A Tattooist submission from Julia Seizure, Star Crossed Tattoo, Hong Kong.
9 to 5: Kim-Anh Nguyen, Tattoo Apprentice
This week I am featuring one of the loveliest ladies on the internet- Ms. Kim-Anh! She is no stranger to this blog - check out her Tattoo Tuesday- and I'm so happy to have her back. Be sure to check out her blog and shop for some great posts and gorgeous art!
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Kim-Anh Nguyen, I'm a Swiss girl from Vietnamese descent. I'm 22 years old and right now I'm working as a tattoo apprentice, since January 2011, at Inkvaders Tattoo (Carouge, Geneva, Switzerland.
Before beginning my apprenticeship I had a blog where I posted some of my drawings and paintings. After some months of having the blog people started asking me for commissioned works, so most of my time was dedicated to drawing or painting. I don't have any formal studies in art... I succeeded at the admission tests for art school when I was 15 but my parents convinced me not to follow that path.
So before having my blog and begin my tattoo apprenticeship I did some business related studies and worked a little bit for the city administration, but never felt happy doing that.
I live in Carouge with my boyfriend... :)
Describe a typical day at work.
I wake up at 7am, shower, coffee, breakfast, geeking, etc...
8am, first attempts at sketching some drawings or I try to finish or progress some others...
at 9am I begin my work day at Inkvaders Tattoo shop: various housework chores before the first clients arrival. Tubes cleansing. Daily shopping (supermarket, drugstore, etc)... Tattoo stations set-up...
Lunch time around 12pm and back to the shop at 1pm...
Afternoon: I just started tattooing some days ago, so I set-up my working space, draw the stencil, etc...
If I don't have any tattoos scheduled I work on some paintings or tattoos projects for future customers.
Thus said, some afternoons will only be about cleaning tubes!
Also a lot of phone answering and appointment setting (so funny how the telephone rings a thousand times a day on a rainy afternoon but just once or twice if it's a sunny day! ;)
A lot of email answering too...
End of the afternoon: tattoo stations cleansing once the tattoo sessions are over and prepare the next day stuff as much as I can!
Discussing some tattoo projects and ideas with some customers...
Back at home at around 7:30pm on a lucky day, most of time it's way later (except for summertime). :p
Back at home: Food, food, food! Tv... internet... drawing and painting with the TV as background noise...
Go to sleep at around 12am extremely tired... then, LOUD SNORING!!!
Did you always want to be a tattoo artist? How did you get into this field?
A Tattooer? Not really... thus said, I've always been into drawing and painting, since my childhood. I've always dreamed of an art related job. Then I began to get tattoos at around 15 y.o. and the idea (dream) of becoming a tattooist began to make its way on my head at around 18 y.o. It began to seem "logic" at some point as I was passionate by drawing and tattoos.
Is this what you hope to do for the rest of your life?
I hope to become a tattooer someday soon (in the next years) and be able to do it for a living. I really don't know about that "for the rest of my life" part, it's still too far away right now, but I surely want to do this for the next years to come!
If you could tell your 17-year old self anything about your life today, what would you tell her?
Well, I'm not so far away from the girl I was when I was 17 y.o. I'm still a lazy person a lot of times, procrastination is definitively in my blood... So, in a way, I'm still in that phase where I'm fighting against those bad habits... The main difference would be that I've become aware of it and I'm trying, as much as I can, to change for better.
a thank you
I wanted to take a quick moment and say thank you to all of you for all of your sweet comments on my last post. Recently I've had a bit of a hard time blogging in this space. My readership has a grown a lot from the five readers I started with, and at times I struggle with not wanting to post personal things here due to thinking about so many people reading what I have to say. There will always be a line for me as far as over-sharing or taking away a special moment's "special-ness" by putting them here, but when it comes down to it, I love blogging and I love writing, and being able to share my thoughts and words with all of you is such an amazing gift. Recently though I've thought a lot about what this blog and what it means to me - why I continue to do it, why I have sponsors/if accepting money is discounting the value of what I produce here, if this is something that could endanger my family in any way, and often those thoughts can become quite discouraging. While on my extended vacation I didn't blog for an entire three weeks. I honestly enjoyed it, but also missed it. I thought about all the reasons I love blogging, and the reasons I don't. I thought about how, no matter how long I do this, on some days I enjoy sharing, and other days I feel like I'm making a mistake putting myself out there in such an extended way. Back and forth. It's weird. But the interesting thing about blogging to an audience of this size is that all of you are along for the ride. I have gotten such support for each of you in the different stages of my life, from being a newlywed to teaching to pregnancy to motherhood...and I appreciate all of that more than you could know.
