Devoted to hopelessness

by on August 27, 2020 at 7:38 pm
Posted In: Blog, Main

So I guess as we move along, and I become more content with this being a spot that isn’t about writing “articles” or even “blogs” but more an open therapy session for myself that I’m willing to let others read (should the choose, there are no expectations of such), I can just slide into the confessional seat more and more.

Today I caught myself going down the backwards road.

It should have been obvious why. I was playing on my phone, and someone had posted a link to some Olivia Newton-John stuff, and I jumped into that pipe and followed it back. I’ve had a celebrity crush on Olivia since the first moment I walked into a theater and she was singing “Hopelessly Devoted To You” on the screen (we had arrived late). My mom attributes Olivia in the skin-tight pants at the end of the movie to the moment my testicles dropped (I’m kidding, my mom isn’t nearly as crude as I am), but it was all about the pony-tail and the sweater and the sweetness for me. That held me through Xanadu, and then her other 80s stuff (Two of a Kind was fun, but it wasn’t nearly as sweet). I listened to her modern pop stuff, but my mom had her older Country albums. Clearly Love. That kind of thing. So I listened to those on vinyl as much as I did the Grease and Xanadu soundtracks on 8-Track. Probably a lot more than Grease actually since she wan’t on a lot of the songs on there.

A couple years ago, Juliana Hetfield did a covers album of Olivia’s stuff, and it included a lot of the older stuff. It’s a really great album and winds up getting replayed a lot by me. So it touches my nostalgic side (on two fronts actually, since i listened to Juliana in the 90s too), but is at least not technically me listening to the same stuff from 40+ years ago.

So yeah, you’d think that would be the link, right? Take me back to my youth. Sing along, ride back in time. But no.

The trek actually took me to listening to one of the tunes, singing along (I sing Olivia stuff rather well. For me. For my voice, which isn’t impressive, but I can hold a tune and a note more often than not). And I think about Scary Pockets, the band that does funk covers of other popular music. Jack Conte’s band outside of Pomplamoose, who I also love. And I am trying to let myself dream things and imagine things and explore even the silliest of ideas and wants and wishes. So I go from this song that Juliana has covered of Olivia, to wondering what if i met Jack and had the opportunity to suggest a tune for him to cover (the song is “A Little More Love,” which I didn’t hear nearly as much when I was younger as most of the other songs on the album). And then, because I’m singing along, I think, what if Jack asked me if I wanted to play or sing in the cover.

Ridiculous. Absolutely unfathomably silly. But like I said… I’m trying something here.

And then I feel it shift. I go from the idea of picking up a guitar and feigning like I could be a part of this amazing band for a moment in my mind’s eye to a memory. A memory of when I was first trying to learn guitar, and I was dating this girl who wanted me to dance with her (not in the moment of the memory, but at some future point). And i have always been steadfast that I DO NOT DANCE. Ever. At all. Not even for a giggle. I’m not wired for it. Can’t be done. The slow dance “waddle” is the only thing I’ve managed which I know disappointed the hell out of the sweet girl I took to her prom. My excuse to this ex- of mine at the time was that I didn’t have rhythm. And she called me on it. She said, “How the hell can you expect to be a guitarist if you don’t have rhythm?”

It’s a good slam. I was unprepared. I wasn’t accustomed to being called on my bullshit in quite that way. And while I realized years later, like how you go back to old arguments and now you know exactly what you should have said to win the point, that what I didn’t have was coordination. What I did have, and still do have, is a lot of anxiety about it. So I start editing the memory to “fix” what I’d said and make a more reasoned point.

And then I realize what I’m doing.

I have taken myself out of the dream/wish fulfillment thing. Like that’s gone entirely at this point. I have also taken myself out of the simple pleasure of singing along to Miss Hetfield and her amazing rendition of this song that should just be enjoyed on its own. And I’ve instead put myself into an imagined speech to a literal ghost (my ex-girlfriend, very sadly, died several years ago) to prove a worthless point about a thing that doesn’t matter in the first place. The whole thing exists only to make myself be able to explain the discomfort I feel existing in my own body. It’s explaining away my failures as a person, that’s how I see myself in my own mind.

I went from “you seem pretty cool, you want to do something fun that could fulfill one of your lifelong dreams” to “you’re a loser than can’t even do the most basic things like dance or defend the reasoning that you don’t dance” in the span of one chorus.

