidermy from the library. In her eyes, I could be anything I wanted to be - except a taxidermist. That was absolutely forbidden.
I've always been around people who believe taxidermy to be unnecessary, gross, demeaning or creepy. Somehow, even if the animal is a beloved pet or a humanely killed deer that was subsequently eaten, most of my cohorts feel that taxidermy borders on obscenity.
It's always been kind of frustrating to me. I think I would be a decent taxidermist, given practice and the necessary skill set - sewing hides is tough work, and preserving hides can be messy and smelly, and there's a good deal of molding and carving to do. Dead animals are much like dead humans, though - once they're dead, does it really matter what happens to the remains? Some guy shot a deer. Now he wants to pay to have the deer preserved, stuffed & mounted on a wall in his living room. No big deal. I think my interest in becoming a mortician was because, while morticians & funeral homes are often looked down on as taking advantage of the living, it's still somehow more socially acceptable than being a taxidermist.
I can understand certain 'slippery slope' aspects that weigh against a positive outlook on taxidermy. For one, it does encourage sport or trophy hunting. I've hunted for food & I believe it's admirable for anyone to want to see the meal on their plate from start to finish, whether it's hunting, fishing or ranching. People should know that their dinner isn't some generic slab of protein hermetically wrapped in plastic for their convenience. Trophy hunting perverts the relationship between hunter and prey because the prey is seen as just another pretty thing to hang on a wall. I've seen landfills and trails after tourist-heavy 'deer seasons' and I know not all that meat is put to good use. I also know that preparing hides or animal parts can encourage poaching of endangered or threatened species, and beautiful skins and whimsical mounts can increase the demand for rare species. There's also the demand for predators to balance out a collection of mounts - and predators are rarely eaten.
I know, I'm a grown woman now, capable of making my own decisions. One big thing is definitely preventing me from becoming even a hobbyist taxidermist.
My husband. Rob hates the notion of taxidermy with a foaming-at-the-mouth passion. He's not real keen on hunting or fishing to begin with, but the thought of being exposed to a bunch of dead animals or their parts gives him a serious case of the skin-crawling heeby jeebies. He would question every death, and torture himself mentally over each piece, thinking about how this or that animal died. Did it suffer? Was it a trophy? Who would want to memorialize such a traumatic experience? What about the animals' ghosts? Where are the animals' ghosts? Are they still lingering around their remains? Is the whole workshop haunted by a billion dead Bambis? Forget buying the parts & making craft pieces from them - that opens up the whole other 'Where were these parts obtained? how were they obtained? Is it a trusted source?' can o' worms.
I just... I see some of these websites, and once I get past some of the outright absurdity (and I'm not keen on the chimeric mounts - no chicken heads on llama bodies for me, thanks), I am so inspired. I think to myself, I could do this stuff. Aside from the human teeth. That's gross. I mean, ew, c'mon. Touching other peoples' used teeth, yuck.
10 Shockingly Creepy Pieces of Taxidermy Jewelry - I lurv the skull & peacock feather hairpiece. I would wear that. It'd make a great brooch, too. I can see other uses for the bird-head necklaces, though... like lamp-pulls, or I have this stainless steel letter opener/bookmark w/a tassel threaded through one end. I could imagine a bird head dangling from the pages of my latest read.
Action mounts
I dunno. Maybe I just want to touch dead things.
It makes me think about my piss-poor goal-setting abilities. I can set minor goals, those every day goals like getting up on time to go to work, taking a shower, stuffing food in my head, walking the dog. Everyday, ordinary goals like getting a new mattress (I'm having a harder time than expected with that one because Sears isn't open at 3am, but WoW is), or paying down credit cards. When it comes to long-term life goals I suck. I have no direction or motivation. I did manage to get a degree, only to find myself back where I started from, working graveyard at the castle, losing my mind and my dignity day by day.
