So what now?

Dead flies

I was looking at a graveyard of splatted flies in front of me and couldn't help wondering about my own life. Our lives.

I don't know how many flies there are but there's an absolute shitload of us. And we die all the time. We're born and then BAM! Dead. That's it. Two generations later, we may as well never have existed.

Our atoms, those things that made up each of our parts, are still there though, right? We're all just made up of bits. Not all that different to the flies. To a chair. Anything. Just a bunch of stuff that came together and made a form. Could actively move those atoms around.

Isn't that amazing? That we can group these parts together and move them around in space actively, with our own thoughts? Which, in turn, are some incredibly complex organisation of these parts and impulses from one to another. It is amazing. In many ways, it's totally and utterly unbelievable.

Am I to believe this is an accident?

That our self-awareness is little more than an accidental curse? A by-product of a random system created by millions of years of chaos?

That looking down on Earth, we're nothing more than the movement of atoms brought together by gravity?

Doesn't sound quite right. It actually doesn't sound all that likely.

If it is, it's not likely that we'd be unique. The only ones here. There must be others like us (at least in some ways) in the Universe. You know, now that I think about it, it's weird to think that there is so much life, has been so much life, all over our planet... and we're the only ones writing books? Painting pictures? Wasting our time on blogs? How is it we have come so far and not one of those millions of other life forms on our planet haven't?

There's not just one life form that can swim. Not just one that has camouflage. Not just one that can light up. Not just one that can use sonar.

But there is just one that can make a television. Build a car. Flip a burger.

That just doesn't sound likely to me.

There's something not quite right about our whole existence. It just doesn't sound likely to me.

Early learners

Susan sent me this link to this rather fancy new children's furniture - their very own cubicle. Well, maybe they didn't intend for it to be represented in that way. Maybe not. But that's what it is.

I couldn't help thinking about the role of children's shows when I saw that. Of course, I'm always thinking about children's shows. It's what I do. But have you seen Higglytown Heroes? It's rather entertaining but the message of every show is that you should work hard. Each episode highlights a different job and shows how important they are to the community.

They're heroes you see.

It's quite a nice thought actually. The local pizza delivery guy does deserve credit. Many people doing their day to day jobs deserve more credit than they get.

But the message in each show seems to be simply - get out there and work, children! Work! Work! Work!

And I can't help wondering who those children are going to end up working for. Children learn from television and this is one show that has a clear message it is teaching. Some are less clear and some are plain disturbing (I may review some children's shows at some point, showing the lessons as they appear).

I've rambled on in the past about how we're living in this age of distraction. Bombarded by choices and yet also shackled by the things we think we need or should have.

Not shackled simply because that's the way life went or just happened to end up. No. Shackled because it serves some people's interests to keep us that way. Like modern day slaves.

But willing slaves.

And to make someone a willing slave, just like getting them hooked into a cult, you have to do a certain amount of conditioning. If you expect it to continue all their lives, you have to do a lot of conditioning. And that has to start early.

That's what schools are for, I guess.

Many schools grew from a need to create work forces of a certain level and, importantly, with certain leanings and loyalties in how they think. Often religiously motivated. To serve the machine.

We still do that today, but it's corporations now. The religion aspect has faded somewhat, though the history of the corporation seems tied to religion if you go back far enough - that's simply about who was holding the power at the time.

Now, we're creating our work force even before school. With shows, toy furniture. It's conditioning.

Is this conditioning something we should accept?

Or reject?

Juggling

That's an old image by the way but one I just hadn't posted before. Probably because it's not very good but, hey, it gives you something to look at, eh?

Man, it's busy right now. Times being what they are, that's a good thing but (and I mentioned this on the blog last year) things will dry up early this year.

And then things get exciting and scary. I have so many different directions - that's exciting. None guaranteed or even highly likely to lead to an actual income. Scary. I am lucky to have a safety net with a project up next but without much of a role for me. Sort of a consultation role - which usually means very close to unemployed but not close enough that I can't live.

So I guess it's not all that scary at all.

The real scares come with the idea that I have to push myself forward and choose a direction. CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER, as some fighting game might say. But I choose Dhalsim because he breathes fire but then realise I can't handle his ridiculous hang time. And then I'm well and truly buggered, aren't I?

I could have chosen Ryu or Ken but that's boring. Safe. For people stuck in a rut. Well, I've quite enjoyed my rut. Right now, I'm spamming Hadokens all over the place. And it's great.

But soon, Ryu and Ken will be off the roster. I'm going to have to pick someone else.

