I Provided For Myself

Hell, I'm such a wreck. Can't sleep, can't sleep, can't sleep. Funny how stress can make you feel so catatonic. There's a hell of a lot of things I could spend my time doing that would be more productive than how I've spent the last week. Games. Comics. TV shows. They all seem more important than straightening out my own life. How is that? How did this happen? I want to get my old energy back. I wonder where it went.

I was going to do Camp Nano for April, hell, I was looking forward to it. Haven't written a single word and won't write one. I feel so frustrated when I can't write. I have so many ideas, but every time I try to put it in words it's like I've lost my magic. Lost my touch. Words just come out wrong, sound cliché, every line is tired old crap. It's become somewhat... achievement-focused, my writing, and when I feel I can't achieve, I am blank. Out of words. It's like that time I used to spend thinking has gone haywire and I'm instead filling it with fictional universes, fictional characters, delving deep into plots behind make-believe stories. I guess this would be a good thing, if I was actually using it for something; but it's become a replacement for writing. Don't get me wrong... not looking for sympathy or for writing tips. Heck, if I wanted writing tips I could just follow my own. Heck knows I've got a lot of them. Doesn't help. I've fallen into a black hole of creativity. When I want to do something, everything else that I have to do piles up on me, and kills that little joy of creating that once flourished.

I mean, I could do so many things, I don't even need to write. I could draw or animate, whatever. But I just don't DO any of these things. I just feel so emptied. And what bugs me the most is, that I feel like I'm wasting every minute of every day. I have no idea what the future looks like for me. I don't know what the NEAREST future looks like for me. I'm trying to decide whether or not to give up this apartment, and I have to decide before May. It's risky trying to keep it, seeing as I don't even know if I'll be able to provide for myself after I graduate. Everything... not just school... my future... my summer... my life... my family... everything, everything, weighs on me. Maybe I shouldn't trouble myself... but I do.

I've been up all night, my sense of day and night is so fucked up. When I couldn't sleep at like 5.30 because I kept crying; I decided I might as well stay up all morning. Fuck sleep. Who needs to sleep? I'll try to get as much done today as possible and hopefully I'll fall down into bed exhausted tonight. Hopefully. Today I still have to finish my laundry, work on my thesis, clean up the apartment, prepare and host a work session for my extracurricular group and spend a few hours doing that. I need to apply for a couple of jobs and make a couple calls. This is what I plan to do and still I know I won't do them all. I'm always avoiding some chore or task. I've had enough, I don't even feel like an adult the way I'm living my life right now. I feel especially guilty that I haven't been to the office for over a week. But what can you do, right? I had to wait for my grade, so there wasn't much I could do really; but I should still have gone. Without a place to be each day it feels like my life has just been slipping away. And still I'd love to do what I choose with my life. I just want to get a steady income, doesn't have to be much, from a job that I don't hate and that doesn't bore me to death. I just want to feel good about life and enjoy living it. I don't want to be entangled this way. I don't want to be this far away from people I love. I don't want to keep looking back at memories because they make me feel better than the present moment does. I don't want to become frozen every time I even think of straightening out my life.

Funny, huh. Straightening out my life. There are people who would say I've got everything going for me, you know. About to graduate, the whole future ahead. Some kind of talent for some kind of creativity somewhere deep, deep down inside. Able to talk to people. Able to make people listen. Steady boyfriend. All that jazz. They say I'll work things out because I'm ambitious, things will work out. But they won't. I don't mean to be a cynic. They just won't. Things have never just "worked out" for me, at any point, in my life; the times they have worked out it's been because I made them work out. I made it work. It wasn't divine in any way. No one provided for me. I provided for me. And that's where the shoe fits, isn't it. I'm tired of making things work out. I feel bad when my projects and plans fall through; even when I've known from the beginning it'd be impossible to do it all. I feel bad when I don't spend my time doing chores, studying, applying for jobs or working on my portfolio. Thing is school is occupying my mind like HELL. And at the same time I just can't focus on it. It seems so trivial. What does it matter if I get a diploma in my hand in June? It doesn't. It's not gonna get me a job. A portfolio is going to get me a job. It's not gonna pat me on the back saying, Hey, you did GOOD! And it's certainly not going to pay off three years of studying loans. People just don't get that you can be completely broken, under a polished, seemingly alright surface. Why is this? Why don't people get that they're not the only ones who are more complex than a box of cereal?