When I was a child, my parents and educators were stunned by my giftedness (they'd be stunned to see where all those 'Gifted' classes landed me, too). Everyone always told me that patent answer of 'you can be anything you want to be'. No one pointed me in any specific direction, though. I wanted to be a paleontologist for awhile, but that never went far because a good majority of small children want to be paleontologists and give up after a day spent digging tiny fragments out of a grid under a hot Arizona sun.
Once, I checked a book out of the local library about beginning taxidermy mounts. My mother, in an unusual display of interest in her child's hobbies, refused to let me get any taxidermy supplies. She actually forbade me from checking out any more books on taxidermy from the library. In her eyes, I could be anything I wanted to be - except a taxidermist. That was absolutely forbidden.
I've always been around people who believe taxidermy to be unnecessary, gross, demeaning or creepy. Somehow, even if the animal is a beloved pet or a humanely killed deer that was subsequently eaten, most of my cohorts feel that taxidermy borders on obscenity.
It's always been kind of frustrating to me. I think I would be a decent taxidermist, given practice and the necessary skill set - sewing hides is tough work, and preserving hides can be messy and smelly, and there's a good deal of molding and carving to do. Dead animals are much like dead humans, though - once they're dead, does it really matter what happens to the remains? Some guy shot a deer. Now he wants to pay to have the deer preserved, stuffed & mounted on a wall in his living room. No big deal. I think my interest in becoming a mortician was because, while morticians & funeral homes are often looked down on as taking advantage of the living, it's still somehow more socially acceptable than being a taxidermist.
I can understand certain 'slippery slope' aspects that weigh against a positive outlook on taxidermy. For one, it does encourage sport or trophy hunting. I've hunted for food & I believe it's admirable for anyone to want to see the meal on their plate from start to finish, whether it's hunting, fishing or ranching. People should know that their dinner isn't some generic slab of protein hermetically wrapped in plastic for their convenience. Trophy hunting perverts the relationship between hunter and prey because the prey is seen as just another pretty thing to hang on a wall. I've seen landfills and trails after tourist-heavy 'deer seasons' and I know not all that meat is put to good use. I also know that preparing hides or animal parts can encourage poaching of endangered or threatened species, and beautiful skins and whimsical mounts can increase the demand for rare species. There's also the demand for predators to balance out a collection of mounts - and predators are rarely eaten.
I know, I'm a grown woman now, capable of making my own decisions. One big thing is definitely preventing me from becoming even a hobbyist taxidermist.
My husband. Rob hates the notion of taxidermy with a foaming-at-the-mouth passion. He's not real keen on hunting or fishing to begin with, but the thought of being exposed to a bunch of dead animals or their parts gives him a serious case of the skin-crawling heeby jeebies. He would question every death, and torture himself mentally over each piece, thinking about how this or that animal died. Did it suffer? Was it a trophy? Who would want to memorialize such a traumatic experience? What about the animals' ghosts? Where are the animals' ghosts? Are they still lingering around their remains? Is the whole workshop haunted by a billion dead Bambis? Forget buying the parts & making craft pieces from them - that opens up the whole other 'Where were these parts obtained? how were they obtained? Is it a trusted source?' can o' worms.
I just... I see some of these websites, and once I get past some of the outright absurdity (and I'm not keen on the chimeric mounts - no chicken heads on llama bodies for me, thanks), I am so inspired. I think to myself, I could do this stuff. Aside from the human teeth. That's gross. I mean, ew, c'mon. Touching other peoples' used teeth, yuck.
10 Shockingly Creepy Pieces of Taxidermy Jewelry - I lurv the skull & peacock feather hairpiece. I would wear that. It'd make a great brooch, too. I can see other uses for the bird-head necklaces, though... like lamp-pulls, or I have this stainless steel letter opener/bookmark w/a tassel threaded through one end. I could imagine a bird head dangling from the pages of my latest read.
Action mounts
I dunno. Maybe I just want to touch dead things.
