Arguments over Dragons

Today wasn't so bad as far as getting things done. I worked from home for the first part of the day fixing up a logo for the place I work. I tinkered with it in illustrator, and then put it in place onto a facebook page. Work needs to have a business facebook for reasons I am not entirely clear about, but I figure if the facebook page can drive people to the internet sales site, then it could be very good.

And yet, without input from the boss, I could only go so far with it. I needed to ask some questions about the information that was going to be placed on it. Consequently, I went down to work and tried to finish it up there. I also discovered, in the process of doing that, the bosses' computer wasn't properly updated. Therefore, in addition to doing the facebook changes, I downloaded and installed fourteen updates, three of which were "high priority." The boss had been having a lot of problems with her e-mail program. I am really hoping that this will clear it up. I stayed almost an hour after closing working on her computer.

During the evening at home, I did not do much else except watch television and play on the computer. I suppose it will be no surprise to anyone if I said that I played World of Warcraft. Most people already know what that is, but for the uninitiated, it is a game of swords, magic, and dragons that you essentially play online. I am not sure how many people play on each of the different game servers, but imagine each server like a small town consisting of a few thousand people.

Like all towns, there are a variety of people in it, but I know that the average player is a young male with plenty of time on his hand. Yes, there are a few women who play regularly, and perhaps more rarely, older people in their mid-forties or more who also play. But for the most part, one is subjected to the views, attitudes, and opinions of the various young men in their teens and twenties, and often the chat can be a bit crude.

I wanted to run one of the quests for the Tournament of Champions tonight, so I joined a looking for group channel. It wasn't too long before I was invited to join a group of four other people who wanted to do the same thing. Unfortunately, the leader of the group was being rude and wasn't reacting politely to simple requests. He wasn't being outright mean, but I could tell by the way he was talking that he was teenager with maturity issues. I endured silently for awhile, but when I asked for some assistance in marking the order of enemies to attack, he flat out refused. At that point, I left the group. I have been in other groups where similar behavior occurred and they almost always end badly. Such players are usually known to "ninja" the game rewards (steal a nice sword for example), rather than give other players a fair chance to roll for it.

Immediately after I left, the leader whispered to me that he was "only joking" and that I was being a "expletive-deleted." I tried to respond by saying that I thought he was being rude, and his insults only proved it, but he immediately put me on "ignore." The ignore action was interesting because it indicated to me that he had probably been involved in arguments with other players before, and this was his way of having the last word. Only more evidence for me that I had made the right choice.

So what was the point of me writing all that? It seems so inconsequential to note the ill-behaved teenager. The reason (or more properly, the significance of this), as best as I can describe it, is that I confronted bad behavior even though I knew it would bring conflict. I intensely hate conflict of almost all kinds, even when it is necessary to point out, as in this case, bad behavior. I wasn't rude about leaving; I merely left.

While being an angry teenager full of hormones gives someone more of an excuse than others, I have to say that I really don't understand why people are so impolite and mean to each other. If you're a player of this silly game, and you want to get things done, and you need other people to help you, the first thing I would think you would remember is to be polite to other people. If you insult them, or treat them poorly, you shouldn't be shocked if they don't want to help you.

The nice thing about this incident was that a mere hour later another group, one much organized and better equipped that the first one, invited me to run that same quest for the Tournament of Champions. I felt a little vindicated because I had stood up for myself, and I got to do the quest too.

I would rather not talk about video games since I feel somewhat self-conscious about playing them. They have a certain childish stigma for people who play them at my age. Then again, I did want to write about what I did during the day, and more often than not, my life is lived online at times so what I have to talk about will obviously include it sometimes.

Tomorrow, I need to renew my car's registration. I should probably check to see when school begins officially again. I should also try to live a little less of my life online and spend more time in the less electronic and pixelated worlds.

Trip to the Grocery Store

Today was shaping up to be quite like the day before it, nothing done of any real value. During the afternoon, I thought really hard about going out to buy a hamburger and then swinging by the grocery store, but I couldn't force myself to do it. The anxiety I was feeling at the time wouldn't let me do it. The best I could do was wander around the backyard watching the cats, or sitting on a tree stump in the sun, and think about where my life was and where it was likely going to go. If I want a better future for myself, I am going to have to get things under better control.

I was feeling bad enough to get back into bed for awhile. I didn't take a nap, although I considered it. I just rested for a bit while I tried to convince myself to feel better. I was also a bit hungry, but I couldn't really find anything in the kitchen that I felt good about eating. Sure, I could have another bowl of chocolate cereal, but then that'd be my second meal of chocolate cereal, and even one is too much sometimes.

It was my hunger that made me answer yes when my parents called and invited me to a steak dinner. A part of me still did not want to go, but I went anyway. At dinner, I shared some of the news of the day I had heard over my top sirloin and rootbeer. I didn't finish it, and I plan on having it to eat for monday afternoon lunch. Afterwards, I mentioned how I needed to get gas for my car, so dad asked if I could pick up a few things from the grocery store. He gave me a wad of bills.

So, I managed to get one of the things off of the list of stuff I wanted/needed to do this week: go to the grocery store. The money I got from my parents paid for the wet cat food and milk. For myself, I bought some juice, jalapeno pepper slices for nachos later, and a bag of wasabi flavored "crisps," which I thought would be like potato chips but turned out to be more like rice cakes. I really didn't think I had the money to splurge on things that might go bad if I didn't cook them in the next week or so. And, I think that I had already bought enough junk food, so I didn't really need anymore of that either.

At night though, I parked myself in my chair and watched a little television and, as usual, played computer games or surfed on the web. I am definitely going to be in bed much earlier than I have for the past couple of days. Last night, I was alseep at 3:00am. The night before--4:00am. Tonight, I'll be in bed at 12:45 or so. I may read for about 15 minutes (a good way to wind down).

I guess I should be proud that I made it to the grocery store, my big accomplishment for the day. Tomorrow, I am planning to get a little more work done than I have over the weekend. School is fast approaching, which means that summer is nearly over, and which also means that I don't have as much done as I thought I would. My grandiose plan for the summer was to complete a bunch of work projects, get back into a regular schedule of drawing my comic, and do more of my own personal art projects like make a few paintings. My summer of anxiety and feeling down has proved to be very unproductive, but worry and emotional nonsense seems to takes up a lot of time.

Latch of Productivity

Every day, I am supposed to write fifteen minutes of stuff. The problem is that I am not sure what to write about. If I keep saying that today I did nothing, and yesterday I did nothing, and tomorrow I did nothing, then what's the point? I don't want to express any strong opinions because a) some of them would be wrong for a variety of reasons and b) even if they weren't, the way the world is so polarized today, if I asserted one thing, someone else would get upset because they believe something else. Anyone who knows me knows that intensely dislike contention.

So, I am going to talk about art. I like looking at it, and sometimes I really like making it. The problem is that I don't do it often enough. The last thing I worked on, aside from the never ending summer school project, and the little work I do for the family business, was a comic that I have not finished. It was the art project that was truly for me alone.

During the spring term of last year, I had a figure drawing class that I really enjoyed. I think I have some talent for drawing. The instructor was really encouraging. It was a hard class to earn even a "B" in, but I managed it. It was also the one of the few classes where I wasn't worried about the letter grade I would earn at the end of the term (unless it were a D or lower). My primary focus was not on the grade, but on trying to get the skills I needed to make a composition that was interesting and pleasant to look at.

I think that I am overcritical of myself a lot when it comes to my art. I know that I don't do it enough. So I get discouraged when on the occasion I make some little art, and it inevitably doesn't look like I had imagined. Then I tell myself, well you don't draw enough, so you have no reason to expect that it will look any better than it does, which is a factual statement of the truth. Of course, that factual statement of the truth discourages me even more and makes it less likely that I will do the art as often as I want. It's an emotional catch 22.

I've been considering using a to-do list of my weekly goals for myself as a way to get moving forward on some of things I need to do, and try to get myself out of my rut. Even when I am not doing anything except watching television or surfing the net, I feel like I am disappointing someone. It makes me feel bad, and causes me a lot of frustration toward myself that I try to resolve by distracting myself with empty activities.

Seeing as today is Friday, I am going to include here a list of things that I want to do. First, I want to finish that unfinished comic in some form and put it on the web. Second, I want to talk to the gym people about my getting a refresher on the rules. I want to fix myself a breakfast of eggs instead of cold cereal at least twice a week. I want to go to the grocery store and do some personal shopping. I want to finish that CD project for my family. And lastly, I want to turn in some pictures of the logo I have been working on so that will be off my plate of things to do. I give myself to next friday to get these things done. I know it doesn't sound like much, but there is an emotional lock on the latch of productivity that makes it very hard for me to open.

Writers of the Past

Sometimes I wonder if I am ever going to really get my act together. I have a ton of stuff to do during a typical day, and I can't seem to even motivate myself to get half of it done. Of course, this daily problem of being as productive as I want leads to me thinking that my future circumstances are rather bleak.