And THAT is what I’m trying to challenge myself on right now. I don’t think I knew precisely how bad I am at just existing in my own form, how much I can’t stand to just “Be” me, when I started writing here six days ago. But it seems pretty fucking obvious now.

What’s not obvious of course is how I find my way out of this. This head trip has been going on for a long time. But that’s exactly part of the problem. It happening for a long time is still looking back. I have to adjust to look the other way. It’s not “why haven’t I been able to fix this so far? What kind of damage have I done to my psyche?” It’s “what do I do now? Tomorrow is something else, how do I face it in a new way?”

I swear to god, I’m not writing a self-help course. I’m just trying to figure some shit out. So I can write a comic book.

Also, this is day seven of my doing the journal. I think I said something about a “prize.” Not sure what that is yet. A new way of thinking though… that would be a solid “win.”

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If wishes were stitches I’d be holding it together better

by on August 26, 2020 at 9:00 pm
Posted In: Blog, Main

Well, if there’s a bottom of the writing barrel, here’s wear I etch my initials into it until I see light coming in from the other side.

Hey! Going with the recent theme here of “looking forward, not backward” and trying to motivate myself to be something more than I am, I am going to do some bullshit exercise and “Visualize My Success!”

First, I don’t know if there is such a bullshit exercise. I’m paraphrasing self-help gurus in my imagination, having never met or paid attention to one. Also, it’s me, so all exercise is bullshit.

But what I want to be doing right now is one singular thing above most anything else. And that’s a comic book/series/graphic novel/webcomic with my best buddy Levi that I envisioned some 11-15 years ago (the time escapes me). And I am stuck. Like, hard stuck. Which is weird because I pre-plotted a lot of it at that time, but now that I’m facing the challenge of moving on it again, it’s being as stubborn and elusive as I am when someone wants me to get off my ass and apply myself creatively to something. Heh.

I did write, again some several years back now, what was to be the first two “issues” of the comic book. Standard sized floppy, so the scripts were 22 pages each. I had, a few months ago, started doing a video podcast of me reading the scripts, interspersed with some storytelling about the ideas for the comic and the history and such, that I only made available to Levi. He had been on a kick of watching other comic-based YouTube casts while he was drawing, so I was hoping this would motivate him. It as also an excuse for me to go back and look at what I had written then and see how it worked for now.

And it mostly worked. Wish is both good, in the sense that I don’t feel like it was a total waste of his time. And it’s bad, because I now have to feel like I can write stuff today that stands up. And worse because one thing I’m most definitely shit at is editing myself, and I can see parts of the scripts that I know need to be sanded and spackled or just all around excavated and done over.

Also, I’m now looking at the format of 22-page floppies and not sure that’s the natural state for this comic. Levi wants print, and I absolutely do as well. I grew up with it. I have worked at or managed three different comic book stores in my adult life, so I completely want to support shops today and have my stuff on a shelf in the last one of them still going strong (and maybe for my dear friend Kathy, owner of my last comic shop, to offer through her store-without-a-store model to the loyal customers she refused to leave high and dry when she finally retired). But the landscape for comics has been changing already for some time, and this year with the pandemics and natural disasters and shutdowns and economic devastation and everything else, here in the states there are less comic shops that just about ever. And less people trekking out of their houses to buy them.

So there’s digital. And I don’t think I ever planned on doing this comic with one component and not the other. But whereas ten-plus years ago webcomics were technically a thing (and, as the guy who put together the DontAskComics.com site for Levi’s stuff I have been trying to be a part of that thing for about that long), the new frontier for digital seems to be a couple of bigger landing sites instead of everyone’s single dot.coms like they were. Webtoons and Tapas. There’s others, sure, and I’d still put stuff on our site too. But the ad revenue streams have shown less and less prosper. You either do a Patreon or a Kickstarter, depending on your book’s final form. And nothing cuts either of those off. But the more I’ve seen of these two modern webcomic aggregators the more impressed I am by them. Or more the people who host their work on them.

So, let’s start a list, shall we?

The first part, of course, is me doing the work. Writing the comics (beyond what’s done. Hopefully well beyond). Then having Levi enjoy them enough to want to draw them. I don’t like pushing something on someone that they just don’t want to do. All the “making” is part one. And it’s a huge part. The most important part, and if it was just that when all is said and done, I’d be pretty much fine with it. I owe it to myself to make this comic. It makes me happy. The characters and the story ideas and even the stuff that I’ve actually completed honestly makes me happy. So it is and should be enough.

