I completely forgot what day of the week it was. You know how you download Candy Crush again, even though you know it’s a mistake, because Pokémon Café ReMix gutted everything that once made it a good game as their way to celebrate an anniversary, and you still want a puzzle game, and that eats up your whole morning for a week? Well, on another note, I have to take my car in the shop in a couple days. Since I made that appointment, my car started making another concerning sound. Like, unrelated to the engine being on, something is rattling on the driver’s side of the engine; I just checked the oil, and it rattled as I closed the hood. I’m not happy about any of this. I’m scared I don’t have enough money, and even if I do, I haven’t recovered fully from the last car repair. Who knows if I’ll recover from this one before another problem crops up. Cars are a pox on us all, everything about them is stressful, and my dream is to be rid of their necessity.
So yeah, that obviously brings me to my topic for this week…perspective, let’s say. I did not think anything through for today. I’ve been drawing more lately, with my daily drawing challenge. Over the past few days, I had some trouble coming up with ideas, and being in the middle part of developing a basic skill always makes me question how much I want to draw full time. Last week I talked a little about whether or not I want to continue with drawing or focus more on writing.
I also, thankfully, reminded myself this week that last time I was making a comic, I was so into it that I thought it was what I was meant for. And that was a book that didn’t scratch every itch I wanted it to, or everything I liked about making my other books. That last book, I worked on it a few weeks ago, and that’s already an eternity away. It’s like, would you know the difference between forever and this one moment? They’re surprisingly easy to confuse. It’s good sometimes to remember how things used to be, to pick out experiences to hold onto for the times you’re feeling low.
A big part of this tension I have is impatience. I have a lot of ideas, and I’m afraid they’ll never happen unless I do them all immediately. So it would be great if I could work with others who are better suited for some things to make something better than what I could do alone, and hopefully faster. My art is lagging behind my writing, so it would make sense to focus on writing and work with other artists. Doing so comes with two key problems: First, that I would be “giving up” on art, which I love to make; and second, that I’m not currently in a mental or emotional position to hand off something so important to me to someone else. A big draw for making a comic on my own is that I control the whole process. Even if I can’t pull everything off, I can challenge myself to learn, and my entire idea and production is held against my own skills and choices. Writing prose has a similar attractiveness.
Of course, these choices in how I work are isolating. Working on my own on everything I want to make will keep me from engaging with others in all aspects of life. That’s something I’m comfortable with right now, because I’m already isolated. It’s a starting point, and if I can go the distance this way, then I already have the path drawn out in my head. I don’t have a path drawn out for how to connect with other artists and writers, how to connect with other people in general, and I don’t have a skillset for making such a path. Like, I could look for art education proactively, but I’m still sitting around at home happy whenever I reinvent wheels; if I had a curriculum to follow to improve my art skills, I wouldn’t have to struggle to come up with ideas for what I’ll draw today, and I’d probably improve faster.
I was going to say something about how discomfort isn’t uncomfortable if you’re used to it, but that’s not right. Instead, I think about something from karate class. You have a proverbial tough guy newbie who doesn’t want to admit to pain. You put him in an outside wrist lock. He insists it doesn’t hurt and doesn’t get the big deal, while he’s leaning way over to the side to avoid the lock. Try saying that while standing up straight. It’s easy for me to say I’m challenging myself to learn more by doing things on my own, because I’m already twisted in that lock. It’s a lot harder to stand up and acknowledge the pain and bind I’m in, and to look for a way out.
That’s something I’ll be working on in the future, learning to stand up instead of insisting that everything is fine. That said, I’m still a little stuck in a lurch, because I don’t know how to get out of this mess. Or at least, historically that’s been the case. Whenever I try to look up advice on how to make friends, it’s stuff like, “talk to people, invite them to hang out,” and like, I’m not stupid. I know talking to people would help, and I wouldn’t be this isolated if I could just talk to people. It’s like telling a drowning person to kick their legs and paddle. In the past, I’ve drummed up my courage around the idea that it’s ok to admit when you’re overwhelmed or inexperienced or whatever, but it’s hard to put that into action. My entire life, it’s at least seemed like not having social skills was seen as a disease, or not exercising them is a deliberate choice that no one should interfere with. It’s insane to me that isolation should breed isolation. Not that I’m any better at reaching out, or more likely to assume that a person on their own is isolated in the first place. This isn’t school, where you’re entire social life is in the same classroom as you; I’m expected to have friends and social connections outside of work, so no one at work should treat me as a special case.
I guess I just need to work on my pitch. I don’t know how well, “Take me to a public place and talk to me for an hour,” would go. Speaking to the idea of perspective, there have been times in the past when I’ve ventured out and had some success socially. I made one friend through a dating app, and I was able to talk to a few people in college. I have some work friends. The reason I hate dating apps generally is that I barely get matches, and when I do, I put in effort to say something about the person’s profile or pictures, and I still get ignored; so clearly I can make relevant conversation, and I need to learn to repeat that with less information. The big things I’m missing are friends outside of work, a way to meet people, and a sex life. That order seems pretty good for my current social skills, if I can learn to use them without having a meltdown.
I guess I’ll call it there. I’m feeling antsy from writing this, so I’ll take a few deep breaths and remind myself I’m more capable than I give myself credit for. I’m a little bummed for today, because my movie theatre lit on fire before I saw the ending of It’s a Wonderful Knife, and they have most of their auditoriums closed still, so it’s not showing now. I could go see Priscilla and pretend to like “movies for adults.” That’s not fair, I do want to see Saltburn. Seeing movies by yourself still rules, whether or not you have friends.
Weekly Thoughts 11/18/23
Life in the Gutters 