My eventual goal is to live a somewhat normal life with a regular job that I can enjoy (at times) and a quiet place of my own. Most of my friends my own age have this, but I don't and I can't help but think that is due to my serotonin problems. I sleep too much sometimes; I feel marginally good sometimes, but mostly my mood is down; I spend too much time vegging out in front of the television.

I know that everyone has their problems, but sometimes it seems a little unfair that their problems don't seem to affect the way that they think sometimes. No one likes getting criticism, especially if it is undeserved, but most people seem to be able to shake it off faster than I do. They resolve to do better next time, or write that person off somehow, but when I am criticized sometimes it can put me in a tailspin of depression that lasts a week or so.

And, of course, I can recognize how morose all this musing about mood is, but it doesn't stop my from feeling a certain way. It's illogical, and wastes my time, and I should just get over it, right?'

I think about famous writers I read in college. I remember one poem by Sylvia Plath that seemed to compare her anger and frustration about her father to the Holocaust. Of course, my remark was something along the lines of expressing a little shock at the audacity of comparing your personal problems with your father to the genocide of millions of people. And yet, Sylvia Plath's problems seemed to follow her to the end of her brief life, and to her, they were real and serious problems. Melville seemed to be frustrated about the course of his life, Hemingway struggled with his problems, Virginia Woolf, and on and on.

It's helps me to think that all of these writers had what appears to me to be depression, but they managed to write their works of art with clarity and enduring power. Their mental faculties were not dimmed by their emotional problems.

Today, I didn't get much of anything accomplished. I did put my dirty clothes in the laundry. I put a few things away in my room, although it looks as disorganized as ever. I fed the cats. I also took a nap in the afternoon, partly because I stayed up too late the night before. Tonight, though, I am going to bed a bit earlier. Tomorrow, my goal is to finish cleaning my room, and burn some picture CD's that I've promising people. We'll see how that goes.

Typos and My Slightly More Productive Day

A word about typos: I make a lot of them in these blog posts, mostly because I don't really spend a lot of time revising what I wrote. I might leave out a word here or there; write the wrong word when I know better; and repeat myself unnecessarily. I could try to claim that this is some post-modern strategy to capture the disjointed way people think, but of course, that wouldn't be true.

Another thing about my writing: I think I have the "writer's block." I don't know what to talk about, or I am mentally censoring things I might write about because it is too silly, inane, I've said it before, I lack the confidence to do it well, and I don't have too many strong opinions that I feel comfortable writing about. As one could see reading the early posts in this blog, I was writing more often and, I think, more eloquently than I write now. Back then, I would post two or three times a week; now, I am lucky if I post once a month. The excitement of publishing your words on the net for the world to see was once exciting. Now, like the same food served over and over again, the posts (and the blog as a whole) has become much more bland.

Today, I woke up rather early for me at 8:30. I watched most of a movie on television called "Music Within". If you click on the link, you can seee that it isn't well regarded, but in spite of that, I liked it. Later in the afternoon, I caught another movie called "scenes of sexual nature," which wasn't nearly as salacious as it sounds. It was a british film that focused on the nature of relationships. Following seven couples conversations as they spend the day in a English Park. I can't say why, but I found the elderly couple's scenes the most interesting.

In between movies, I took a shower. After the second movie, I went into town to run a few errands, including taking my sister to the local fast food restaurant to get all her co-workers some ice cream. When I was at the ATM machine, the person in the car ahead of me forgot to take the debit card out before the pulled away and disappeared into the street. I grabbed their card, made my transaction with my own card, and then went into the bank to drop off the abandoned card. The teller didn't seem too surprised as this sort of thing must happen on the odd occasion.

Then I went home and vegged out in front of the laptop and television. This day was more productive of the last, and I am hoping to get even more things done tomorrow. I know I must do laundry, and I should clean up my place a bit as things have been messy for too long. At some point in the next week or two, I am planning on getting my hair cut and my registration renewed for my car. The car thing must come first.

I stayed up too late tonight, and the 90+ degree heat makes it difficult to sleep in the day-time. I will work on getting to sleep no later than midnight. School will practically require the earlier bedtimes because of the long commute to the campus and the too early classes.

Puzzle Pieces of Myself

Just a handful of weeks before school officially begins again, the heat has returned. It was slightly over 90 degrees today and the weather-people on television seem to be promising more hot days to come. The heat is better than the cold in most respects, but on the other hand, it also seems to sap the overall motivation to be productive. The late afternoons are nearly impossible. I am managing as best I can.

I have not been nearly as productive as I had envisioned before the summer school break. I had grand visions of doing a couple of paintings, writing nearly every day to keep up whatever skills I have left, and earn as much money working as I possibly could. And, of course, things hadn't worked out the way I planned. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. My plans tend to be a little overly ambitious, or so I've been told by the ones who apparently know such things.

Of course, when your brain doesn't produce the right amounts of serotonin due to genetics and environment, there is always the trap of believing things to be a certain way when they are not. Serotonin affects mood (apparently), and mood affects perception. I could say I haven't been productive regarding my work or my school without acknowledging the hard work I was putting in to control my mood properly and/or gain perspective. The brain is a tricky organ. I could be perceiving failure all around me when I am just being subjected to the stressors of everyday life. Another person looking in from the outside might notice achievements to be proud of that. As for myself, I may not see the effort or the work because they slide into my emotional blind spots of feeling inadequate, anxieties, and sadness. The gang up on objectivity and push him out the window.

This morning I got a phone call telling me I was late to an appointment when in fact the appointment maker was the one who had the date wrong, not me. I only realized this after rushing out the door in a panicked worry. I had my appointment anyway since it was convenient for everyone involved to just go ahead. I bought some shampoo at walmart afterward and then stopped for lunch. And then I planted myself in front of the television with my laptop in my lap and proceeded to waste a good portion of the day thinking on things.

In some ways, I have turned myself into a jigsaw puzzle. I am always looking back and forth at the pieces of my life wondering what goes where and how it all fits together. But then I wonder if maybe the "clues" about myself have no relationship to the mystery I trying to solve. Maybe the puzzle pieces don't add up to the picture on the box. Maybe there is no picture. Is it possible to have clues without their necessarily even being a picture? I am not sure. I am sure, however, that I am very tired, so I will end this blog here.

Illnesses and sporadic posting

I've been sick these past three days, and I was sick for a few weeks last month or so. I am not entirely convinced my illness last month wasn't the swing flu. There was the upper respiratory component to it, but as poor as I am, I couldn't see the doctor, so nothing was confirmed.

The worst thing about being sick this time was that I kept waking up in the middle of the night with a tremendous headache, parched throat, and an inability to fall asleep again. This afternoon I took a four hour nap. My appetite is returning and my headache isn't as bad, so I think I am feeling a little better.

Aside from illnesses, I've been doing the same things I've always been doing: watching television, surfing the internet, drawing when I feel like it, and working when I can. My parents went on vacation recently, so I was also taking care of the farm, feeding animals and making sure the place doesn't burn down.

School is my last piece of unfinished business. I have a calendar I am working on for the art gallery that I need to finish. I will try to go to school and work on it tomorrow. It will depend on how I am feeling I think. I need to send my instructor a PDF of the calendar as it is now, get her revisions, get the template from the printer, and push the damn thing out the door. The project has dragged on far longer than it had to, partially because the artists wouldn't send their pictures to me fast enough, but mostly because I take too long with everything.

I will try to write more often. I had a chance to look at my previous blog posts from several years back, and it seems that I am always apologizing for not posting earlier. I guess I feel like I should posting every week or so, but maybe I should I accept the fact that blogging is just a sporadic thing.

Congealed into the Same Shape

So, I haven't posted in forever, and I guess that is partly because I've been burned out on writing and couldn't find the energy to even make an attempt to post, and partly because I have no clue about what to write about. Life has been so unalterably boring in its routines for me that most of my thoughts for the past couple of months have focused on my life's seeming lack of direction. When I am not worried about the future and my potential to get a nice job and be self-subsistent, I am thinking about how much debt I have built up over this past decade and the apparently futility of getting it paid off, or I am thinking about how many of my previous goals have evaporated into the steams of utter failure. These aren't happy thoughts, and like most non-happy thoughts, they congeal into the same shape to become essentially the same thought. An, of course, that monotony doesn't make for good reading.

In the face of these thoughts and worries, I try to distract myself as much as possible with video games, television cartoons, the internet, and my college classes. I recently heard that the MLA and the APA are now recommending only one space after a period instead of two. After working with Indesign, the professional layout software, and considering the ubiquity of computers in academia, it's easy to see why this change is being made, but I am finding the habit hard to break.

On the school front, I managed to finish my packaging design project a few hours early. It's only a macaroni box, and my design isn't terribly exciting, but even if I do say so myself, I think it's remarkably competent. It is something my instructor would say is "a solid design that can't miss," but "doesn't take any chances." This is his way of saying it's worth about B. I will be surprised if I get something else. Most of his class sessions are fairly boring.