Oh, I don't know. It felt like the right thing to do to come here, and I've learned so, so much. I thought three years spent at a fun education would be better than five years at an education I hated. I thought that if I spent three years here and then still didn't get a job, I could take any job, I'd still have those three years to remember. This just didn't happen. Now I'm panicking because I can't sort out what's going to happen. I'm unable to look past even a day at a time. I'm going to lose my apartment. My independence. Stuff is going on with friends and family. I worry to BITS. I've told myself to focus on my thesis for now, but I can't even do THAT.

To top it off this may very well be the most disorganized post I've ever made here. I apologize, or rather, I don't. I'm shit tired and I've gotta stay up for the rest of the day too. Yay. Yay!
POET IN THE BREAKING JAR

Emotion Explosion!

I'm having one of the strangest surges of emotion in my life. I'm bursting with pride, with sadness, with frustration, a glimpse of hope, a pinch of anger, and with an overwhelming topping of happiness and self-confidence. I wonder if other people are like this sometimes, or if it's just me. Seems to me that if a normal person had all these emotions at once they would explode. And I also feel as if I might explode any second - but I'm trying to keep it back, because I don't know if this explosion would take the form of laughter or choking tears. Life stretches out ahead of me, and it beckons with its inviting fingers, beckons me to better times and greener fields; but the road is lined with fear, fear of death, fear of age, fear of worse times, and withered fields. The future is a treacherous term. It should be treated with care and respect. Instead it has been hailed to the skies. "The future" is always something positive, something we should work towards and want for ourselves; but what is it really? Seconds that tick by counting down to the day we leave our bodies and this existence; seconds that fly by the older you get, seconds that are grains in the hourglass of human life and not even worthy of mention in the greater perspective of the universe.

Recently I applied for an animator's position at a local, rather successful, game development studio. I passed the first round, and got asked to do a work sample. Passing the first round was an achievement for me, seeing as it proved somebody had seen potential in my showreel, even though the reel had older material and wasn't optimally or professionally presented. With full time in school, I spent as much time on the work sample as I could, yet I told myself I wouldn't put any more time into it than I felt that I could afford. A decision thereby followed by an all-nighter before the deadline, creating animations in as little as four hours per animation. When I handed in a quarter before the deadline and stumbled exhaustedly into bed, I didn't feel achieved. What I did feel was a hunch that handing in despite the quality of the material, didn't mean I had wasted my time. And it turns out I hadn't. I didn't get the position, but I didn't expect to. What I did get, and what I didn't expect; was a written feedback on what was good in my material, and what I could have improved. Somewhere among the lines there was one line that seemed to stand out to me. The line was something like this: "It's clear that you have a good sense for animation". And this is when this email becomes good news - despite the fact that I didn't pass the second round.

Here's why.

A simple "You didn't make it" would have been convenient for the studio, but useless to me. I would know I wasn't good enough for their standards, but I would have no idea of what to improve or what to learn. A written feedback proving they have evaluated my content is generous for the studio, and useful for me. Now I know what I need to work on, and which my strengths are. Hearing this outside of a study environment, is extremely educational for me.

So I'm quite relieved my work wasn't hated, proud that they gave me positive feedback among the negative, happy that I took the chance to hand in and learning something, frustrated that I didn't put more time and effort into the sample, and finally I'm hopeful, because I know that I'll eventually learn these things, and eventually work with what I dream of working with - when I'm ready, and when I'll be needed.

I bet you couldn't guess this simple email was what caused my introductory philosophical stanza about life and the universe, now could you?
POET IN THE JAR