Letterpress, Week 2

Still sucks.

How can I say this? I am either incredibly uncoordinated or extraordinarily unlucky. While my classmates are laying out type without incident, mine is consistently wonky. And, I have to say this, if it has to look like shit, it should be easy to make. Letterpress is fuckall hard, and everything I do is fucking gross. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

My teacher watched me spend 12 hours last week on a single layout that never worked. I was using an old type, and the letters were shot. So, I never got a good press, and I was frustrated, and just put it all away. It's obvious to me that she now thinks of me as a potential problem. At first, she thought I was a designer (hell, isn't everyone in this class?) because I had so many ideas (Halloween, Christmas) and so many questions (I am in class with mutes - why don't they have questions?!?!). Then, she was excited because I was making plans to rent a press (um, HELLO, my boyfriend won't let me have a press, and Halloween is WEEKS away).

Well, after all of last week's fun, I'm starting to think, I'd rather pay someone to letterpress the 3 things that need to look nice in my lifetime, and I'll Gocco all the rest. I can't get into the myriad ways that Letterpress is complicated and frustrating. I explained one problem, and its solution, to Dr. Boy and he looked horrified. Silly rabbit, there's never just ONE problem...

So, teacher wants me to be happy, and is now afraid that I won't rent the machines, and will swear off letterpress forever. She's watching me closely. She's always trying to see if I'm frustrated, and ward off the evil spirits. Which makes me self-conscious, and more likely to be apathetic and just let her tell me what to do.

She checked my work all morning, without realizing what I was working on, and then told me I couldn't print it. 5 FUCKING hours, and then I had to start over with 30 minutes left. Not nearly enough time. I laid out a stupid fucking thing, and it was crooked INEXPLICABLY, and there was a hair in the press, and too much ink, and I had to handcut cards. Shit, absolute shit. She keeps trying to make me print envelopes because they're small, but every mailing I have coming up won't work for one reason or another. And, she's trying to get me to do very small projects to practice. Which is great, but if I'm going to bust my ass lifting heavy shit, work for hours on a 2x3" block of text, be covered in lead, solvents, and ink, pass it out, and then keep it, I want something with value to me. Something I can use. I'm collecting these stupid fucking scraps of paper with quotes on them from my classmates. Hello? GARBAGE. YOU ARE FORCING ME TO MAKE CLUTTER. So, no, I don't give a flying fuck what color paper you give me, what ink I get stuck with, what font, what press, or whatever. If I have to make some shitty little piece of FUTURE GARBAGE I could fucking care less how the fuck it comes together.

And now, I have to turn in an assignment, which requires that I ask questions, and I'll have to bear with her trying to manage whatever she imagines my issues to be because I do not want to explain my fucking philosophy of life. If I have to make garbage, I do not want to talk about it. Or fucking fuss over it. If it's always going to be fucking crooked and wonky, why am I wasting my fucking time? I mean, I spent 14 hours drilling into 5 dozen eggs with a Dremel, filling them with multiple layers of ganache, painting, and arranging them FOR FUN. And, I loved it - I'm totally doing it next year. Seriously. I'll post about it soon. And, I never want to go back to Letterpress because it's too complicated and there's no fucking reward. I'm surrounded by the shittiest, ugliest product, and it takes a fucking Herculean effort to make it.

If it has to look like shit, it should be easy to make.