The only mildly interesting thing I learned during the last class was that before Adobe's Software came to dominate everything in the graphic design field most designers were constantly using their exacto knives--according to my instructor--"cutting ruby lith," something I have never even seen. All that constant use gave them surgical like precision when came to wielding said knife. As for my own recent project and exacto knife skills, it looks as if I had been caught in the middle of a particular violent earthquake while I was cutting out a little cellophane window on my product box. My folding skills were not much better.

The term is coming to an end, and the summer break fast approaches. It's odd to note how I won't be seeing some of my fellow students (nice people) ever again after these next two weeks. Most of them that I have asked haven't really indicated that they were getting a design job anytime soon. Their plans were on the more immediate problem of earning money to survive through the summer which could mean staying at their menial unskilled jobs for the time being. Thankfully, I officially have another year to go before I earnestly start thinking about such problems.

That's it for now. I will try to post something else in the next couple weeks. My lackluster blog goal is to try and post at least once a month, but don't count on that. There are so many things on my list of personal goals that aren't getting done, and writing blog posts aren't even on the top of that list.

Odd Mood

I haven't been feeling well for most of the day. A sort of faint queasy feeling settled in the upper part of my stomach, and, only now, at the end of the day, is it starting to go away. I think this feeling might be the cause of the odd mood I am in currently. Well, actually, that and the thoughts I have been having about one of my assignments for figure drawing class. Let me explain.

I admire my figure drawing instructor tremendously. Perhaps I shouldn't admit this, but my overall opinion of community college instructors as a whole is that generally they are a mixed bag of the merely competent, the mostly mediocre, or the frankly terrible.

For example, in my first pass through this very community college ten years ago, I had a writing 121 instructor who refused to grade anything seriously. One of his more memorable assignments required us to find and stare at a spider's web for ten minutes and then write about the feelings inspired by that experience. Being a serious student and simply grateful to be in college in the first place, I followed his instructions. I found and stared at a spiderweb, and I felt like a total jackass. The only thoughts this was inspiring in me were about how incredibly dumb and pointless this was.

On the day assignments were due in this class, each student would read his or her two page essay aloud, while the instructor silently nodded and sat as a houseplant. His most common response was a rather cryptic, "good contact." And, typically, one student or another would wind up gushing about their feelings concerning spider webs in a far too personal way which was also revealing more about themselves than they realized. In a normal world, this should have embarrassed them tremendously. But, when you stepped in that writing class, you quickly found you were no longer in a normal world. Clearly, we were not being prepared to research or write the argumentative essays that the rest of undergraduate college was going to demand from us. Thesis statements? Building an argument based upon scholarly evidence? Thinking critically about arguments in class? Forget about it.

Suffice it to say, my large experience of college instructors has run the gamut, from community college to graduate school. My figure drawing instructor is one of the best. Not only is she scarily talented at painting and drawing in general, but she is super smart, and has fantastic teaching skills.

In any event, our latest assignment is to examine the "geological strata" of our lives and draw the things that have the most meaning to us as we have grown into the people we are now. Dividing our drawing paper into sections which might represent our childhood, teenage years, adulthood, we will bring to our portrait drawing experience the spirit of ourselves beyond our actual image. Yes, I know it sounds just as "ooga booga" as the staring at the spiderweb exercise ten years ago, but I think the difference lies in the fact that the writing class should have been teaching us concrete writing skills that would help us clearly communicate our ideas to others, while the drawing class is all about developing our self-expression.

And it is this "geologic strata" assignment that put me in the odd mood. I've been toying with some ideas in my sketchbook already. Initially, I think most people think about the objects that they had while they were growing up, like a favorite teddy-bear, a bike, or a videogame. Anyway, this was how the instructor was describing it. Later when I was working on ideas for it, what stood out for me most were not the things I owned, but the places I have been, the things I was doing, and, not least of all, a few very important people in my life.

In this vein, I was trying to remember the child I was in the late seventies. I know as one gets older, nostalgia has a tendency to color perception to the point where the facts matter much less than the personal narrative one slowly builds as they live their lives. Even with this in mind, this period seems unique.

My mother was still very young during this period, in her twenties. The "adults" in my memory of then were younger than I am now (seems odd to think of it now). And as young people are, they were are still very idealistic about changing the world. And, most of them were the spiritual version of hippies, much less into drugs and rock and roll than the ones seen now in popular movies and memory. And, I was absorbing all of this in. The idealism, the art, the youth, and the sense that the world would soon be changed into a paradise of happiness. The world, or rather my world, seemed full of a kind of hope that had less conflict between people, and had more honest, practical, emotional connection instead.

Of course, the world was changing. This was the era before the personal computer, before the arcades I would fall in love during my teenage years, and before the terror of nuclear war that seemed so present during the eighties. The electronic age had yet to reach my part of the world. Maybe it hadn't yet arrived for us since, we were also so desperately poor. So I guess I'm seeing this part of childhood as a more artistic and human world between people than the one we have now, which admittedly has its nice features, but also feels like it is missing something.

Hence, the odd mood that I mentioned at the beginning. The tragedy of my above description is that it does not really come close to accurately describing the half hidden moods, unconscious memories, and emotions that drift around these thoughts like a misty fog. Describing an emotion, especially one as inchoate as this one, is like describing the color green. How do you do it?

Homework and Worry about the Future

I slept in this morning until about 11:00 a.m. or so, and sufficiently rested, I eventually went to the school's design lab to work on homework. I hate driving the hour it takes me to get there, but really, I had no choice. While I do have the software I need to make my little designs, I don't have the nice selection of typefaces that the school does, nor do I have the hundreds of dollars to buy the decent and legal typefaces that is required for professional work. Of course, I wish I did. Money sure is nice. It's still green, right?

I came back home, and while I had every intention of working on my projects more, I just couldn't find the energy. In fact, I was surprised that I got as much work done this afternoon as I did. The calculations just underneath the surface of consciousness were telling me that I could get the rest of my work done tomorrow with no problems. Tomorrow might tell a different story.

Still, especially with the economy the way it is, I remain uncertain about my ability to do a design job with the skills I am learning. Yeah, I get decent grades, but so do the hundreds of other students that have also been processed through the program I am taking, not to mention the thousands through all of the design programs in the state. College do a great job of exploiting hope.

Young people have a knack for envisioning themselves as masters of the universe. Not being a young person anymore, and now more intimately acquainted with failure, I am beginning to see the compromises that life forces people to make as they strive after the model of living provided by the larger culture.

I started to see this during my undergraduate days as an English major. Nearly every student in that program wanted to become a famous writer, but they rarely spoke about it. Instead, they talked about jobs teaching or becoming librarians. And when you think about the amount of English majors who are currently in or have ever been to college, and you compare that to the amount of English majors who become and stay teachers or librarians, you can get easily depressed. Less than 1%? Less than .5%? So, what becomes of those students who envision themselves as potential famous authors, and just a handful of years later, wind up working as a secretary in some office, or driving a truck at some warehouse job? Do they take up writing as a hobby? And when that fails to take them anywhere signficant, then what? The emotional realities of failure can burrow deep into your soul and burn slowly and painfully.

The same kind of process can happen in any of the so-called "creative" fields. I've traded my English major status for the small promise of becoming a commercial artist, but really it is the same thing. I suppose that it is possible that I could make a career out of design somehow, but knowing how life works, it is much more likely that I could become the operator of a postcard mailing machine, attaching barcodes to thousands of postcards at a time. Or something like it.

In each class I take, I do my very best to absorb the lessons as the instructors give them, but there is one class I am taking that is above the rest. It is my figure drawing class. I enjoy that class very, very much. Even if I got a 'C' in that class, I wouldn't really care that much, especially if I felt that I learned something and pushed myself a little. I can't explain it. Maybe it is the instructor (whom I really admire), or perhaps it is the subject matter itself. Maybe it is the fact that I am creating art for myself rather than trying to meet some commercial need with my design projects. Whatever it is, it makes this term enjoyable. While I'm not the best student in that class (I am one of the better ones, I must say), I am fairly positive that no one can surpass me in enthusiasm for the knowledge it offers. I'd write more, but it is time for bed and I am getting tired.

My Day

Did not get a whole heck of a lot of sleep last night, maybe 4 or 5 hours, but it is my own fault for staying up a bit later than I should have, and then for not being able to fall asleep due my worrying about waking up on time at 6:00am. I worried for nothing. The dogs who live behind my place woke me up with their pathetic and insistent barking. When I had my fill of mean thoughts about little dogs, I dragged myself out of bed and steeled myself against the rest of the day.

After fighting through the typical morning traffic on the bridge into town, I made it to school and my morning design class with enough time to print out my homework and mount it on a 10x13" piece of matte board. The class, one long critique of said homework, was more than a bit boring, but then, of course, this is not surprising. The instructor has everyone gather in one large group to review everyone's individual work and make comments. If it is not your turn for the review, or worse yet, if your critique happened to be at the beginning of class, you silently sit with feigning as much interest as feasible in the instructor's comments on someone else's work, trying not to stare at the clock too much.

