Howdy folks! Carla Baudrons here, Head Wench In Charge here at Art Office. You may have noticed we’ve been silent for a few months, and I wanted to tell you why that is, in case you were wondering. See, even though Art Office is a community-based program, and relies on the active participation of our members to thrive, it still requires quite a bit of careful pre-production planning, as well as post-production management after each session. This all takes time––and I’ve been spending most of my time over the past few months making money to feed my face.

See, my partner and I moved to Upstate New York at the beginning of March, and I don’t know if you know this or not, but 1) it’s expensive to move across the country, and 2) it’s expensive to live in New York! Oh, and 3) the pay isn’t any better, and of course 4) the cost of living everywhere is skyrocketing.

Thankfully, just a few weeks after we got here, I landed a full-time job as a background check investigator and NYS DOT certified drug test collector. Yet another strange addition to my crazy-quilt of a resume! Anyway due in part to staffing issues, I was promoted to Branch Manager after I’d been there only two weeks. I had a lot of responsibilities, but the most challenging one was that I had to be on-call for post-accident testing 24/7. 😳 Including driving time, I was working about 50-55 hours per week, which left me bleary-eyed at the end of every day, and I also had to get up stupid early to do collections (like 4:30 sometimes), some of which were an hour and a half away! After I fell asleep at the wheel once (fully stopped, at a traffic light), I decided I needed to look for something else.

And I didn’t have to look long before literally the perfect job appeared right in my inbox (thank you, Indeed). As of June 1st, I’ll be working at The Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes as an “Agency Administrator,” whatever that means! Just kidding, I know what it means, but it’s an awfully chewy-sounding title for the work I’ll be doing. I won’t bore you with those details, but I will tell you that I’m only going to be working 32 hours per week, and from the looks of it, I think I’m going to be less stressed out too! Which means I can hopefully start up Art Office again very soon!

My hope was to be able to have a Summer session, but what with our 2nd move and needing to get into a rhythm at my new job, I think it’ll be best for everybody if I push it back to Fall.

I have a lot of bright, shiny, new plans for Art Office. This coming session is going to be our first with guest speakers, we’ll be introducing a new local outreach plan for community involvement that doesn’t require social media (woohoo!), and for the first time, I’ll be offering one-on-one Motivation Sessions to help members on an individual basis get unstuck and excited to make art. Doesn’t that sound AMAZING?! I can’t wait!!

If you can’t wait either, apply now! All right, that’s all I’ve got! See you next time!