failing up... I AM Dunkan.
bleh... I just spent a good amount of the night/morning trying to thumbnail out a bunch of pages for the Visual Novel I'm supposed to be working on w/ Geistrums called "Psychomatic" (which by the way the more I see becomes more and more clear to me how terrible a title it is, but I can't think of anything clever or visually interesting.)
But I barely got through many of the thumbnails, it was frustratingly hard to concentrate because in the back of my mind I knew I needed to go to sleep so I could wake up early to start the rough pencils for Goblyn chapter 65, and then I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I need to thumbnail out Eustro chapter 14 because that's coming up in a week.
but I also needed to finish the designs on this months monster stickers as well as get over my (i don't know what you call it, wall with a locked door in the middle?) thing that's been preventing me from coming up with an idea for a wallpaper for February. FEBRUARY!? gaaaaah!
I don't want to just crank out any old thing as a wallpaper just to get the deed done, you know? I want it to be significant in some way, a little special because of what it represents. I didn't want to contribute elements, to make these pieces offerings in the great sacrifice of disposable, forgettable art. I didn't want any of that kind of stuff to show or even be accidentally perceived in the work. not just the wallpapers... none of it.
I let my anxiety get the better of me, as I have a tendency to do. But managing these things is like driving several cars down a multi lane highway at the same time, they all go different speeds but you have to watch them all to keep them going straight, but that's not the problem for me. for me I sometimes stare at the road too long, the lines in the street, staring at the changing patterns of the asphalt showing how it's been patched and not patched year after year. listening to the weird gravely oscillating humming of the synthetic wheels rolling over those asphalt patterns. and then I look up because I just realized I've been concentrating on driving one car too long, too intensely swerving, slowly, into one of the other lanes.
I don't crash, no, it's been a while since I crashed. but I snap out of it and panic and slow down my speed on all the cars. this metaphor sucks by the way and I'm sorry you're still reading it.
I dunno' I just had the urge to write about all these projects happening at once and how they made me feel because I had a panic attack late last night. My head was thumping my heart was lie a million suns exploding in my chest over and over, my lungs hurt and I was cold and my head was fuzzy and I just wanted to run and scream and hide somewhere or just stop and die so I could stop feeling that way. and I haven't had one of those since I worked at my last job. I literally used to have panic attacks as I came off the train and crossed the street from the station to the building I worked in. Just remembering it is making my heart beat faster. But it wasn't just me it was Geistrum too, she worked there with me and admitted to me on several occasions that she had panic attacks just walking up to the building as well. what an unhealthy job. But, I realized last night my panic attack wasn't just the idea that I was trying to juggle a bunch of projects at once, hell, I've always done that. (I get bored very easily if something's not a creative challenge or engages my imagination in an interesting way.) this was the fear that if I didn't do this...
1. I wouldn't get another chance to put out these comics, and stickers and art and... and stuff and stuuuuuuff! because I might die tomorrow or just y'know... end up back at some sub-corporate company doing a job I dislike. which is like dying and going to hell. (no really for about three or four months I was convince I had died and gone to hell. the only way I knew i hadn't? I still had my drawing hand. In hell, I'd have no right hand.) O_O
2. would be letting you down, because I'm not making good on what I said I would and being a productive responsible artist.
3. letting Geistrum (and myself) down by not finishing my end of a project and not trying my best to prevent myself and a fellow artist from having to suffer through more anxiety attacks by actually succeeding as artists.
All of these get me, because they all deal with me freaking out over feeling like I'm letting people down constantly.
consistently.
like it's my pattern.
I hope it's not, but these are pretty new branches of that super highway I was driving on earlier. I have no clue where they go I realized I'm driving all the cars but you're the passenger and the person I'm on my way to pick up at the end of the voyage. I try to prevent myself from getting so stressed out by the stuff swirling around in my head that I shut down.
I did that already, back at the end of 2013 into early 2014 just as I had started that job and watched it slowly leak into my life and leech away all my energy to do anything except shamble into work like ajob zombie and make money for a boss I never saw but had the not so great pleasure of meeting the lapdog of the person he sold the company off to.
guh... sorry. I don't want to spit venom here.
I just really hated that part of my life. I shut down. Goblyn didn't get made for... months. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know what to do with anything. I'm not going to say I've sorted it all out, because I haven't and right now I'm back in nearly the same seat I was just prior to getting that horrible job. Having the ability to work full time on my art but hearing the slow creaking clopping footsteps coming down the shiny newly waxed, blandly colored, hall. knowing eventually someone is going to respond to my resume and ask me to come work for them, and that makes me panic with more anxiety than I feel like one person can handle. because it won't be something I want to do, rather something I have to do. but I question (have always questioned)
why, do I have to? why can't I... why can't any of us do the thing we want? the thing that drives us in the morning? the thing that makes us passionate about life? why? why do we compromise? why do we accept this kind of life? what makes succeeding as an artist with your art so friggin' difficult?
I ask this of myself but I don't know how to answer.
what prevents me from pushing myself to the point that I can and DO actually succeed artistically? what is it in most of us artists? is it internal or external? is it something we can control or not? see... that's what's really going on behind the scenes, what's creating the anxiety, what's under the hood of those cars moving down the super highway. Not knowing why or what. I've been wracking my brain, hoping for an answer to find even a little clue, but I'm not even sure I would recognize it if I stumbled over it. honestly.
I think to myself, "well... I guess I'll get back to making art? I guess." and then I realize. I'm my character Dunkan from the Psychomatic VisNov I'm working on. I gave him my life up til now, but I gave him a way out. someone came along and saved him, but unlike Dunkan I have to save myself from that psuedo-corporate hellscape.
I do. but I don't even have a clue where the emergency exit is.
no really... back to making art.
if you read all of this thank you for reading my rambles trying to figure out some stuff by actually typing it out. it's the only therapy I can afford.
:/