This particular homework was typography created for a movie about the "angel of death," who for some reason, is reaping an errant soul in an all night cafe. The instructor refused to give us any detail about the movie, arguing that "sometimes, in the real world, you have a project dumped in your lap, a project about which you know very little and must complete in a matter of hours." Yet, I'm very suspicious that one could ever know so little about a design project, especially when money is involved. People (read: clients) get really weird when it comes to money. Furthermore, the so-called "real world," in my opinion, has more flexibility and fluidity than the instructor can or cares to acknowledge.

The instructor was sick this morning and starting to lose his voice. Consequently, my review, which came in the last third of the total projects, consisted of little more than his choosing which design out of the three I created that I should continue with. Truthfully, I didn't expect much more than that. I've been through this process before and knew what to expect from this instructor.

The second class was a figure drawing class in the afternoon that was much more interesting. This is one of the very few classes I've ever taken where I am not as focused on getting a good grade as much as I am focused on trying to master the artistic techniques and the knowledge that will set my artwork a step ahead of the rest. Unlike the first figure drawing class I ever took, many of my fellow students happen to be very good. One student in particular has a mastery of the subject that inspires a tremendous amount of jealousy in the rest of us, but he is a nice enough person, even with his young man's tendency to devolve in a restrained fit of silly laughter about some guy's witticism about being "stoned," or "farting."

I suppose Graduate School, and the personal fiasco I experienced there, has made me realize how competitive the wider world can be. You might be the big fish in your particular pond, but that doesn't mean you still won't get eaten if you somehow manage to make it into the lake.

In any case, after class, I had a chance to talk one-on-one with the instructor about my artwork. I prefer to work with a drawing easel instead of the benches or horses that some of the other student's use. I turned my easel around toward the front of the class and waited for the instructor to finish talking to the model and then another student with the daily student question, "what is the homework." (Most instructors have a daily answer, "Check your syllabus.")

Now, in case you didn't already know, insecurity might as well be my middle name. In this regard, most of my conversation with the art instructor consisted of my asking if I "was on the right track," or if there was a technique or medium that was off limits for our various homework assignments. The answers, essentially, were: yes, I was on the right track, color is off limits, and I should try to experiment more with line variation, gestural strokes, and generally just loosening up.

Ironically, my versions of the quick warm up sketches we do during the first five or ten minutes of class look so much more polished that the one longer drawing I've made which we work on for more than an hour and half. My first quick three minute sketch has a vitality and fun to it that makes my longer drawing look like a complicated math problem that I've managed to get the wrong answer to. One looks good enough to frame, and the other looks like a decorated turd.

Conversation over, I eventually wended my way back to my car and, for the second time that day, fought through the bridge traffic to get home and rest. Since I have all of Tuesday to work on the homework that is due on Wednesday, I made a conscious decision to take the rest of the night off. I finally watched the series finale of the "Life on Mars" television program that had been previously recorded. I must admit that I was a little sad to see the show was over. While I found the science fiction element of the whole show more than a bit silly, the period police drama was highly entertaining. They should have had more of that. The final resolution to the mystery of what was happening to the main character was a bit of a let down. However, seeing as how the show had been cancelled, I am glad that they had enough time to at least resolve all of the loose ends rather than just having the show disappear.

Even though it probably doesn't seem like I did a lot today when you look at it objectively, it certainly feels like I accomplished a lot. The two hours I spend commuting on these school days are draining; plus, my shoulders hurt from all of the drawing I did, and my feet were practically killing me. I'm am so out of shape it is not funny. When I finally made it to my car on the other side of campus, I just had to sit behind the wheel for a couple of minutes to catch my breath. I think I needed the rest tonight.

The End of a Laptop

A little over a year ago, I got a really nice laptop computer. Although Windows Vista was annoyingly fussy to work with compared to XP, it was still a great computer for doing my design homework, its original and intended purpose upon purchase. But, of course, it was also great for listening to the music and podcasts I downloaded from Itunes, for playing games like World of Warcraft, and for surfing through the many blogs that I read, some with an illustration or art theme, but most of them not.

And yet, during the Summer of 2008, I made a critical mistake that I am sure is not an infrequent one among fellow laptop users. During an afternoon computer surfing session, I found it necessary to attend to the natural biological result of having had a soda or two. I gently placed the nice laptop on the drafting table that I use for doing my art/design homework, and left the two cats sleeping on my bed unattended. I returned to the room just in time to see one of those cats, the particularly clumsy one, sniffing the laptop's monitor and nudging the computer towards the floor. My heart immediately leapt into my throat and I frantically threw myself at the drafting table to try and catch it as it fell, but the computer smacked the ground with a thud that broke my heart while the cat furiously scampered off the drafting table to hide under the bed.

Normally, my emotions, if not numbed to depression, are kept beneath the waves of myself as much as I can manage, my face normally the visage of stoicism. But this moment filled me with several strong emotions: anger at the cat for being merely a cat, rage at myself for being so careless as to leave the computer in such a perilous condition, panic at the thought that the computer may not work, and despair at the amount of money it cost to purchase and my inability to afford another. Plus, I also felt several undefined emotions that clashed against each other second to second giving me that light-chested feeling one feels in a crisis. Yet, I discovered soon enough that, while the hinge of the computer was indeed broken, the computer overall was still as operable as before. I thought I would be able to replace the hinge myself, but gave up trying when I found I could not get the speaker cover off to access it. The last thing I wanted was to damage the computer again in a misguided attempt to fix it.

For the next several months, I used the nice computer as before, except that I had to take special care to not exacerbate the broken hinge. I took an almost excessive and ritualistic care when I opened the laptop, making sure that I did not damage the hinge anymore. The only possible thing that I might have neglected during this broken hinge period was some magic incantation imploring the gods of electricity and pixels to have mercy on my computer and its mechanical injury. And everything went well until Spring Break when the monitor finally refused to light up. The darkness in the absence of the electric glow I expected seemed to seep out of the monitor and directly fill my chest with dark forebodings, some of those same panicked emotions that I felt that previous summer.

After extensive research checking on official repair service providers, one of which had recently gone out of business just a few months ago, my laptop ended up a Radio Shack, where an affable guy who seems to know how to replace parts but not diagnose problems attempted to fix the monitor as best he could. Unfortunately, even after a couple of hundred dollars, he was at a loss. My already tremendous distress was gradually building. The cost of the projected repairs was slowly closing in on the price of new laptop. Money is a constant source of worry to me as I never seem to have any. This was becoming one of those lose/lose dilemmas where a choice has to be made, but as each result is markedly unpleasant, one tries to put off said choice for as long as possible.

Things became even more stressful when school started up again and the computer lab was not open long enough for me to get my homework done. I utilized the available lab time as much as I possibly could, but only got about one-third of my current project done. Even when the lab monitor said that we had an extra hour beyond normal closing time to work, I still wasn't done.

And, just to make things absolutely terrifying, the instructor who assigned this particular project is very inflexible when it comes to due dates and seems to enjoy handing out 'F' grades under the mistaken view that somehow an 'F' will motivate students to perform better. Yet, for me, an 'F' is the torpedo of despair that can sink a student under a fresh sea of depression. (I could say much more about my feelings regarding this instructor and my view of his misguided teaching philosophies, but it might be wiser to let that go unsaid. My goal, when I think of this class, is to duck my head and get through it as best as I can. I don't want burden myself by dwelling on the unpleasant aspects of it for too long.)

Too soon, the last of the school's computer lab hours flew by, and I was still not finished with the project. Thankfully, my parents, whose generosity I constantly worry about stretching, came to my rescue by purchasing me a decent computer on the low end of the price scale so I could finish my school projects without having to cope with lab time shortages, the extra time and gasoline costs associated with commuting, and the few instructors impervious to the reality of students' various problems and their serious needs.

I am now working on the new laptop and am grateful for every minute I have with it. Should it be necessary to jump through a plate glass window to somehow protect it from falling off a table, I will do it and do it without thought or question. It is a rather sad fact of being poor to realize that your means of livelihood depends on just a few material things that can easily be damaged or lost somehow. I could cite a few examples that come to mind, but the ones that seem most insistent are the ones that pertain specifically to me. My school program unofficially requires expensive software and electronics: a DSLR camera, a computer, and a suite of software. This program is my last best chance for a lower-middle class life, my ultimate (and I hope realistic) goal. Without them or the assistance of my parents, my only safety net, I could easily be homeless, fighting for meager chances at an unskilled job, looking for work in a marketplace where the unemployment rate is at 10% or more. Not pleasant prospects at all.

It has been said by a few other people that I am rather resourceful in the face of problems; and, they have further said, considering my background, the limited successes I have thus far achieved are remarkable. This may very well be the case. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of energy to be resourceful and fight through a lot of these challenges. I am afraid that, at some point, I will run out of that energy and be left with nothing except the experiences of someone who has tried and failed.

Rolling Rocks

It seems like every post in this silly blog is, one way or another, is about how depressed I am. Yes, it's true. I am depressed and, like solving a puzzle that is missing a key piece, it seems that I am trying to figure something out that isn't going to show itself. The last page in the book is missing, the puzzle piece is lost, the song is missing the chorus. I am plagued with the mystery about the depth of my own problems and the solutions I need to get back on my feet.