That's a bit of a confused thought and will lose any of you not familiar with Street Fighter. Mostly, what I'm getting at is this - I began last year working on a tough project, with the promise of one I really wanted. This year, I begin the year on that project I wanted. When you got what you wanted and know it will end, what then?

Catching up with people

Thing about this panel is that, usually, it's not like this at all. Oh yeah, somewhere in there, I'm comparing myself to others and managing to come out of it worse off but the truth is that most of the people I meet who I knew in school aren't settled and don't have that good life.

Some do. But most seem like they are still floating around like they're in their early twenties. Changing careers or working ridiculously hard at some worthless one, having been seeing someone for a year or so, look how drunk I got at some party, and that sort of thing. As a generation, we just don't seem to be able to settle. By my age, we're meant to be completely settled. We're the older generation. Sad but true. At least for me. And yet, we're really lagging behind.

Does it matter?

Yeah, I think it does. Because you only have to look at older people to know that old age creeps up very, very slow and then strikes fast. And one day we're going to wake up and we'll be old. We'll have trouble getting out of bed. It will take several hours to walk to the shops. We'll bitch about just about everything we see on television. We'll tell the young just how dangerous the world is and maybe even collect newspaper cuttings of horrendous stories to prove our point.

And we'll realise we're old.

And we skipped a whole stage of life. Probably a very good stage.

I wonder why that is? Why it's like that now?

I think I blame the corporate world, advertising and chick flicks. Yeah, that's a long topic in itself but I think we're focusing too much on this career thing for stuff we're constantly told we should have. A life we all deserve that is little more than a materialistic fantasy. And, on the relationship side (and this is where chick flicks come in), we're taught to expect some stupidly romantic happy ending that only occurs because you can end a movie at a very fixed point. Cut six months later from the end of any chick flick and you'll find something a little more like real life. Our stories don't end at that moment of connection. And it's rarely perfect.

But, whatever the reason, this generation, my generation, is very slow to grow up. And, even coming from someone who lives in a world of cartoons, games, toys and complete fantasy, I don't actually think that's a good thing.

Defining moments

Every moment I live dictates how the rest of my life will be. Every single choice or, more often, choice I don't make defines my future.

In a way, every moment of every day, I am fighting for my life.

But I live unaware of that fight. No, that's not true. I'm aware of it but I try to ignore it. Avoid it. Because, really, I just want an easy life. A simple life. But doing that, I'm losing the battle. Throwing the whole war.

It's November already.

All around, I'm seeing things listed for 2010. Release dates and so on. And every time I see 2010 written down, even here, I think it's a date from some fictional future. It's science fiction. The Space Year 2010. It's not a real year in my lifetime. It's the year some sci-fi story is set in. Where some guy has to escape some oppressive Big Brother society, running from robots with laser guns.

But, aside from the robots with laser guns, that's where we're at. That's now. Or almost.

And I can do things right now to change my future. A real future, not some robots with laser guns future (though that should be the real future). But keeping up that realisation, actually acting on it... well that's a lot of pressure and a hell of a lot of hard work.

And I'm so tired.

Monday

I don't mind not having my phone with me but my iPod is an essential. As is my pants. Not sure how that happened. I leave them out so I can't miss them.

Unless somebody moved them...?

Forgot my headphones too so I can't just listen to music from my computer either. Oh well. One of those days.

It's September. I've been doing this blog almost two years now. That's flown. I have been far less prolific over the last while. Things have been busy. Is anyone still here?

But it also means we're going into Autumn and on towards Winter. And the project I'm on finishes early next year and I have no idea what will happen after that. I am faced with the prospect of having nothing to move on to and that is something I haven't had to face in a long, long time. It's a little scary. Actually it's very scary as the last times I faced this, I didn't have children to feed. Now, I do.

I'm not sure how it will all work out.

There's a small work for hire project that may happen but it's looking less and less likely. That wouldn't be an awful one to do by any means. Well within my comfort zone. Then there's another project that might happen but it's one I feel should never be made and I just don't see it in my future. If I was going to do a job I am completely against, there are probably ones that can make me more money - like dealing arms or drug running.

And then there's... nothing.

If I didn't have a family to feed, I'd live on beans for a while and write a book or something. I'd actually use a break to really put my time into something creative. But things are different now.

All part of growing up, I guess.

If I looked how I feel...

I thought this would be interesting but had no idea when I started just how disgusting the final image would be.

This documents how my physical form feels.

It's actually not far off how I look, except you can't see things like the sore knee or neck just by looking. The old, exhausted eyes, on the other hand, are obvious for all to see.

How would your image look?

The most important part of the day

I'm beginning to notice a pattern. It's really rather simple. If I have a nice smooth journey into work, passing any traffic and having good luck with the lights, I am more likely to have a better day.

