As I was planning out my current romcom project, it occurred to me that most romance stories take place from the point of view of the bottom. Right? That’s why it’s traditionally been a women’s genre, because in traditional hetero relationships, the woman is the bottom, and therefore the leading character. Even in such a story with a leading man, he’s the bottom. He just thinks he’s a top (because he’s a bottom). Going back to our animal instincts, we naturally have a greater sympathy for the prey than the predator. We emotionally invest more immediately in the pursued rather than the pursuer. It also helps that it’s usually the more interesting position narratively; it’s more boring for a story to be about someone trying to do something over and over until they succeed, compared to it being about how a person responds to outside forces and interests. In that light, the bottom is always the one with power, because in a romance story with multiple suitors and life trajectories, they’re the ones with the most choice. So I now wonder, as someone who hasn’t explored this space much, how apparent that would have become if it weren’t for queer romantic fiction. In a fully hetero fiction landscape, there would be little, if any, opportunity for people to explore what it means to be a top or a bottom, what with restrictive gender roles.
Anyway, last night, I noticed how overwhelmed I felt lately. Part of it is stuff at work. I’ve been behind on a couple projects, and now that I’m caught up, other stuff has fallen behind, and I’m playing catchup. I’m also working on these designs right now for a project I’m planning. It’s an ambitious project compared to anything I’ve done so far, and I’m excited to get started on it. because it’s going to be so big, I can already feel myself pushing to get it all done right now, to go, go, go. I’ve been taking Japanese lessons with Duolingo, which is fun. I was told I had to take katakana lessons before I could continue with my language lessons, but I didn’t want to start learning a second writing system before I finished the lessons for hiragana. Yesterday, I finally finished my hiragana lessons, and I can start katakana. I’m working on a Madame Web rewrite, which is going pretty well. Me and my brother also started planning out what we’d do with Sony’s not-Spider-Man movies if we were in charge, and it’s really fun. I had been working a little on the next part of Dragon Ball ‘Redux’, but I put it on the backburner when I realized why I wasn’t satisfied with the current draft.
Maybe I’ve never been a good judge of how much is too much, but none of that sounds like doing a lot to me. All of those things are just a little bit of work or thought every day, and don’t have a deadline. I’m even trying to emphasize that to myself as I go. That Madame Web rewrite doesn’t have to be done any time soon. For as great as it would be for them and us, I also don’t realistically think Sony Pictures will hire me and my brother to be their Kevin Feige. I literally committed to a mere fifteen minutes a day learning Japanese, so I shouldn’t feel bad if I’m falling behind my past momentum of going way past fifteen minutes, sapphire league be damned. I really want to get myself in a mindset with this comic I’m working on that I don’t have to push myself to get it done immediately; I have a full-time job already, so I shouldn’t make myself work this like a full-time job as if I’m proving something to an industry that doesn’t seem to care much about work-life balance. And my job, right? It’s just a way to get money. Nothing that happens there is really that important. I wanna do well, and I feel responsible for things, but I shouldn’t get so worked up about it.
Despite how “little” all these efforts feel to me, I still came home not being able to imagine cooking, and nearly downgrading my daily drawing significantly so I could watch videos and not do anything. To be clear, I’m glad I didn’t draw less last night because it ended up being good for me mentally. But I guess, good in what way? That drawing can be therapeutic in the way it focuses my mind on an enjoyable task, or that it addressed anxiety because I kept a promise to myself about how much work I would do? Sometimes I think it would be good to meditate, but at times like this, I can’t imagine it helping to give my mind yet another thing to actively do instead of relaxing. Not that I’ve ever been that good at relaxing. There’s so much I want to do, and I want to get it done. I think a lot of it is genuine enthusiasm, but it’s not helped by achievement society nonsense.
Being still means you can’t move, and not moving means you’re dead. I don’t want to be still, so I’m running myself ragged. I need to learn to slow down. The biggest obstacle, of course, is that I want to be doing all these things. My brain is always thinking, and I have to act on an idea while I have it. At least, that’s what I usually think, despite having a history of revisiting old ideas. I can always come back to it later. I’m actually good at that. I need to learn how to better juggle things, so that I don’t give myself all the work at one time.
Looking at the current moment, I want to keep up my daily practice with Japanese. Learning another language is a totally different headspace than anything else in daily life, and I enjoy going there. I also want to keep drawing every day, because it’s another healthy habit. I like drawing and want to make sure it’s part of my life. More importantly, I want it to be relaxing, so I could learn to be more forgiving about it. I’m the only one keeping account, so I shouldn’t feel the need to maintain momentum or consistency in volume. I’m at a point with these designs where I could stop them and focus on other aspects of story planning, and just draw shapes or stuff around me for practice. I did start a document for story planning yesterday, too. That MW rewrite can really wait till whenever, so if I’m ever sitting around thinking I should be doing something, I should remind myself to only open the doc if I actually have an idea of how to continue. The Sony stuff is just me and my brother talking.
Really, the harder part comes from outside specific activities. I’d be a lot less stressed if I could just speak without planning my words, or finding a justification for interacting with someone. I’m always worried about doing the right thing, and doing things the right way, and a lot of the times anything’s fine, you know? If I’ve already decided what my right thing is, I shouldn’t reexamine that decision every time it comes up in my life, since I know I’ll come down on the same side. In general, for as much as I enjoy that my brain is always thinking, I don’t want to have to do it all the time. Right now, I’m stopping to think about what I’m going to write here every few sentences. That’s how I do everything in life, even though most of life isn’t an essay or blog post. I don’t have to have everything in exact order or fully explained. I know that a lot of my thoughts and feelings are happening in the background, because I can hear it, so I should learn to trust that. I don’t have to pull it all out to the conscious level all the time.
I also want to spend less time focused on how I look and express myself. I don’t want to feel my face all the time. I like when I make an expression that happens naturally. It occurs to me as I type that maybe it means something if I’m consciously making a large proportion of my expressions. Do other people feel their faces so clearly as they move it? Are you aware of the thought that went into the movement? Maybe I don’t like mirrors because I see my reflection like another person, and my face doesn’t always look like how I picture happy people. I may not always know when I’m happy, but I also don’t want to be so focused on that, because it makes me unhappy. Thinking about what I think I lack only makes me think the lack is real, when the presence might just not be apparent to me.
Idk, there’s a lot going on. I’ve put in enough work on this for now. It is nice to get my thoughts on a page sometimes. I’m going to call it done writing today.
Weekly Thoughts 3/2/24
Life in the Gutters 