And so, the challenge seems to be to try and figure out how to be okay with not knowing how to fix "it." Of course, this is easier said than done. I wonder how Sisyphus must feel knowing that the boulder he is pushing up that hill will never get to the top. He'd love to get to the top because then he could stop pushing that stupid boulder and be himself again. Job done! Mission accomplished, right But, that ain't going to happen, and being a clever guy, I am sure he's figured that out. Being eternity, I am sure he's spent more than his share of time being absolutely disgusted by the fact that he's been cursed and damned to do something so pointless and frustrating. But, then what? Does he change his thinking about his task?

Knowing that he is cursed, does he try to enjoy the moment of the boulder rolling down the hill? The rolling of the rock is his moment to rest and watch the quick energy of the boulder tumble along the earth to reach the bottom. Does the tumbling become its own reward and bottom, for Sisyphus, become satisfaction? And why keep pushing the boulder at all for that matter? Why not sit on top of the rock at the bottom of the hill and enjoy the view: watch the sun cresting over the hill, feel the breeze weave itself around in the grass, and enjoy the shade on the cool side of the rock when the sun is too warm.

In a sense, this is what I think I am trying to do. I am trying to convince myself to enjoy being denied the top of the hill, which in my case, is a life without the ogres of depression. Maybe I should just enjoy the rolling of the rock, all those pleasant moments when they happen; and when I have my shoulder to the stone, maybe I should just remember that there pleasant moments will occur again in the future and leave it at that. Is this the wrong approach? Isn't it fatalism to say failure is the new goal, bottom, the new top?

The answer seems to be: sometimes yes, and sometimes no. There isn't a rule, and thus, I spend most of the day in bed either asleep as a way to avoid pushing my rocks of depression around, or I am awake trying to figure out how to be okay with it rolling down the hill.

By way of report (to myself) more than anything, I am doing a little better about getting to sleep earlier and getting my internal clock back on track. I have also drawn a little as a way to ease myself back into the old routines that kept the engine of my daily life going. I want to do a little more of that, especially as I have a lot of work that I need to do. I think I can change the current track of things, but it is hard, and that, apparently, goes without saying. My inability to get on track thus far is evidence of that.

Burning Memory

I suppose one of the more interesting things about being depressed about life and your future is that you spend an awful lot of time thinking about the past. In essence, when you're not trying to numb yourself to the unbidden thoughts that are causing you your present anguish, you're spending much of your mental life in the past and reviewing how things went and thinking about how you ended up the way you did. You past becomes a puzzle in where you try to find the answer of "now."

Of course, you would naturally think that the painful thoughts of the present come from painful memories of the past, but this is not necessarily true. In fact, you can form fairly negative thoughts about past positive experiences by merely saying to yourself (in one emotional form or another), "just look at what I've achieved. It is such a shame I'll never get there again, will never have a positive experience like it." Sometimes, in your better moments, you can recognize those thoughts as irrational and wrong. Seen through the filter of depression, everything tends to turn into those bitter cold shades of blue.

Sometimes though, if you're being perfectly honest with yourself, you will remember positive moments in your life and will be absolutely correct if you said that those moments will never happen again. Yet, the mistake here is thinking about the "past specific" and turning it into the "future general." You would be right if you said that one specific moment of happiness in the past won't happen again, but that doesn't mean that there won't be happy moments like it in the future. that other happy moments that spring from places you didn't or couldn't consider at the time.

With all this is in mind, I would like to visit one of these positive moments. I will try not to make too many judgments about it. I just want to present it as I remember it.

- - - - - - -

My high school graduation was an awkward affair. I assume that most students are excited and happy to graduate, if only to finally be out of the various personal hells high school seems to create. I definitely was looking forward to high school being over, but unlike most students, I certainly wasn't excited. In fact, I was a bit anxious and depressed. I hated almost every aspect of school, and the ritual of the graduation ceremony was just one more thing about high school that I didn't want to be a part of. So while all of those other students seemed happy to parade before their parents and extended family, I was glum and depressed.

I sat rather forlornly in a cheap plastic chair, in a graduation gown that felt ridiculous to wear, on the football field with the rest of the graduating class. I looked miserably towards the bleachers where the parents and most of the teachers sat and tried not to worry about the future.

I had spent much of high school being the outsider, the weirdo, the loner, or whatever the modern trope is of the quiet student who looks glum and reads books all day. Instead of socializing with some group of friends, I sat in the hallway or library reading some book or another counting the minutes until I could go home. I guess was that kind of student until the bitter end.

By contrast, the valedictorian spent much of her speech talking about how great high school was, but as far as I could see, she only spoke for herself or a few friends. Being the studious and devoted daughter of the principal, I imagine her belief that high school was "the greatest part of our young lives" was somewhat natural conclusion for her to make, even if the rest of us were wondering what the hell she was talking about.

But eventually, the ceremony was over, and I was left to consider what to do with my life. College appeared to be out of the question since money was always an issue. I went home and thought.

But, in the most improbable move of my life, I shortly found myself traveling in a beaten up R.V. with people my own age, going to different towns and giving talks and presentations about World Peace. Actually, most of the so-called talks and presentations were us singing songs in public and doing small community service projects for a day or two. We would spend a week or two in a town before moving on to the next one. I spent nearly two years doing this.

I had some natural skills at organization, and although I intensely hated telling people what to do, these "kids" seemed to rely on me in the practical areas of daily life. They needed someone to figure when dinner was or where it was coming from so they had the time to focus on being spiritual.

Most of us were the children of hippie parents, and I suppose I was as well, although to a smaller extent. My mother was definitely a product of her generation, the late sixties and early seventies, but poverty and the various emergencies of her young life meant that she was more grounded that the stereotypical hippie. She wasn't the spoiled flower child who disguised her consumerism and self centered interests as high minded cultural and spiritual change. She belonged more to the genuinely spiritual and idealistic wing of the hippies who actually tried to change the world for the better, who believed that the world was, at some point, really going change for the better, and that it was partly her job to change it. Poverty can be a kind of purifying fire that burns way the silliness of "theories" to leave behind the pure gold of practicality.

This was one thing that poverty gave me as well: an ability to practically assess a situation and determine what might be the best thing that needs to happen. Whether that thing might be dinner, might be a time table for showers, or a day off to recharge our batteries.

There is much about this period of my life that I probably will never be able to adequately put into words. It was life times ten, life speeded up. Although we often made mistakes, both personally and as a larger group, I probably learned more about myself in that period than I ever did during my time in middle and high school.

So, with all that as background, here is the memory that I would to recall: I am on this "team" of fellow "kids." The oldest of us is in our early twenties, the youngest is just 18. We have already done quite a bit of traveling. Most of our time was spent in the suburban farm areas of our state, the wet forests and farmland ares I grew up in. But, we had just finished a week living in an artist community, a town of nearly 500 people in the extreme eastern, desert part of the state. It could have been a different country altogether as far as I felt. The familiar tall fir trees and various sloping hills that were often buried in fog and clouds had long given way to the rolling brown and yellow hills and sage covered stark plateaus of the desert.

Cramped in an old R.V., an R.V. old enough to still have the factory original 8-track cassette player in the dash, we drove to our next destination somewhere further along the high desert highway we were on. It was dark and very late, and we had already been on the road for a couple of hours. Some of my friends had individually succumbed to sleep as the hours grew later and the night longer. Someone was snoring in the bunk above the the drivers seat, the attic as it was called. The driver stared tiredly at the monotonous road stripes as they flashed in the headlights and quickly passed by the windshield.

One of my friends, someone to whom I was closer (emotionally) than the others, was reading a book at the breakfast nook at the back of the van. Much like a circular booth in a restaurant, the breakfast nook consisted of a cushioned bench seat that swept around a hard table anchored to the floor by a long metal pole. Behind the seat was the large rear windshield that framed his head against the dark. My friend sat in the middle of the back at this table, and I sat listened quietly to whispered reading.

As I gazed out of the window into the darkness, I saw what I imagined to be the last gleam of the setting sun. It took several moments for me to realize that the sun did not set in the north. I sat up intense interest and tried to get a better look out of the side window. I noticed several things all at once: the driver, my friend, the darkness, the road. But above all of these things, I began to take greater notice of the fact that there was nearly no-one else on the road. I had initially assumed that the absence of vehicles was because we were in a relatively remote part of the state. This was not a main highway and towns were few and far between. But I began to suspect the lack of other cars was due to another reason. I scanned the light along the top of the dark silhouetted hills trying to make out the silhouetted tree line at top.

It was then I saw that the light was not behind the trees, but coming from them. The trees were on fire. The fire appeared to be some distance away, perhaps twenty or thirty miles, but the flames, and now some of the trees, were clearly visible. I pointed this out to my friends who were awake.

We then took note of the red moon. The moon was the reddest I had ever seen in life then or since, perhaps due to the all of the smoke in the air. The driver turned on the radio to try and get a station. He managed to tune in one of the country stations that we could occasionally get to play for just a handful of minutes before drifting back into static. A news bulletin solved the mystery of no other vehicles on the road; shortly after we had begun our trip that afternoon, the state had closed the highway. No further traffic was allowed in either direction.