The journey into work is setting the tone for my whole day.

Now some days I wake up exhausted and, on those days, things are tough anyway but a good journey in can make all the difference and goes a long way towards improving how that day will play out. I do notice that the person who gets on my little bike can be quite a dramatically different person to the one who gets off it on the other end.

Those of you who have been reading the blog a long time might remember my posts about waiting at bus stops. Well, those days are over. Man, those were soul-destroying times. Waiting for buses that never turned up or went by full can absolutely destroy a day. Of course it wasn't all bad - I miss the time just sitting listening to music. But, overall, going to work on my little bike is a thousand times better.

I wonder if there are any other early morning changes I could make that would contribute towards a better day?

The climb

I'm making some conscious changes. I've made conscious changes before but then slip back. Maybe that will happen again but a temporary move forward is better than no move forward at all.

It's like drawing. Okay so some of you artists out there blow me away and I can't possibly compare. But I bet you have some drawing habits, that probably started in your teens, that became your default way of drawing certain things. And you can improve and move past them. Learn better ways of doing things. But if you do 100 drawings in a row, you'll see those habits creep back and, by drawing 100, there'll be quite a bit of your teenage drawing in there.

I'm right, aren't I?

We learn and we get better. But those ways we learned, those patterns, they are still there somewhere. And it's by consciously overcoming them and by learning new patterns (in drawing, by repetition) that we can be better artists.

Well, you good artists anyway.

I think it goes far beyond drawing. It is simply how we live. We fall back on patterns. And those patterns, while often easier (even though it may not seem that way, we have to be getting something out of them on some level), are not always good for us.

But, with drawing, I think you have to see your patterns - that my hands always look like big gloves, for example - before you can really catch them and make them better.

Failing and succeeding

I'm failing miserably at plain ol' life at the moment. The frustration and anger that came with something very simple, something for someone else that I managed to selfishly turn into my own battle (I lost), caused me to grip so hard on to my mobile phone that it bent and snapped in my hand, little pieces of glass going into my fingers. Just tiny pieces - it sounds far more dramatic than it actually was.


Pain in the ass really. It was a good phone and was part of an upgrade package so that one failed moment is going to cost me a lot.


Somewhere very early in childhood, I convinced myself that real life was too hard for me. And I've been living to that idea ever since. I don't know where it came from, how that happened.

So I live in my head and pretty much always have.



But here's the thing that has just occurred to me today - my head is an absolute bastard. I have close to no memories of my childhood. But what I remember vividly are the nightmares. I remember nightmares as far back as when I was three years old and remember them like they are happening right now and yet no real memories at all.


My head was a dark, scary place. Not some pleasant escape. I would retreat in there and end up tormented. Why? Like some sort of battered wife syndrome?

Even now, my life on paper is pretty good. The times when I feel wrong, tormented, unable to cope, it's entirely from within. And yet that is where I spend most of my time.


Those who have read my blog for a while know that my particular interest in animation and my work is in shows for young children, usually very young children. Sweet, innocent, happy work. I love it. More than that, I'm good at it. Even right now, while I'm having a hard time with the mundane in life, I'm involved in a project that is going to absolutely rock and I'm pulling the whole thing together and doing it damn well, even if I say so myself.



I've often told myself (and others) that it's because I work for the child I once was. I still think that's true.

But where I think I may have got it wrong is here - I thought that I was creating work that the child in me loved and thrived on. And now, I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually that I am creating work that may have gone some way to repairing that child. To, in some way, balance the dark thoughts. Maybe even overpower them.


I don't know.


I do know, as far as work goes, it's a strength. It's odd that it matters little what the state of my life is like or even my psyche - if I am doing the right work (being on the creative end of a show I believe to be good for children) - I can do a really good job. I am a success. And I love it.

But, as for the rest of my life, that is where I fail. I wonder if it's possible to fix that while not losing the strength in my work? I hope so.

The need for sleep

Today is a little better than yesterday.

I need sleep. A lot of it. All at once.

The lack of sleep is now inhibiting my ability to conduct everyday life. One way or another, that can't continue.

On the plus side, I can now do an excellent zombie impression with little to no effort. Not the rubbish fast zombies. Proper zombies. Those fast zombies aren't even zombies and totally miss the point. I've heard people justify them by saying - well, they're like zombies only more scary because they're fast and that makes them more dangerous.

Following that logic, they should be given guns. Then they'd be even more dangerous. Or nukes. Think how much more scary that would be. Hard to get more dangerous than that. Or even a death ray, like Godzilla. Actually, they could be bigger than skyscrapers too. Then, even their footsteps would be dangerous.