But let’s say, after all that, I get to start looking at what could potentially come next. Like the Stretch Goals on a Kickstarter for instance.

Part two, then, would be publishing the work beyond our own site. And that would be print, if possible, and on one of those webcomic hosts. I admit, right now my bias is towards Webtoons simply because I’ve been following it more. Some people I really like, a couple I’m even friendly with, are doing their comics there, and since i learn from my peers first and foremost, it seems like I would like to follow them. I don’t know if there’s any required exclusivity, but that’s a down the road thing anyway.

Part Two.1 I guess is that Webtoons has a program for compensating their creators. A couple different tiers, but one is more lucrative. I’m going to again point back to the part where I said, and meant it, that I would be happy enough just to finish the work. But work that you also get financially compensated for is rather nice when it happens. And I’d happily put that money on Levi, because his job is way more labor intensive than my job (no matter how much I whinge and cry over my part of it currently). We also have some people we would enjoy being a part of this project in one way or another, and being able to pay them for their contributions would make me feel a lot happier. On the print side, I guess it would be getting the current comics distributor(s), whatever that looks like at the time it happens, to accept the book, list us in their catalog, and having shops take a chance on it. Maybe some of that would have to work in tandem with Kickstarter or Patreon, I don’t know. After a time, it starts to feel more about the funding of the book than the making of the book and that’s where my head gets tripped up because I feel like asking anything for something I’ve made seems greedy and misguided to me. I know realistically that it’s not, because I would want to pay anyone else doing the hard work if the roles were swapped (and I do support the work of other comic creators). But that’s just my personal gripe with myself that I’m trying to work through.

Can we go further? Oh yes. And this is where the dreams are so pipe-y that Danny Boy hears them from glen to glen down the mountain side.

Part Three is recognition. And I mean, a biggie. Because there are a couple of prestigious awards that comics have that are like their Emmys and Oscars. And at least two of them are named after personal heroes of mine in the industry. One of them, named for Dwayne McDuffie, let’s be honest, should not be rewarding any work I’m doing. I will always push for diversity and inclusion in all things, especially the art medium I love the most. But since we’re not nearly close enough to that actually being norm, I think there are far too many deserving creators that need to be recognized.

The other one I’d love to see happen though is Mike Wieringo’s awards, the Ringos. Like Dwayne, Mike was a beloved person and creator by just about everybody. And there’s a webcomics category, among some others, that I could see our little comic being qualified for. Good enough could be something else entirely, sure, but like I said, this is about what I could wish for, not what I think or expect to happen.

This isn’t meant as a slight against the Eisners I have to point out. It’s mostly just a me thing. I grew up reading and loving McDuffie’s and Ringo’s stuff, so they hold a special place in my heart.

Let’s do one more. And like the publishing/paying thing, this is multi-part because the second factor is a bigger deal to me than the first.

Part Four would be getting the comic optioned. Ideally as an animated series. With all the streaming platforms starving for new content, this seems like the one time when this could be more possible for anyone. And I do love and believe in our little comic idea. More because of Levi, but I say that knowing that I am Levi’s biggest fan in the world. I created this idea based solely on wanting to make something for and with him. But his art has always brought me so much joy, from the first moment I saw it. And I think it would look incredible brought to life on a screen. And I’m not making this comic strictly to be able to try to sell it as a show, because the comic is and always would be its own thing. It just feels… really natural that it could also become something else too.

Which finally brings me to Part Four.1. If there was a chance of it becoming a tv series, I would very much like to be a part of the writer’s room. Not the showrunner, I’m not crazy, that’s way outside of my skill set. But to just sit in a room of other writers all working on ideas towards this one, crazy, fun, wonderful thing. And I’d like to do that with anything really, it wouldn’t have to be something that was originally my idea. But I just don’t know how else that would ever happen at this point in my life. I’m not young or brave enough anymore to try to run off to Hollywood or New York or any place where shows are being written and made. I have my family here in our little house in Michigan and I am so content to finally have this spot of our own with our river and my parents close by… Uprooting is off my agenda.

