Sunday, September 10, 2017

Another quick update.

I’m running on 4 hours of sleep and I’ve got a ton to do. So I’m going to make this pretty quick. Lots of good stuff this week. I let go of the original idea so I wouldn’t be chocking myself on trying to make it work. And I’ve decided I’m just going to write this story online, in this blog. So I’ll be making my first post on it after a little editing and a little decision making about the site.

So stay tuned for that, as well as an explanation as to why I decided to do things this way.


For now, on to the next thing.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Sac Anime Summer 2017

There’s a certain amount of guilt that comes with not following through with things. While I have no intention on giving up, I do have to say the guilt and shame does cause demotivation at a fairly large scale. This is the plight of my brain. Not only are there so many different types of projects to work on (comics, novels, music, podcasts, ect.), but there are different projects within each section to work on. More than one comic. More than one song. More than one podcast.

It’s hard to stay positive and motivated when there seems like so much to do. Everything needs to be done now, and five different ideas are fighting for attention in my brain. Most recently, I’ve decided to take my two-decade old stack of notes and finally organize them. That, added with trying to talk myself into my friend’s new band and all of this game development stuff begging for my attention, and I’m forced to make some tough decisions. I have to refocus on just a handful of things, and stop trying to do everything all the time. This is difficult for me.

I recently asked a friend how she was capable of focusing on just one project and get so much done every week. She told me that I had to be in love with what I’m working on. I struggle with this idea. I love the idea of making a comic. But I’m not sure I’m in love with the material. I like the material. I like the idea of making a graphic novel out of it. I don’t know if I love the work. Forcing myself day after day to “find time” to get it done. I hate that. It just seems… Wrong. And no matter how much I schedule, it always seems like something comes up that eats up my extra time, and then there’s no time to relax and enjoy myself. Which is important to me, because I’ve just learned how to do that.

I also had a friend visit fairly recently that I shared some of my work with. She seemed to be more impressed with my school work than my creativity, more impressed with the effort than the actual material. I’m not sure how I feel about that. And that last sentence is a problem in and of itself. Am I doing these things to fulfill my personal goals and need for creativity? Or am I doing it to impress people? Am I juggling plates because I’m too spread out and need to refocus? Or am I showing off? How is it that things go from being so important to just kind of being there? Is it my own disheartened sense of the world, a stack of bad habits that are hard to break, or am I just being too hard on myself? It’s hard to tell looking from the inside out.

To be honest, there’s been a personal issue that has had me on edge for weeks. On top of that, I’ve been fighting to stay on track in school because everything seemed to just happen all at once. And there’s a social aspect that seems to pop up when I’m supposed to be working that I have a big problem saying no to. While all of these things might be perceived as excuses, there is a viability to their importance. Balancing an activity as important vs. being an excuse is difficult as well. Something I’m not sure I’m doing correctly.

Of course, a part of me is screaming that I’m going through a rough patch, and now that it seems to be calming down, I can get back into things. But another fear I have is the idea of these rough patches constantly affecting me. Going back to school is meant to alleviate some of these rough patches. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. I have to again admit the difficult nature of my brain and the way it works, and its inability to cope with things when they come up. Are my reactions justified within the situations I find myself? Or am I making things hard for myself by stressing so badly I make myself physically nauseous? It’s hard to tell without outside input. And I wonder as well, am I listening to the advice I get from my friends? Is it sinking in? Or am I just absorbing words without any effort to adapt to the ideas shared with me?

No one has answers to these things. Or rather, everyone will have an opinion, and it’s impossible to figure out who is right. It makes my head hurt, really. There’s no guarantee that I would even change anything if there were a clear answer to any of this. When the day is done, life is just the way it is, and either I choose to work on this project, or I don’t. Even now as I write this, I struggle with how to finish it, or if I should finish it at all. My nihilism is high, and while my creative projects have always been a good escape from the pointless world around me, they’ve somehow become part of that pointless world. The idea bothers me a little, but I struggle with exactly how much. I hope it will be enough to make me continue working. Experience tells me it won’t be.

So what do I do about it at this point? Scheduling only works when I have enough energy to force myself to work. Accountability from my writer’s group hasn’t seemed to work. Self-accountability has been even worse. So what does one do? Set it aside once again? Give up? Start over? Change mediums? Change stories? Surely the biggest piece of advice I’m going to receive is to keep pushing myself. Push through it. Keep working until it’s done. And clearly I’m going to do that. Even if it takes me 20 years to defeat my demons and actually accomplish this. But it’s not easy. It’s definitely not that.

I haven’t done anything with Dream Story for weeks. However, I have been working on other things. And I think I’m going to continue doing that for a little longer. At least until I get my notes sorted out. There’s something about the whole idea that I’m not exactly sure about anymore. It’s going to take some time and self-resolution to get back to a sure place. In the meantime, I’m just not going to worry about it, carry the story with me, and hopefully inspiration will strike.


Hopefully.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Now that I've Skipped a Week

So where am I at now?

Well, in the last two weeks I’ve written about four sheets. It’s honestly not all that much. But I have done other things. It was quite a job getting my financial aid in order for the coming semester. Technically, I’m not done. But I’m comfortable that I’ll get through this semester without any issues. I’ve been working with a group of friends putting together a Kickstarter. I’m happy to say we’re putting on the finishing touches and should be ready to launch in about a week. And I’ve binged all of West World, Defenders, and Deep Space Nine over the last month. Which might seem less like an accomplishment and more like laziness. But I’ll chalk it up to consuming inspiration. Only because they’re all excellent shows.

The truth is, while it’s been busy, I have had plenty of free time. And I’ve accomplished next to nothing when it comes to this story. And I’m disappointed about that. I started out so well, and I got into my own head about things. I questioned myself too many times. I lost sight of why I liked the story. I let myself run with too many ideas and never actually did any writing. And this is a pattern I’ve noticed in myself all too often.

I missed my deadline as well. Given, it was pretty ambitious. Two months is actually a pretty short amount of time to complete a story. I have to remember that and not beat myself up for missing my mark. It was possibly unrealistic, and my excitement at the beginning was unbalanced. It could be why I fell off so badly over the last few weeks. I forgot that this is a marathon. It’s going to take a while to get to where I want to be. Especially because this is my first attempt at writing a graphic novel.

Also, I have to be honest about something. School is important to me (and starts tomorrow at 9am). This Kickstarter is important to me. My podcasts are important to me. Unfortunately, on the list of priorities, it’s a lot lower than I wanted to admit. Which is fine. This is a marathon. As long as I continue working on it, carving away little bits at a time, I will eventually finish. It doesn’t need to happen right this second. But I do have to work on it regularly.

So the new plan is not to work on it every day. It would be unrealistic to do so with my current schedule. But I can work on it a few times a week for a few hours. And over the course of the 16-week semester, I should see it slowly create itself. And that’s the way it should happen anyway.

So I’m recommitting myself. But not as hard core as before. Just enough to get some work done in those little gaps of free time. And I should be okay with that. Especially since I’ve completely flipped the story on its head and sent the whole thing into a spiral. Which is also okay. Because writing is messy. And no matter how well you plan or lay things out, the finished product will never look like your original idea.


Time to fuck shit up.