EXISTENTIAL CRISES WHILE DOING MASTERS

As you might be aware, after my Bachelors degree in Hand embroidery, I have gone to get a Masters in Cultural Heritage Management and Communication. I know it seems like such a jump, but it actually is very logical; while I was studying for my undergraduate I found myself touching upon different topics away from embroidery itself, I was starting to dabble in Soviet heritage research and its footprint in Latvian society. I graduated with so many feelings, ideas and also passion for our Soviet heritage that I somehow really wanted to prove valuable and that led me to this Masters program.

My first semester was kind of an introduction to Cultural Heritage studies from so many different aspects, which was very dense, so detrimental and heavily theoretical. I had moments where I genuinely could not understand why I am in the program because my fellow students are working in the museum and heritage field and I clearly am not, so I kept gaslighting myself that I am trying to pretend to be someone I am not as I am very dedicated to my creative practice in hand embroidery and they started to feel like two separate lives. So I got through my first session of finals with shit load of essays and writing which I was not used to, and with 3 written essays on Soviet heritage from architecture to national minorities in Latvia I thought I was done with said topic, as it honestly is very draining. For one course I even turned to crafts as my theme, which was my last straw for help, and I am not particularly concerned about crafts nor interested in it from a heritage perspective. Anyway, I was completely bulldozed over by that first semester.

For already two weeks I am in my second semester and the courses we are taking are definitely more practical and not as theoretical which is very refreshing. I have a great bunch of courses like Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries, Exposition as a Tool for Cultural Heritage Interpretation and Communication, Heritage Interpretation and few more and I feel like for these 2 weeks after each lecture and seminar I have left with huge revelations about myself and my practice. I went into this program with no desire to work in the field as it is severely underfunded and very demanding, I knew that research just drives my creative practice and I needed to sustain that. 

So, a quick recap on what I have realized this semester:

Firstly in the Creative Industries course I understood that I am actually an entrepreneur in the creative field with which I would have never identified with as my idea of an entrepreneur is not really compatible with the nature or my work life but turns out my work life is not that unusual in the field, so yay, it validates what I do even more, which always is great.

Secondly, in my first lecture in Strategic Management I came to a conclusion that vision, mission and values need to be communicated throughout and clearly of a brand to solidify and explain what the brand is all about. I've known and researched about this but somehow hearing it by a specialist and asking directly if that applies to me too as a one person orchestra just solidified more of my brand structure. Also, you are witnessing my first time referring to what I do as my brand. Crazy.

Thirdly, I have realized that I would love to work as an exhibition critic. I really enjoy it and always try to organize to myself what I like, what I don't and why, and this could really be of use.

Lastly, when reflecting on Heritage Interpretation class today I found myself making sense; I know I will go back to writing about Soviet heritage but in more niche ways as I touched on all the immediate interest topics, it is my passion and my love, that I want to prove. Then I realized whatever I do creatively regarding Soviet heritage and Post-Soviet living is heritage interpretation; I am not curating exhibitions in museums or doing it in a traditional institutional sense but I do it through stitch, writing and even as little as through curation of aesthetic posts on Instagram, and who knows where that can take me. As I laugh at myself I am a visionary and through each rejection I get, I keep redirecting my energy to create a platform for myself. 

And today is the first day where I am starting to see and believe I have a place in the heritage field. In the recent months I understood that I cannot be just stitching all the time, I have more interests than that, also physically it is very demanding and I need to divert my attention elsewhere too. Maybe I can be an external specialist in a certain topic or can be curating projects of my own, I don't know, but today is the day I can stop gaslighting myself. Yay!

Ever stitching and ever loving Post-Soviet living,

Elīza