When I started writing this post, I was just writing to write, and writing to express my gratitude. Somehow I ended up discussing something that's been on my mind for awhile, and it feels good to start to make some sense of it. I'm such a thinker by nature and writing is the best thing for me because it allows me to organize all of this, even a little. My main point (it's somewhere in here, I promise!) is still a huge thank you to all of you for reading. I'm definitely not going anywhere. If anything, this weird little bump in my blogging road has really refocused me and reminded me why I do this and what I should be getting out of it.
Sometimes I think as a blog gets bigger we allow the audience to take on the role of navigator- giving us directions, telling us where to go, all while keeping ourselves under the guise of driver and being in charge. Something is lost there. Continuing this space for me, and for Henry and Hank is the most important thing to me. Being able to write and feel as if I am contributing something here gives me a greater sense of identity, outside of a wife and mother. It's truly my outlet.
So moving forward, I'm going to cut myself some slack. This is my reminder to myself to have fun with it, stop anything on this blog that causes me stress, and just get back to the basics. Write. Share things and people and businesses I love, and create a warm space that encourages discussion and creativity.
So yes, my point: thank you. You are all a part of my life through this little corner of the internet, and I just want you to know how much I appreciate you, your comments, and your emails. I feel truly lucky to be able to reach out to so many of you via this site, and above all else I treasure that the most. I hope you have the best day. :)
Journal Day! V.3
As much as I say I don't have regrets, that everything has gotten me to this point in my life, etc...there are still things in my past that I look back on and sometimes wish I could change or redo. Thinking like this really does me no good though, because let's be real- we can't change the past, we can't go back- all we can do is move forward. With that said though, at times I do find myself taking a trip down memory lane and thinking about a few different instances years ago that I would definitely go back and change if I had the opportunity AND if it wouldn't affect my present and future in a negative way, Back to the Future style.
*what I'm about to share is really hard to type out, and I found myself in tears multiple times while writing it. I've spoken about it a few times on this blog, but this time it was very hard to find the words to describe this time in my life. But as much as it hurts to write, it also is incredibly cathartic and I'm so thankful to be able to express my emotions about it here. I hesitated to share it, but for the sake of journaling and being honest, here you go.
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If you had a free pass to go back and change anything in your past, with the promise that it would only affect you positively, would you do it? And if so, what would you change?
I'll never forget that fall. It seemed to be colder than usual, the autumn chill in the air lingering later into the day and coming earlier in the evening. The leaves were bronze and rust, and orange and gold. We were making plans for Fall Break, deciding where to go and who to see, and most of my memories involve sitting on the white railing of our front porch, talking with friends and watching the cars go by. That was the Fall we lost you. That summer, seeing you every night had become commonplace. We'd spend weekends at shows together, eating vegan food, road trips to Phoenix and Tucson listening to Stay Gold and Shakira, midnight trips to Dennys where we'd eat too much pie and you guys would drink too much coffee. You were our little brother, and our nightly runs around the track, the long conversations about your girlfriends and crushes are still fresh in my mind.
When that fall arrived, you began to drift. The new school year for you brought new friends. Less hardcore shows, less band practice, more spending time with the party kids, and subsequently, more time spent around drugs and alcohol. I should have seen it coming. I should have noticed the slow and eventual shift in personality, the shy, quiet, often awkward boy acting just a little different, a little off. Dinners and hangouts slowed down, you stopped joining us on the weekends. You'd pop by here and there, but it wasn't the same. Myspace messages unanswered, unreturned phone calls. More than once I tried to reach out and find out what was wrong, why you seemed so different. Unanswered, unreturned. And then October came. You passed through the library one day while I was in the non-fiction section. We had plans that night, for you to come over and hang out with Hank and me, to cook dinner, to catch up, to spend time together with one of our best friends, however far removed you were at the time. In that passing we confirmed our plans. You said I love you, I said the same, we hugged, and you walked away. In that moment something in my gut told me not to let you go, to call you back. To please, please, please stop him and say more, ask him, tell him, make him. Something way down deep inside knew something was not alright. But I let you go.
You never showed up that night. I called twice and got no answer. I didn't call again, but the next morning the phone did ring. It was Hank's Dad, calling to let us know that they had found you, not breathing. You had died early that morning.
I can never ever go back to that day, that month, that Autumn. But if I could change one thing in my past, this would be it. For a long time I blamed myself, I felt like I should have done something more, I should have found out what was going on. It hurts to know that you are gone and it hurts that Henry won't ever know his Uncle. But yet there are so many days I think of you and smile to myself- Hank and I find ourselves talking about you often, and sometimes when I walk around town with Adie we'll remember funny stories and reminisce about your blue eyes and shy smile. New Year's Eve will always remind me of you, not-so-vegan lasagna, Shakira, bandannas, In My Eyes, fancy olives. All you. And whenever I think about something I would change if I could, you will always, always be the first thing that comes to mind.
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