fear

*this summer I have the privilege of taking an internship course, at OCAD University, that enables me to experience a taste of jewellery design and metalsmithing in a field placement study.  This course has been a wonderful experience but has also raised many challenging questions...what do I really want to do with my life? Where do I see myself in five years? Why do I spend so many hours in the studio?

Over the past few years, these questions have caused me so much anxiety and anguish…I’ve actually come close to transferring programs several times throughout my time here at OCAD University – because there is something so frightening about pursuing a career that does not necessarily have a stable and concrete direction.  But as much as my fear sometimes gets in the way of pursuing my passions for jewellery design and metalsmithing, it has also been this exact freedom of being able to choose the direction of my career that has stopped me from dropping all my courses and transferring schools.  I know that I love what I do and that the satisfaction of being able to design and create objects is what brings me joy and contentment.   I do not have the desire or pursuit to become a famous or well renowned jewellery designer (perhaps this will happen, but I would never want it to be my primary goal).  

My entire life, I’ve always been surrounded by lots of people – from being raised in a large family with three biological sisters and countless foster care siblings, spending my summers as a camp counsellor and most recently spending the past three summers working alongside children and adults with both physical and intellectual disabilities – these experiences have heightened my desire to be an advocate of the potential in every human being.  In many of these relationships, I had the privilege of catching just a small glimpse of the vulnerability that many of these children carry with them… a vulnerability that so often restrains them from chasing after their own passions and desires.  

I find it can be overwhelming to try and understand how we might even begin to empower these children and young adults, but it ultimately comes down to how we choose to live out our lives.  Statistics can dehumanize injustice, but they do not eliminate the problem.  Our habits comprise our character and these habits have the capacity to consume us.  While these issues may be large and my own individual ability to fight injustice might be small, I will not let my inability to do EVERYTHING make me do NOTHING instead of SOMETHING. -Michelle Brock, Hope For The Sold.