But a couple of weeks? A trip here and there. Some virtual meetings to talk story. Yeah. All that sounds really good.

And that’s it. It’s just me talking out loud about wishes and hopes and not a lick of it is worth a damn until I can get script three worked out and feel like I can then move on immediately to script four. And a lot of those wishes are not just lofty. They’re bats-settled-in belfry.

(I’m assuming lofty as a word relates to an expensive penthouse apartment and that’s why its high-ranked. Language is fun when you don’t actually follow its rules.)

We’ll have to see if it’s worth it to say this stuff out loud. Does it just further embarrass me when some or none of it comes to pass? Does it feel like a kick in the beans when tomorrow I come back here and can’t think of anything less deserving to journal about? Or does it go on my virtual vision board and hold me to a standard I haven’t been very good at setting for myself?

If nothing else, yesterday I was talking about wanting a haircut. At least I aimed a little bit higher this time.

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Gifts

by on August 25, 2020 at 10:32 pm
Posted In: Blog, Main

I’ve got nothing to really write or talk about tonight. I’m forcing myself to just sit here and do nothing, look at the blankness of the screen, and try to piece together a coherent thought or idea. This was a day that sucked all motivation straight out of me, like so many of them seem more than capable of doing. But i spent most of it not looking backwards, and not forwards. I just.. sort of did what I needed to do.

I find that I’m trying to create something to look forward to in my head. One of the things that’s happened with quarantine life and working from home, I’ve grown what I call the “completely given up” beard. I haven’t shaved, even a little, since I stopped going into the office, and I look a dreadful mess. But Erin loves it. This giant tuft of white hair (my facial hair has lost almost all semblance of color over the last couple years, even if it was never consistently toned to begin with) coming off my chin and cheeks and neck. Not making “chin” plural is a nicety by the way. My hair was already too long again back in February, then roughly a year since I’d last got it cut (for my job interview at the place I now work). It’s easy enough to wear it up in a sloppy pony tail. But the beard is a constant annoyance. It’s not itchy so much as so long and unkempt that it gets tangled to itself, to my hair. It pulls back behind my ears. It gets hot when I sleep and I pull it when it drags across the pillow-case as I turn my head. When I go out and have to wear a mask to grocery shop, it creeps out the sides or bottom or top.

So I have always wanted to get a professional beard trim. I went once, shortly before we moved out of California, to a barber around the corner I’d never been to. But the person who usually did beards wasn’t there that day, and the very nice woman who said she could do it was a dirty liar it turns out. She “shaped” my beard by basically shaving it almost completely clean from my face. If I had the kind of face I wanted to show without the ruse of facial hair to make it seem like I could possibly have a jawline under it, I would’ve been fine to do that myself. But much like haircuts, I often can’t articulate what it is I actually would like to have done, and I wind up offering a thousand thank yous and a generous tip because that’s the sort I am. A for effort, here’s all my cash, better luck next time for me, but we all know it’ll go tits up once more when my ass hits that chair.

Maybe Michigan will have a different level of facial hair recognition. There’s a lot of beards out here. Manly, ugly, wretched beards. Not boy bands grown up developing dad bods and the first hints of testosterone mustaches and goatees. Not hipster smooth beards that go to a narrowing point of almost shaved clean at the ears and temples. Lumberbeards. Paul Bunyon-esque facial hair. I should be carrying an ax and wrestling a blue ox if I’m to live up to the examples.

Actually I’m being very giving again. It’s more like those duck people who grew out their facial hair to fit the stereotype to better sell their program. Halfway to giving up. But not quite. Because we still might be on a t-shirt at the Wal-Mart.

I’d love to land on the pretty-boy scale, or even the hipster, roadie for the Arcade Fire example of face foliage. I’d like to graduate to the 80’s hair metal band singer or bassist who maintains their edge and cool-factor (with their original audience, let’s be fair) now with shorn locks instead of the long tresses teased to the Heavens by 30 odd cans of Industrial AquaNet. When the 90s taught them that image, in fact, was everything, but the images they’d been wasting their time and mousse on was the wrong one. Dial it back. It’s cool to wear pants that don’t show a pulse through them. Flannel kept your nipples warm way better than that t-shirt you cut to ribbons. It was weird that Kip Winger used to sing anthems to 17 year old girls, but he could do a Playgirl spread and actually improve his image. The times they were a changing. Except for Mick Mars. He just kept looking the like same 80 year old he always did, somehow surviving with less blood in his veins year after year.