With the illusion of immortality clouding our young minds as it does most youth, we decided to pull over and watch the flames as they grew brighter against the deepening dark. The distance, one we thought considerable, made it feel safe to do so.

The fire took on an important and spiritual meaning that we all struggled to apprehend individually. Our chatter about the fire slowly died out and the excitement of this event was somewhat transformed into a stilled awe as we gazed at the flames. Our lives, in a sense, had just begun. The newness of our lives seemed connected to the fire somehow. We shared some unexplained kinship.

The destruction was both terrible and awesome to see, yet beautiful under the reddening moon. When I looked closely, I discerned tall trees, trees which I assumed had already lived for decades, explode in a sudden bloom of yellow and red. The sap inside the trunk had boiled until, like a piece of pop-corn, the entire tree burst in sudden brief intensity, the light from the explosion quickly fading back into and among the other yellows.

Silently, we stared at the forest fire, taking in the stunning vision for several long and quiet minutes. Then, somehow chastened in spirit, we climbed back aboard the R.V. to think about all we had seen and puzzle out the spiritual mystery that seemed to presented before us.

- - - - - - -

This memory of the trip through the darkness, the forest fire, and the exploding tree is what I wanted to examine again. There is still a mystery in there, both beautiful and frightening to look at, but of course, less important, less intense now that eighteen years has passed. I cannot explain the connection that we felt, but I can only affirm that we - - or rather, I, perhaps- - felt it.

There was a power in that may remain out of reach forever. In some ways, the forest fire I witnessed then makes me want to be a better person, a person who actively lives his life rather than let life flow over him like a flowing stream, pushing him around until he winds up in some strange puddle, slowly evaporating in an afternoon sun. In some ways, I do not want to figure out the mystery of the fire at all. I want to let it burn like the fire, work in the darkness, and feel that strange magic that I felt back then, when the world seemed to hold the promise of new discoveries, the chance for a life well lived and beautifully felt for decades to come.

A Couple of Dreams

Lately, I have been trying to get to sleep earlier each night as a way of incrementally forcing myself into a more normal sleeping schedule. I do not want to stay up all night staring at my computer screen trying to not think about my myriad personal problems; unfortunately, I have found this is more difficult to put into practice than I had initially expected. It is far too easy for me to focus on the emotional set-backs I have experienced in the past couple of years, to dwell on what seem to be missed opportunities to improve my lot, and to float blithely on the stagnating ponds of introspection. To exert the effort to recognize these "default" negative thoughts and counter them can be particularly difficult, especially if my energy is low, and my emotional guard (sometimes exhausted) is down. Still, I am trying. What else can I do? There is a noble struggle in moving forward, even if it doesn't seem like you're going to succeed.

This has been the main concern in my life, especially these past few weeks: getting back on track and pulling myself together in spite of what appear to be depressing odds. If you were to see me, just assume that this thought is working itself around the many dark and electrical parts of my brain. I may be feeding the cats, a task that can take as long as twenty minutes, but my mind is continually singing verses of failure from shadowy and soul seducing songs. I'm fighting them most of the time. This isn't anything new, really. If you have read the past posts of this blog, you can read these various verses from those songs of failure.

However, sometimes, with all of the thinking that I am doing. I do come across some personal avenues that do not make much outward sense to me. These are the personal things that I find fascinating. At times, I think that perhaps the recognition of these points of confusion is actually a sign of progress because it highlights a place to start getting better or it illustrates a problem I haven't yet considered. Maybe, I say to myself, "this is another stepping stone on the path of healing."

One of these avenues that do not make much outward sense to me is my dreams. Admittedly, this is a small aspect of both my personality and my problems, but maybe, I hope to myself, these dreams will lead to the clarity I seem to be seeking so much of the time.

Recently, I have had a couple of dreams that have stayed with me. The reason for the dreaming is very probably due to my poor sleeping habits. However, the thematic message or the meaning of the dreams are much, much less clear. I feel that dreams have an emotional logic. If you can figure out the progression of emotions that are hidden inside your dreams, often hidden by symbolic imagery, you will have discovered an insight about yourself and will have gained a key to unlocking that part of your unconscious thoughts and motivations.

Here is an example of one of my dreams: It is dark outside and very cold, but the inside of the cabin is being kept warm. The cabin is somewhat rustic, and the low ceilings make it feel very small, despite the amount of people crowded inside. The walls are bathed in low yellow and orange light, almost as if the rooms are lighted by oil lanterns. The biggest room in the cabin is the dining hall, if it can be called that, but even as the biggest, it is only the size of a small living room in a cottage of some kind. The people cramped inside the hall are mostly teenagers, and they are sitting on long benches around wooden tables having tea and desserts. The furnishings are notable for their elegance and simplicity. The knick-knacks on the buffet and various small tables lining the wall are all obviously antiques of humble yet dignified quality. The hostess of this cabin, a late middle-aged British woman, is remarking on how delicious the tea is that evening, evidently pleased with it considering how quickly it had been made.

Suddenly, I walk in. I am a tall man, dressed in blue old fashioned breeches, large white billowy shirt, and paisley waist-coat. I silently put my great coat down on a table and sternly stride away from my officers in the tiny foyer into the dining hall to do a sudden inspection. The teenagers, mostly men as far as I can tell, all stand up at attention. I am irritated with this group for some reason. It may have to do with their lack of discipline, but I say nothing. I prefer to let them see my anger burn out slowly from underneath my furrowed brows. My stern manner does not dampen my ultimate duty towards them though. Ultimately, I know these people to be under my care and protection. I am doing my best to instill a sense of discipline in them, a discipline that they can feel bloom out from their co-fellows as a fireplace at home will slowly warm the hearth stones.

In another dream, I am journalist making contact with a college educated Afghani woman in her country. We have agreed to meet at a small town bazaar. Her country is in great turmoil, and she is not too happy with me because, to her, I represent all of the "Western" values and behaviors that she despises. However, her great desire is to tell "her side of the story," so she somewhat petulantly grants the interview. The interview in unusual, because as designed, it is more of a documentary than a one on one, back and forth, asking and answering of questions. Over the next few days, she will be showing me her life and the way she has to live it in the world of turmoil around her.

I am so grateful for her having agreed to this, I do everything that she asks. I ignore her thinly disguised contempt of me and contempt of everything that she believes I stand for, and I do my best to assimilate, however temporarily, into her society. I even adopt the local manner of dress to better fit in. Mostly, I commit myself to following her meekly around, drinking up everything she says with my ears, devouring everything I see with my eyes.

As we leave the relative safety of the indoor bazaar, I note the parking garage across the street is nearly engulfed in flames. Despite this, there are three or so men on various levels patrolling with rocket launchers, ready to shoot anything and everything they want. Their bodies burn in the flames, but they are unconcerned. Slowly, they pace back and forth on their respective levels as dark smoke rolls out from the top of the building. I cannot help but ask about the fire or the burning soldiers, but the Afghani woman expresses that very same contemptuous irritation that she had shown before in the bazaar. She considers me naive for not knowing just how much her country is in turmoil.

Both dreams have more to them, more parts that I have since forgotten. I can't remember the full dreams. In any case, I will probably dream again tonight as I have pulled another "all-nighter" that I didn't intend. Like I mentioned before, I hope to get back on a better sleep schedule soon. Still, blog posts will be few and far between. That may change when I start feeling better, but then again, I have a lot of other projects that need doing to that are suffering from my inability to pull it together. I guess we shall see when I am able to post next.

Gigantic Mess

My life, as of late, has been a gigantic mess. But I am not sure if it is of my own making (probably yes) or if there have been circumstances beyond my control that have led to my shutting down more than usual (probably yes on that too).

First, the facts. In the middle of this past school term, a term which is now over, I stopped going. I stopped working on my assignments; I stopped attending classes; I just plain stopped everything. From of the perspective of my fellow students, it was like I was suddenly kidnapped or stricken with an exotic jungle disease that required my immediate medical quarantine. Yet, if either of those two things had actually happened, I would strangely feel better. I mean, at least then there would some kind of tangible cause I could understand, an explanation I could grasp, put on the shelf, and forget about so I could move on with my life. As it is, I have stopped and caught in a soup of inertia and confusion about how things ended up this way or what to do next.

My total stoppage is in its fourth(?) week. Has it been longer? I've lost a normal sense of time. Since my disappearance from school, I have spent most of my time online playing World of Warcraft, sleeping, watching television, listening to music and literary podcasts, sleeping, reading books, and thinking about sleeping. I have been going to bed anywhere between 3:00 and 7:00 am., and waking up anywhere from noon to about 4:00 pm. I have work to do, and yet, I don't do it. It piles up and my motivation remains shackled, depression has frozen my feet in place and reached its chilly tendrils toward my heart.

Those are the facts.

Here is the trouble: I think I can only figure out about 40% of why I stopped doing everything. About that 40%, I will attempt to sketch out some kind of account.