Totally misses the point.

It's the slow, shambling creeping death that defines them. Their strength in numbers, not the individual. A huge part of the suspense of a good zombie movie comes precisely from people being lulled into a false sense of security because they are slow. Mocking them. Letting their guard down.

That's why they work. That's what makes them creepy.

And when the zombie apocalypse comes (and it will), you people who think they're only scary if they can run or have death rays will be the first to fall.

When the outcome is staring you in the face

If Blogger let me (maybe it does and I don't know), I could just sum up my issues in one post and put it on a loop, to post maybe every three days.

The same thing.

I have bitten off more than I can chew. And whatever it is that I've eaten is now stuck to the insides of my mouth and I can't spit it out. I believe there is peanut butter involved.

I have many things on the go.

I shouldn't have.

What comes with juggling projects is juggling people. And I just realised today that I told one person that nothing has been happening with another project. A project that, next week, will be published as part of a list of projects going ahead. A list with my name all over it. Pox.

A simple mistake. A hopeful ommission more than a lie. To stick with the juggling analogy, I was simply trying to separate my balls. Ahem. That didn't come out quite right but you know what I mean.

Next week, my balls will collide.

And all I can do is wait.

For my balls...

...to collide.

Be careful what you wish for...

I feel a little isolated by my own pressure.

I have this constant feeling that I should be doing more. I've blogged about that before. Actually, you're probably bored to death with it. But it's still there - that I should be pushing in many directions. I'll push in a direction and be rewarded for that... but I'll find I don't want the reward because that reward is more work.

That's something I should be happy about. But I'm often left empty. Sometimes I think I try to do things simply to prove I can. Not because I actually want the end result.

Still, in a way, that feeling is coming from a good place. Right now, a show I was very closely involved with is taking off just a little more. And, some time from now, maybe in a year or so, that could turn out to be good for me. So I need to be ready for that.

And that means pressure.

On a totally unrelated note, check out this seemingly dull news story from the BBC. "Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture. The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria."

I can't be the only one to see a problem there.

Totally swamped at the moment so apologies for the lack of updates and the lack of quality.

I'm really juggling things right now. I've gone into my production system of not reading any emails on a Friday or weekend. Because invariably someone will send me a work mail that will piss me off no end and I won't be able to deal with it until Monday.

It would simmer all through the weekend and build and build until I storm into the studio on Monday morning a little like the Hulk. Only not so ripped. Like a flabby Hulk. And I'd be angry.

And they don't like me when I'm angry.

Sure enough, when I came in this morning, there's a mail from a complete gobshite sitting in my mailbox that came in last thing Friday afternoon. That would have killed my weekend.

But today, I'm not the Hulk. I don't need to smash anything. I can deal with it on a Monday morning.

Surely it's not still 2009?

I'm a bit tired at the moment. That's barely worth mentioning. It's like saying I'm doing a spot of breathing right now.

I have a feeling that something just isn't quite right but I have no idea what it is. That happens to other people, right? There's just something there... bothering me.

Things change next week. I've been writing on a project and, next week, production starts. My life will likely get a little crazy for a while but I like that. I like being busy. What I don't like is having to deal with some of the external shite that goes with that. Dealing with people who haven't an arse notion what they are talking about and yet think they need to give you 'notes'.

I must do a post on the culture of notes some time. It's utterly ridiculous and often self-destructive, leading to people who are barely familiar with projects making calls about things over the people who know the project inside-out.

Yeah, I'll go into that some time...

Just one more thing -

Susan sent me this link about a three year-old child who it seemed died from side effects of drugs to treat her bipolar condition. A three year-old child. Bipolar. I have to wonder if some people are familiar with toddlers. On their best days, they can seem absolutely stark-raving lunatics. That does not mean they should be doped to death with psyche drugs. But the earlier pharmaceuticals companies get children hooked on psyche meds, the more money they make. This is why they were pushing for mandatory testing on children entering the school system.

And I can't help thinking, with the amount of times that pharma companies have been hauled up in the courts (and so that only counts the shit we know about), if a person had been found guilty of even one of these crimes, they would be put away. Shouldn't companies guilty of crimes be forced to cease trading rather than given a fine and sent on their merry way to continue their crimes?

It's all a bit much

A cautionary tale

On dreams and letting them go, from my post a few days ago on this, Anonymous Gerbil posted some very interesting comments.

"I gave up my dreams years ago, there's nothing anymore. Days go by, I lurk in net like a ghost, acomplish nothing and just wait for the inevitable, oblivion..."

"At first it was nice. Life was simple and cold beer was that "heaven". But one can live like that only for so long. Now I can't even recall when I last time actually enjoyed about anything. And all that because nothing matters anymore."