I don’t have the eye for style that it would take to make me someone I’m not. Let alone the drive. Certainly not the budget. The beard is a symptom of me giving up, sure, but the extra hundred pounds of weight I’m carrying was there way before it. I also don’t contain what my wife refers to as “fashion irony.” If I actually somehow own anything that could be addressed as “hipster,” it loses its magic as soon as I don it, because I don’t have the attitude or wherewithal to evoke anything considered a “vibe.” If I were to wear a hat that would normally be on tour with Jack White, it would be slumming so bad on my head it would be the equivalent of a great white shark being mounted and forced to animatronically sing like a Big Mouth Billy Bass. And no, again, these references aren’t meant to make me seem coolly retro. I just have no idea what’s going on in the world today. I’m still watching Firefly reruns for god’s sake.

But yeah. That’s my big, happy goal. A haircut and a shave. I might as well be trying to conjure a cartoon rabbit so I can drown him in Dip.

I do also have a birthday coming up. The year before The Year. This October I turn 49, and it brings with it all the dread and anguish of turning 50 but not the relief of, “Well, it happened. What’s left that Life can do to me that it hasn’t already done?” It’s like watching your own foot about to stub itself against a table leg, but in slow motion. A year’s worth of slow motion. You know it’s going to hurt. You know you’re probably going to lose a nail. You can’t stop it, you just stare at it in horror.

The problem with having Fucking Loved Ones who care about you so much that they want to celebrate you for any and all occasions is that you can’t just duck your head and hide from shit like this (and yes, I’m painting it this way knowing fully how lucky it makes me so FUCK YOU). I’m trying to get my mind prepared for it. Trying to come up with things that are simple when I get asked “what do you want for your birthday, why haven’t I gotten your list yet?” I’ve had some stuff on my Amazon Wishlist for ten years I think. You don’t need any more suggestions. You have decided what you DON’T want to get me. Although, yeah, maybe those old DVD sets make no sense any more with streaming. Same with the CDs. I still like books, but i hardly ever let myself read.

My dad and stepmother (I had the distinction. She’s my mom. But it shows which set of parents I’m talking about) tend to take their birthdays and go away for a couple of days. Not together. If it’s mom’s birthday, she leaves the house and stays… I don’t know. A hotel maybe? They’ve got a cabin they’ve been working on lately, I’m sure that’s changed things and given them more of a destination. Dad would run too. Granted, three of their kids live with them and one grandkid, so peace and quiet may be the most valuable thing in the universe. Spice worms would be throwing on noise-cancelling headsets with a hoodie and sunglasses to just close off if they were in my parent’s shoes. I sometimes think about running off to a quiet space too, but I really don’t have the need like they do. Erin contents herself so much of the time to her art. The only thing I really feel the need to escape from is me. Being in the same place, wondering why I haven’t done more, why I’m not currently trying to do more. If I went to a place where doing nothing was actually the assignment, maybe I’d be more okay with it.

I most likely would nap. When I nap too much, I feel judged. Not in a mean way, more of an, “Are you okay” way. And no, obviously I’m not okay. But I feel less not okay when I’m asleep. And then I wake up, look at all the not okay that’s still going on, and it just fucking exhausts me again. Give me some Oreos and another four hours of Good Eats episodes I can slip back into unconsciousness with.

I did look at getting some new strings for my Ovation the other day. It hasn’t been touched in a decade, so the strings on it, having been safely nestled in its case, may be perfectly fine. Or I could try to strum one sad chord progression and have the thing crumble to dust in my hands (penis metaphor!). But that I thought about it, and actually priced them, and then decided, no, not something I should waste money on right now, but maybe that hits the wishlist… That’s something, right? Like I actually selfishly thought of something I kind of wanted for a whole five minutes. Not to say I’m not selfish a lot. But it’s more Oreos and naps. This actually had more substance to it, creatively, and less lard. Delicious sugar lard.

Being that this is now my fifth night of journaling in a row, I should maybe offer myself a prize if I make it a full week. Perhaps the strings. Something I can talk myself into when I can’t make the words appear, so that I don’t feel I’m both not writing AND not doing anything else worthwhile. I mean, “worthwhile” is a much a kindness as the singular “chin” from earlier.

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