One, I was overwhelmed with school work. There was much more than I had expected. A class that had been worth two credits in the schedule had a work load of at least six credits. The unexpected amount of work combined with my usual, and admittedly unrealistic, expectations to do classwork that far exceeded normal expectations. I don't want to be just a good art student. I want to be the best art student. Silly, considering the amount of work I am willing to invest in my various projects to achieve that goal.

Still, when I do work on a project, I want the instructors to exclaim that my work is really, really good--among the best that they have ever seen--and, yes, a part of me even wants my fellow students to be jealous. And, in the past, especially when I was an English undergraduate (and very probably much to my detriment) that had often been the case. I won prizes for my work, had instructors tell me that I should be going to a better college, and I often would feel the bewildered admiration of fellow students who wondered how I managed to pull it off. I may have been a big fish in a small pond, but at least I was the big fish. The praise was engine that kept me going more than I thought.

After a lot of reflection, and some therapy, I am fairly sure that I enjoy praise twice as much as a normal person should. And, conversely, I hate criticism twice as much. Professionals call this sort of thing "mood reactivity," a long step beyond the normal reaction of feeling good when someone compliments you or feeling discomforted when someone is mean to you. It is like being very easily sunburned. Just an hour under a harsh sun can leave you with a sting you feel for days.

Of course, negative critiques are nothing extraordinary in the context of an art class. Art critiques are part of the skeletal system of a creative education, and by necessity, a few of them will be negative. How else would one learn if not by trying and failing? Yet, I wasn't the perfectionist I wanted to be, and it upset me.

Example of sorts. I worked really hard on a postcard advertising an upcoming college play: Brighton Beach Memoirs. The director wanted the postcard to emphasize baseball, a wrong-headed emphasis in my opinion, but then again, "the client" always gets what they want, at least according to the instructor. I thought the proper emphasis should have been on the working class environment, the historical context of a looming war, and/or the emotional struggle of a young boy "coming of age." After hearing the director describe the play in class, it was clear to me that, to her, males were an amalgam of rough and tumble stereotypes, snips and snails and puppydog tails, a confederation of sexist clowns, and, largely, a mystery. But hey, baseball! Okay. I get it.

So, in the spirit of trying to exceed expectations, I did my research. I read the play, and I read aboutthe play. I researched poster design in the 30's, and looked at several "time-appropriate" typefaces. I found photographs of the very baseball players mentioned in the play in an old baseball magazine from the 40's. And, pursuing my industrious course, I made several sketches in different directions, got feedback from the instructor about which of them worked better than the others, carefully did several final drawings, combined all the elements in Photoshop, inked it and, finally, colored it. Perhaps even more importantly, while staying faithful to the director's original intentions for the card, I had managed to tweak it enough to pull in the broader interpretations I thought she missed.

So, when it came time for the presentation to the "client," the director of the play, I explained my work, my thought processes, my goals, my effort, to which she responded: "it looks too high school". Not that the particular imagery I chose was wrong for her vision of the play. Not that the colors wouldn't match the stage production goals she had. Not that the work communicated the wrong tone. But, that it was "high school." Meaning, to her, it was "unprofessional." The seeds of professional design I was trying to plant with my student work was not yielding any fruit. Hell, according to her, I wasn't even in the right garden. I was devastated. I asked my art instructor, "was it true?" Does my postcard look "high school?" I spent well over twenty hours on it, way more than the six or seven the other students had devoted. I had even watched a fellow classmate cobble a quick postcard together in the class previous to the presentation in about an hour. No, I was assured by the art instructor. With a minor comment or two about how to improve, she declared it overall a fine work.

So, okay, the play director was wrong about the postcard. I can admit that. A normal person would brush off the negative comment as "just her opinion," or "plain wrong." Or they might just chalk it up to some weird anomaly that happens in everyday life, like a full moon or something, right? But, the remark cut me. It hurt. I tried to hide my obvious disappointment when it was made, but I didn't do a good job. Some of the more sensitive and observant students offered their reassurances when class was over, to the tune of "I thought it was really good," with the corresponding verses of "I like the color," and "did you draw it yourself?" And, instead of making me feel better about my hard work, I only felt worse. Their nice comments were only emphasizing my inability to hide my disappointment and distress. When the mask of pleasant sociability falls, when the thin veneer of self-image that one so carefully builds has burnt away, and one stands exposed with naked and nausea inducing emotions, embarrassment shines as brightly as the sun. And every stranger's added syllable makes it shine even brighter.

So, the problem summed up, as I see it: I fully recognize that my mood has been much more dependent on my various interactions with people than it really should be. I should be able to provide my own support when it comes to needed an emotional boost, and I should be able to brush off criticisms that are uneccessary, or gently take them when true and offered in a friendly manner. But, I can't for some reason. Consciously, I recognize the ideal way to react, but emotionally, an arrow pierces the exterior and wounds my heart in a way that I never seem to be able to expect. I am the fool dancing on a ship's railing in the midst of a typhoon and is stupidly surprised when he inevitably falls off.

So, that's one thing I've been grappling with: schoolwork and attendant irrational mood reactivity.

Second, I am finding out that my depression is less like the flu and more like diabetes, meaning that it isn't something that you catch and get rid of, but it is a lifetime condition that will affect daily choices you make for the rest of your life. I still have my perspective, and I can parrot the countless medication advertisements on television by (ugh!) saying that a person can live their life with a chronic condition and "still have a normal and healthy life for many years to come." But, what the commercials don't communicate is how it feels to realize that, for the rest of your life, you will be struggling with something that you'd rather be rid of.

It is as if your shadow is grabbing you by the shoulders and pressing your towards the ground with the intent of burying you in a dark and earthy hole. You must exert the strength to push against him, and you can't ever have the luxury of forgetting he is there, because if you do, you're suddenly in that hole and he's carelessly tossing dirt on you. At which point, you have to exert even more effort to get out. It's exhausting mentally. I hate it.

The third part of that 40% I mentioned earlier, might be the fact that I am in between counselors. At the same time I was struggling with school, I was in the process of finishing up my sessions with the counselor I have had for the past three years. While I am still not sure how much this has affected me, I am beginning to think that it is affecting more than I think. I have been trying to find a new one, and by the grace of god, I will find out if I have one this next week.

In the mean time, I will try not to think too much more about all of this. At times I feel like I am lost in a dark and labyrinthine cave being stalked by a two starving coyotes. Yes, I know I could fight them off, and yes, I know that if I keep at it, eventually I will make it out of the cave, but not before I get bitten a lot, bump my head on the cave ceiling, and curse the darkness to the point of absurd futility, bitter about being lost. Maybe the key is to just stop and rest for a bit, maybe get some sleep, and fight the coyotes when my strength is up again.

Zombies

Foreward: The following is a dream that I had last night. For the heck of it, I decided that I would try and write it more creatively than a typical dream report. As far as a personal background, which might provide some context to the dream (although I am not sure how yet), these past few weeks for me have been truly terrible. And this is not the "terrible" of a daily complaint, but the "terrible" of ruined college career and straitened circumstances of ongoing poverty. I have suffered some emotional setbacks which have stopped my school progress for this term, and I am not sure how to fix it. Now, the dream:

Confusion. Things stop working like they usually should. I am drive around aimlessly in my used station wagon trying to figure out what the hell is happening to everybody. There is the electric and unplaceable oddity one feels after a major national crisis, like a terrorist attack or declaration of war. But outwardly, other than a few more people walking out on the street, people who appear perfectly normal, not too much is different.

I am not sure what happened. Perhaps a meteor hit the east coast, or there was a biological experiment gone wrong. I remember that this is how it happens in the movies. But, now that it is actually happening in real life, I don't have no idea how it started, and I am pretty sure that I will never know. There isn't anything on the radio. In fact, all of the stations on radio are silent. I can't tune anything in. This is my first and biggest indicator that something is really wrong: the media, constantly present, has shut down.

My first impulse is to find and meet up with my family, but I can't find them. They aren't at home. I'm very worried and am desperately looking around. Driving around the suburban neighborhood, I pull out my cell phone and try to call them. The voice on the other end says, "I'm sorry. This phonecall will cost 12,450 dollars the first minute and 3,000 dollars for every additional minute." While it seems clear that society has very definitely fallen apart, I inwardly debate the cost of the call while staring blankly distressed at the phone. If the world is truly crumbling, it won't matter how much debt I incur now because no-one will ever be able to collect. Unfortunately, I'm so poor, I can't take the chance. I think, "Yet another indignity of being poor: having been beaten into submission by the exorbitant costs of things."

I have somehow found my way to the local hospital, three stories with the red brick facade. Stopping in the lot, I get out of the car and walk through the hospital corridors looking for someone normal to talk to. Someone leaps out of nearby examination room very angry and looking to bite someone, possibly me. I quickly back away and find another corridor to search, where I see an angry person biting someone else. This appears to be the only indication that someone has become a zombie: they are angry and upset. They want to bite. In another corridor, I come across zombie blocking my way, menacingly. But, oddly, I smile and give a little wave. It seems to work! The zombie stands up straighter, smiles and waves back and moves off to search for another potential victim. I discover that if I smile and act very pleasant, my zombie attackers become mollified and walk away.