However accurate Anonymous Gerbil's assessment is of his own life, there is an important warning here.

It can be very difficult to get up in the morning without a real reason for doing so. We all seem to need a point to our lives. Goals seem to get us moving, keep us going. Is a life without dreams a pointless existence?

I'm not sure that it is. I think that's certainly a danger. I guess there is another factor here, one that was brought up by Bwakathaboom in the comments -

"The challenge you face with regards to screenwriting, television production, etc. is that everyone in those fields must ultimately beg the "gatekeepers" for permission to achieve their dream."

Absolutely right. And that is the kick in the pants every time. To quote from my favourite album of last year, "they got dreams of taking someone else's dreams away".

Maybe it's not the concept of having dreams that is the problem. It's dreams that depend on the approval of others.

Maybe it's not a case of dropping dreams altogether, but being selective and refining them down to find dreams that don't depend on others.

I finally managed to see Star Trek at the weekend. Thoughts, however late, on that in the next post.

Wanting what you don't have

More on those dreams, or lack of. Some great comments on the last one. I want to go into some of them in another post. But I was thinking more about the abandonment of dreams and thought back to early rejections, hence the teenage version of myself in the pic.

A phrase I've often heard says that it is the journey that is important, not the destination.

And yet we are driven by destinations, not journeys. In most cases, the journey becomes worthless if the correct destination is not reached. Wasted time and energy.

I think back to crushes I've had on people. Some serious. Others just when people sort of made their way into my head, temporary and amounting to little more than the crush itself. I don't think I've ever enjoyed that. Ever. It's not fun. Thoughts seem twisted, they lead to self-doubt, endless questions and a slight queasy feeling in my stomach.

What is fun and very exciting is when that crush leads to an actual connection. But that's the destination.

The journey, the crush, for me, is actually a pretty horrific experience.

And that, I think, is because it amounts to wanting something I don't have. Or, in some cases, know I will never have. The reason I'm using a crush as an example there is that it is quite a primal, pure emotional version of what I'm talking about. But wanting anything, even on a very logical level, has elements of that. The fear of rejection, the sense of unfulfillment, the temptation to obssess on things that will never happen and, eventually, the letting go and moving on.

Now that I'm thinking of relationships, I remember reading a book as a teenager on girls and how to get them. Yes, I read a book like that. No, it didn't help. It said basically just keep asking girls out. You may go through 99 rejections but that 100th time could be the winner.

But what kind of demoralised worthless shell would I be after being rejected by 99 girls? There would be nothing left of any humanity for that 100th girl to respond to.

When those rejection letters came through one after another last year, trying to get a project moving, it was like that. They didn't get easier. Each one cut deeper. And I was left damaged.

Was it worth it?

Dreams

This is something that has been on and off for quite some time. I think I may have even blogged about it at some point but I've long forgotten. I probably meant to but didn't.

At some point, it's time to give up.

I'm right, aren't I?

It has to be true for many of us. Most of us. We have some things we want to do but, at some point, many of us have to accept we're not going to get to do those things.

It sounds bad but maybe it isn't.

That searching, those endless knocks, the criticism, the failures - they're not good for you. How could they be? Maybe just accepting that some things just aren't going to happen will allow me to let go of so many disappointments, stop me wasting large chunks of my life. At the beginning of last year (or was it the end of the year before?), I sent out a load of submissions for a project that I had worked long and hard on. I had a 100% failure rate. Stock rejection letters one after another.

What did I gain from that?

More recently, I spent many months on a screenplay. I sent the draft off quite some time ago and have heard nothing. Now, if there was good news, you can be sure I'd have heard it. Did I throw away those months? Even if there is good news, what that good news would be is the tiniest of tiny steps forward, possibly adding on considerably more work before the inevitable happens.

Most of us in any sort of creative field have goals and goals. So many, often very different. And I'm finding myself a complete failure at many of them. And that process of working so hard and then not getting results is killing me.

And yet, right now, I'm doing something else. Something I've done before. Working on a show for very young children - not animating. Writing. And I like it. More than that, I'm good at it. I care about it and I'm in a field where so few do. Maybe I should just finally accept that that is what I do and let go of the rest? Let those other dreams die.

Actually I did blog about this before. I've found it here in this post. Last September. I wrote "it's a bit like those claw machines right now. So many things to grab and yet those stupid claws are utterly useless. I'm getting old. I'm seriously thinking of letting go of the claw machine and playing a bit of Street Fighter instead."

Is it time I finally did that? Let go of that poxy claw machine thingy and go and play Street Fighter?

Not SF IV. I mean back when it was good.