Expectations

Come-on admit it, you really expected to get juried in to that show at the National Reserve Water Color, Pastel and Espresso Machine Open in Petaluma and now that you didn’t you are annoyed, confused and just howsomeever pissed off.

That’s a mature, adult response to failed expectations.

And of course, no matter how mature and adult we happen to be, we all do it. It just ain’t right when you get your heart set on a thing not to get it.

That’s why the United States is awash in credit card debit, bad politics and horrible reality shows, we want what we want when we want it and nothing else will do.

See that’s the magic of a credit card, you can have anything your credit limit allows and not have to give a thought to how you are going to pay for it until the end of the month.

Ya need three cars, two boats and Jet Ski a snow mobile and stereo so large that it can be heard from outer space and when you crank in the amp the lights dim in Buffalo. Okay, given that Buffalo has ConEd the lights just might dim on their own but you know what I mean. Big toys make for a lot of comfort and joy with little thought to what was missing for you to need the comfort and joy.

And reality television, oh yeah, trash sports for those who love to compete but have not so much as a single athletic bone in their entire family tree. You know you could win the Amazing Race if you were entered, or what about Survivor? All that takes is a willingness to be filthy for six weeks and wear a bikini. I won’t say a word about politics. I haven’t earned the right to complain. I come from Texas where the only political movement is from radical conservative to Nazi.

So are you ready to take a minute and think about why our expectations have gotten so far from the real world that Big Brother is a show and not a phrase coined by George Orwell?

You know that creative arts is an area where the best job you can do with the finest materials and the most attention to detail and craft matters not one whit? What you create is going to be judged by someone else and their opinion is going to be a lot more important than yours.

Yeah it does suck.

But that’s just the way it is. It’s a lot like falling into the hands of the Croakers. Once they get you they will never let you go. They’ll just keep finding things which are wrong and need more attention and they can do it if only you will give up your rights and allow them to poke and prod you like a side of beef being sized up by the butcher.

Now I am no big fan of the Quacks and I get tired, depressed and annoyed when they find something else wrong with me that needs another coupla thousand dollars and a few more trips to Fairbanks where the only Quack in North America who can possibly deal with the bend in my gizzard lives and he never comes down to the Lower Forty-eight so I have to go there or just shrivel up and die.

Well that’s a cheery thought. Of course if I hadn’t allowed my expectations to run wild and forecast, with no apparent reason and no medical training, that I would be attending art openings in Coos Bay by the end of June and any thing to the contrary is just wrong and cannot be allowed.

Hmmmmmmm? Guess that isn’t going to happen. And that guys is the same story with expectations in all areas. They don’t have much to do with reality, reality shows to the contrary, (although I’ve never really understood why one would want to be stranded on a God-forsaken island with just a dozen or so arch-enemies, a television film crew, and a ratty bikini. Really if I’m going into snake, bug and pest infested swamps, forests and other hell holes I want a full bush kit with some good boots so that I don’t offer a snack to whatever local vermin happens to be lurking around wanting to wriggle in through my pores, orifices or others avenues of egress. I am not a parasite open zone!), expectations can make a tiny loss a major catastrophe.

And the hard part is we all have them all of the time. The worst of it happens when we are in our teens and discover the other bunch of folks, you know the ones we want to date and chase and do other stuff with, like talk about important esoteric metaphysical claptrap so that we can stay up all night and have a great reason to miss that eight o’clock class we didn’t want to sign up for but it was the only one left and ya can’t drop it cause once its paid for you have to tough it out or the school will send a notification to your parents and then you won’t have a car next semester so it is best to stick it out and just cut as many classes as you can without actually getting an incomplete.

Expectations make you think you’ll be the top choice when there is every chance the juror ill skip right over you and pick that cow thing and you just don’t understand how that could happen but the people who selected the jurors did such a miserable job that you got stuck with this lame bunch and they like cows go figure.

Expectations need to be worked on so that they inspire you to do top quality work, to be proud of what you create and to believe in your own talent, but then let them go and wart someone else. The false ones, the ones which make you think the juror will do what you want instead of what they were going to do anyway, them you can do without.