Eventually, I find the E.R., where there is a nurse who, while having been bitten, is not yet a zombie. She is trying to treat other people who are not yet zombies. She explains that the zombie infection is spreading very fast and that my best bet is to leave and get out of town. Deciding that this is good advice, I go for the exit in the room beyond. There is a plate glass window between rooms so I can look back and still see the nurse treating people. Suddenly, I see that there are about eight zombies with her, circling around her as if to attack. I must be horrified, because an expression of shock and pain escapes onto my face. The zombies, surprised at my inadvertent expression, lunge at the window. I hit the fire alarm to cause momentary confusion, and turn for the exit. As I am rushing out, I see a baseball bat that someone has left by the door. I grab it and quickly get back in my car to speed away.

I am driving out onto the coast. Society has indeed fallen apart, and I have still not found my family. There aren't many zombies out here as it is too remote for them to find or survive for very long. I come across a giant coastal home that the rich people own, but are now abandoned. I decide to take residency here. I can see the lights of the nearby town in the distance from the back sliding glass doors.

- - - - - - -

I have now become an older man, perhaps about sixty. I found another normal person to be with, a woman, who has essentially become my wife. We are still avoiding zombies. It is late at night, and I am trying to shut off every light that is on so the zombies will not see that someone lives here. But, because of the odd shape of the house, with large cathedral ceilings in tall and narrow rooms, I sometimes have to use a ladder to shut them off. I have my bat nearby to fend off any potential attackers, and there are a couple more bats in the upstairs bedroom. I am trying my best to take care of my wife and reassure her that everything is all right. As I shut off the last light, the lights near the porch, I look out towards the lights burning in the nearby zombie city and worry if they will ever eventually find us.

Spider Blahs

For some reason, I have been seeing lot more spiders that I usually do. And these are not small ones either, but large sized ones with funny looking antennae. Most people are generally creeped out by spiders. Fortunately, I am not one of them. Still, it's a little disconcerting to see these monsters and try to figure out where they are coming from. I did not offer any invitations to the spiders who live in the forest behind the house, and if by chance they read blogs, I would like them to know that they would do well to stay outside, preferably 200 feet away from the doors and windows. If I were a spider, I think that the trees would look like a nice place to live. I'm guessing they're on the move because they sense the upcoming change in seasons and need a place to come in from the cold.

Generally, I don't notice the little wild animals that pass through the yard. I'll notice a deer and her fawn only when I've startled them by tramping out in the yard to get to my car. I've heard, but not seen, the wild squirrels that live in the trees above the chicken coop when I am out collecting eggs. I'm afraid that most of my attention for animals is devoted to the seven or so cats that live out in the yard and behind the barn. By default, I am their primary caretaker. The big red barn in the backyard, the fact that I buy the dry cat food from the "feed store," and an ever present cat or two lounging out in the grass makes me feel like a farmer of sorts with cats as my chosen livestock. I imagine myself in bib overalls, chewing on a blade of grass, looking out over "my many head" of cats, and saying, "yessir! we've got ourselves a pretty crop this year. I reckon our operation will finally make a profit and we'll be able to affford that tractor!"

Aside from farming cats and avoiding spiders, I have not been doing much. My trip to the Portland Zine Symposium was my biggest adventure as of late. Mostly, I have been spending time at home trying to get my art going again. I've gotten the scanner working again for my art blog, and I made a little something for the Illustration Friday website. (If you don't already know, you can read what Illustration Friday is all about by following that link.) It's not the greatest work in the world, but I think it would make a pretty good spot illustration for the right article in a newsletter or magazine, even if it is cliched approach. I know that every artist is their own worst critic, so I try to keep that thought in mind in order to give me the perspective I need to create something. I've let too many negative thoughts shut down my creative motivation. As a consequence, I haven't practiced as much as I should have.

Someone in the news recently talked about the 10,000 hour theory, a theory that states one must spend 10,000 hours in a particular field to get really good at it. I'm not sure that I have spent 10,000 hours on my drawing yet. Ideally, I'd like to draw every day and gain the skills I need to feel satisfied and accomplished with my work; but then again, I would also like to exercise every day, find time to cook for myself every day, and while I am at it, win a billion dollars. School will be starting for me the last week of September, and I've signed up for a lot of work. I am sure that I'll be getting more drawing practice there. At least, the routine will be nice. (I'm a little worried about where I will get the gas money for the school commute, but I am sure that I will work something out.)

If I had to sum up, despite the anxiety I felt about not doing this and that, or anxiety about not being where I wanted in the future, I do feel somewhat good finally knowing (or having a clearer picture of) what it is that I want. I've spent a lot of time enveloped in a cold cloud bank of blahs, not knowing what to do, mists clouding every conceivable direction. Now, even though I haven't been anywhere, the mists are beginning to clear out and I think I can see which way I want to start heading. Like they say, at least it's a start.

Labor Day!

If I had done something interesting over the summer months, I probably would have blogged more or at least tried to write something. But, I spent most of the summer hidden in a dark room contemplating where things went wrong for me and how I could turn it all around. It sounds depressing, but really it was just sort of stupid. On the one hand, it wasn't like I was pulling the wallpaper off the walls trying to get to the woman moving around inside there. But, on the other hand, I was upset enough to waste an entire summer trying to get my wheels spinning in the right direction again.

Sure, I did a few things here and there. I drew a few pictures, and I read a book or two: nothing too remarkable about either one. But mostly, I spent my time in front of the television watching reruns of cartoons and old sitcoms, or I was surfing the internet and reading up on other people's art blogs. The art blogs were interesting. I liked to read about how people created their works or how they explained the thought process behind them. And believe it or not, the cartoons were interesting too because I was watching them with a artistically curious eye. (I would note how the animators used color in the backgrounds to enhance the mood of the scene, or I would try to deconstruct visually how the characters were created and moved about.)


Portland Zine Symposium

On the whole, however, the summer has been somewhat of a bust. I suppose if I were feeling charitable to myself I might describe this "bust" as period as internal reflection and recuperation. School doesn't start for me for almost another month, so there is still time to make something of the summer and have some outward accomplishments justify the internal ones. The tendrils of negative thinking are always waving just out of sight, reaching towards me and threatening to pull me back into the stupor of nothingness, a darkened shell. The weirdness of depression is knowing intellectually how all of this works, but emotionally falling into all of the traps anyway.

In the spirit of breaking out of my darkened shell, I went to the Portland Zine Symposium last week. Initially, it was a little awkward being one of the oldest people there, but even still, I enjoyed myself. It was nice to meet some of the do-it-yourself comic creators I admire and imagine how I might be able host a table of my own comics someday. Aside from the customary pacing of the aisles to observe the wares people had for sale, I attended two "workshops." (They weren't quite a workshop as I imagine them, but then again, I am not sure what else they would be, so the word will have to do.)

The first workshop was a comic "jam," essentially an even where one person draws a single comic panel of a story, passes it to their neighbor and trusts that they continue the story somehow in a reasonable form or another. I started a comic where a person (who distantly looks like me) wonders if his cat is an alien. The end result was a four panel comic where an alien cat demands tuna in exchange for not blowing up the earth. I was actually impressed by the creativeness of the other attendees, especially since I had no idea how to continue a cat alien story and, somehow, they did. The second workshop was a discussion, and then a demonstration, about how to do some screen printing at home. Frankly, the screen printing sounded like a lot of work. I was uncertain about how such a technique would benefit me or my art, so I did my best to sit through it. I suppose if I ever came up with a simple T-shirt design screen printing would be worthwhile, but then again, the cost of starting up would be too much, especially as the first results would be inevitably terrible.

As a side note, the symposium and workshops took place at a university that I almost attended myself, so the strangeness I felt during the symposium was amplified by thoughts about how my graduate career might have turned out differently if I chosen this college over the other. Physically being in "the other classroom," an opportunity that I imagine doesn't happen to many people, and picturing myself teaching a freshman class there, was just another one of those weird moments of the past few years and the fiasco of my graduate school experiences.

We shall see in the coming weeks if I am able to maintain a new level of activity and redeem the rest of my lost summer. One goal I would be happy to achieve is a blog post once a week, but I am definitely not going to sink into despair if I can't make it. A secret (in my favor) that I haven't told anyone is I already have some comics drawn up that could be posted on my other blog tomorrow if I wanted. I have only to scan them in and voila! Most are diary comics with one or two of them being several months old. I think I would be happy if I could get them up in a week or two. But even if I don't post anything else for yet another month, I am at least hoping for better and more productive days. We'll see.

The Man in the Hat

Many questions are raised by this video, but the two I really want to know are the following. One, where can I get an awesome hat like the one that guy at the bar is wearing? And, two, could I ever win a staring contest with him? (About that last question, the answer is clear: NO!) Side note: I actually have a CD of music written by the father of the man who composed the song in this video: S.D. Burman. He was also an uber-popular composer of Bollywood music.