Today has been a pretty lousy day overall. After I got ready for work, Erin texted to let me know that her card was declined, and it turned out we were overdrafted. We’d both spent too much this pay period on little things we didn’t realize the other was also spending on, and it just added up and made things impossible. Erin had some cash in her Venmo from her art, which helps us, but I both hate taking money from her art sales and hate that we just can’t seem to get our shit together.
Work was monstrous, and towards the middle of the afternoon our Comcast has been going out frequently. So I wasn’t able to accomplish as much as I wanted/needed to today, and I’m off tomorrow for Gaiman’s follow-up vet appointment.
We got a little bit of a nice rain, but it’s another one of those days where there’s a lot of promises of some real storms but it seems to blow right by us. What was to be 12 hours was less than one. But at least Erin and I got to go outside and enjoy it for a bit.
Overall, my mood soured early and it never really picked back up. All of that’s on me, and I get it, shit happens. But we’ve been in this mode of not having any real money or savings for so long, so we naturally get a little excited when things ease up just a bit, and we screw ourselves up again. It wouldn’t be as tragic if my parents weren’t doing so much to help us.
Anyways, between the internet not working consistently and me staying up until almost one last night, and neither of us sleeping well, and the day being what it was, I’m not feeling incredibly creative or inspired. Even just to knock out words on some ranticle. I’m trying to hold myself to a higher standard of “write every day.” And even with just this, I guess I am. But I desperately want to go downstairs and veg out and eat junk and hold a cat or two on my lap and not think any more.
I did get asked by a friend if I was considering NaNoWriMo this year. I always, ALWAYS, consider NaNo. The last couple of times it’s been the Camp NaNoWriMo, which isn’t so strict in the amount of words you need to achieve (50k in November) and happens a couple of times over the summer. I’ve attempted the standard NaNo I think three or four times, I’ve completed it once, while unemployed, and it took a lot to do. Which is, again, funny. I can bash out 3000 words about the internet last night, but 50k over 30 days is tough when it’s actually focused writing. There are ghost writing jobs out there I hear about, where someone gives you the overarching plot of their book and you just follow that road map. You don’t get the praise or the fame or the money if it’s successful (you get some money). I don’t know if I could do it, but I do feel like that’s the training wheels I need maybe to get to where I feel comfortable storytelling again. My plotting sucks.
I’ve also been fantasizing about dressing up a couple of my stories that I have finished and putting them in a collection. Just to have one thing done and under my belt. But it just feels so desperate. No one will see it or buy it. It’d just exist on the virtual bookshelf of the Amazon store. Is that really what I want?
I said, to the friend, that I’m concentrating what effort I have in me on the comic with Levi. Which is true. I do believe that is what I want right now. That’s what my hopes are pinned on. Unfair to him, sure, because I shouldn’t place so much onto his shoulders (but he has volunteered this time). But it’s kind of that Eminem rap. If you only get one shot. God, I’ve spent more time on the actual 8 Mile than most people, I still can’t get myself to watch that movie, but that one line is stuck in my head.
The thing about one shot is that it’s a pretty bad odds maker. You put everything in that one thing and it fails, what do you do? Give up? Walk away? Never try again?
Erin paints all day, all week, all year. She has plenty of boards and canvases and old sketchbooks that weren’t worth her time to finish. But she finishes a ton of other shit. She just moves along to the next thing.
I used to be the Idea Guy. I’d have a dozen ideas for stories or comics or whatever in a day. Sometimes the barest bones, other times pretty in depth. Usually I’d get inspired by seeing someone else and then think, “Well, if I were you, I’d go in this direction. And I’d bring in this character. And then I’d…”
Easy. Just like giving advice. Easier to give, hard to come up with it for yourself.
My ideas have been less and less. Harder to flesh out. More frustrating that giving. I’m looking at old stuff because I have no new stuff. Now, again, I love the comic idea that I’m doing with Levi. I think it’s as valuable as it ever was, creatively-speaking. But I can’t figure out why I’m struggling so hard to get a handle on it now. Maybe because it’s waited so long, and I’m so desperate. Or maybe because the ideas that I had before weren’t as fleshed out as I thought they were. Or maybe it’s just my brain. Doing less and less with it the last few years has taken some of that magic away.
I am just struggling to be excited. And that, I think, is maybe more external than internal. I don’t see my friends any more, and for the last couple of years when I was in California, it was my fault. I was so stressed out, I was acting poorly when I was with them, and I hated it. I hated how it made me seem. I was there to have a good time, they were giving me so much, but I couldn’t get out of my shithole existence enough to enjoy it.
But out here, it’s different. Even without pandemics and such, we’re a bit on an island here. Erin has work friends, but that’s usually how Erin does things. Gets a friend and work and that’s her focus. I am used to being around a lot of people at a time. There’s a lot of energy to it, and I seem to shine better in a group sometimes. Which is weird because I was a pretty stand-offish kid. I have always needed some alone time to center myself. But I guess the abundance of it is wearing on me now that I don’t have much of a choice.
But I’m also probably reaching at straws. Who knows why I can’t get myself back to being inspired. I’m doing this to remove the roadblocks that I can. You don’t write if you don’t sit down in the chair and do it. You don’t get a story if you don’t put in the effort. If I go through the motions to write every day, maybe that will make it easier when the ideas come back.
I keep saying that.
But today’s not my day. I’m allowing myself just an ugly, sad, self-serving post of misery. And the only reason I’m throwing it on the site is because I promised myself I would do this as many days in a row as I could, on a better day than I’m having right now. What little headway I’ve made, I’m trying not to undo.
This post was done at the end of the fifth paragraph. I think I’ve tripled that. I get to feel like a failure today, but not about that particular part.
