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.

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.