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THIS VIDEO AGED LIKE FINE WINE

I'm writing this from a throwaway account, because you know...Scientology.

I want to preface this post by saying I am not one of those "I knew it all along!" people. I can't stand that attitude. I was pretty ambivelant towards Neil Gaiman. Prior to the allegations, I didn't hate him but I wasn't that interested in him as a person either. I don't think you can always tell when someone is a bad or good person simply by the topics they write about. If that was the case we'd be arresting every horror writer on earth.

But one thing that did always rub me up the wrong way was the way he talked about getting work.

I borrowed and read "Make Good Art" (a small book based on a speech he gave to graduates at the University of the Arts) at a time in my life that I was really struggling to get by (I still am to some extent, but in a different way). I expected to see some practical advice. Instead it was a bunch of glib shit like:

I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them. Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Yeah, well, no shit. If you're a writer or artist you probably do anyway. Whether you get paid for it or not, whether you draw fan art or original art. But the point of Gaiman's speech was to give advice to people who wanted to be paid for their art. To make a career of it. Making art every day isn't always enough. You have to pay the damn rent, you have to eat, you have to network and do social media and promote yourself, and you have to do it while thousands of other people are doing the same thing in a massive crowd of people who want the same thing. Practical advice is much more valuable than platitudes and theory.

I am not a writer, I'm an illustrator, and let me tell you that for most people, 'getting your foot in the door' isn't a one time thing. Quite often you have to work at getting your foot in the door again and again until you become established, and it's very easy to be forgotten. I still feel like I'm in that stage now.

I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I’d listen to them telling me that they couldn’t envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn’t go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

The implication was that he was successful because he wrote every day and his friends weren't because they didn't, because you know, working a second job is tiring. He called this a tragedy, but there was something very glib about the way he narrated this.

I think someone had more financial cushion that he was letting on.

And yes, sometimes it does work that way, (some people are very lucky and make all the right connections) but Gaiman was getting Big Jobs right off the bat and something about that never smelt right to me after the way he talked about it.

And then I saw Jeff's tweets. Oh, that's why...

I suspect the truth is he was living off his family's money and connections, and while I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that if you're a struggling artist, his family are Scientologists, and I don't think he ever struggled.

I suspect it's all a lie.

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I guess it depends how many people were skewered in this comic along with him. If it's a large number of parodies of people then it's probably coincidence. I know the "Irish Wizard who shits all over his own work for a decade" is clearly meant to be Alan Moore (though Moore is English).

So if it's one or two then yeah, they probably are ragging on Gaiman and Moore specifically, but if it's more than that it might be coincidence.

I'm writing this from a throwaway account, because you know...Scientology.

I want to preface this post by saying I am not one of those "I knew it all along!" people. I can't stand that attitude. I was pretty ambivelant towards Neil Gaiman. Prior to the allegations, I didn't hate him but I wasn't that interested in him as a person either. I don't think you can always tell when someone is a bad or good person simply by the topics they write about. If that was the case we'd be arresting every horror writer on earth.

But one thing that did always rub me up the wrong way was the way he talked about getting work.

I borrowed and read "Make Good Art" (a small book based on a speech he gave to graduates at the University of the Arts) at a time in my life that I was really struggling to get by (I still am to some extent, but in a different way). I expected to see some practical advice. Instead it was a bunch of glib shit like:

I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them. Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Yeah, well, no shit. If you're a writer or artist you probably do anyway. Whether you get paid for it or not, whether you draw fan art or original art. But the point of Gaiman's speech was to give advice to people who wanted to be paid for their art. To make a career of it. Making art every day isn't always enough. You have to pay the damn rent, you have to eat, you have to network and do social media and promote yourself, and you have to do it while thousands of other people are doing the same thing in a massive crowd of people who want the same thing. Practical advice is much more valuable than platitudes and theory.

I am not a writer, I'm an illustrator, and let me tell you that for most people, 'getting your foot in the door' isn't a one time thing. Quite often you have to work at getting your foot in the door again and again until you become established, and it's very easy to be forgotten. I still feel like I'm in that stage now.

I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I’d listen to them telling me that they couldn’t envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn’t go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

The implication was that he was successful because he wrote every day and his friends weren't because they didn't, because you know, working a second job is tiring. He called this a tragedy, but there was something very glib about the way he narrated this.

I think someone had more financial cushion that he was letting on.

And yes, sometimes it does work that way, (some people are very lucky and make all the right connections) but Gaiman was getting Big Jobs right off the bat and something about that never smelt right to me after the way he talked about it.

And then I saw Jeff's tweets. Oh, that's why...

I suspect the truth is he was living off his family's money and connections, and while I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that if you're a struggling artist, his family are Scientologists, and I don't think he ever struggled.

I suspect it's all a lie.

[livelaughpeg]

I'm writing this from a throwaway account, because you know...Scientology.

I want to preface this post by saying I am not one of those "I knew it all along!" people. I can't stand that attitude. I was pretty ambivelant towards Neil Gaiman. Prior to the allegations, I didn't hate him but I wasn't that interested in him as a person either. I don't think you can always tell when someone is a bad or good person simply by the topics they write about. If that was the case we'd be arresting every horror writer on earth.

But one thing that did always rub me up the wrong way was the way he talked about getting work.

I borrowed and read "Make Good Art" (a small book based on a speech he gave to graduates at the University of the Arts) at a time in my life that I was really struggling to get by (I still am to some extent, but in a different way). I expected to see some practical advice. Instead it was a bunch of glib shit like:

I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them. Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Yeah, well, no shit. If you're a writer or artist you probably do anyway. Whether you get paid for it or not, whether you draw fan art or original art. But the point of Gaiman's speech was to give advice to people who wanted to be paid for their art. To make a career of it. Making art every day isn't always enough. You have to pay the damn rent, you have to eat, you have to network and do social media and promote yourself, and you have to do it while thousands of other people are doing the same thing in a massive crowd of people who want the same thing. Practical advice is much more valuable than platitudes and theory.

I am not a writer, I'm an illustrator, and let me tell you that for most people, 'getting your foot in the door' isn't a one time thing. Quite often you have to work at getting your foot in the door again and again until you become established, and it's very easy to be forgotten. I still feel like I'm in that stage now.

I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I’d listen to them telling me that they couldn’t envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn’t go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.

The implication was that he was successful because he wrote every day and his friends weren't because they didn't, because you know, working a second job is tiring. He called this a tragedy, but there was something very glib about the way he narrated this.

I think someone had more financial cushion that he was letting on.

And yes, sometimes it does work that way, (some people are very lucky and make all the right connections) but Gaiman was getting Big Jobs right off the bat and something about that never smelt right to me after the way he talked about it.

And then I saw Jeff's tweets. Oh, that's why...

I suspect the truth is he was living off his family's money and connections, and while I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that if you're a struggling artist, his family are Scientologists, and I don't think he ever struggled.

I suspect it's all a lie.

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I’m too lazy for dating. Why can’t someone materialize out of nowhere and agree that we should spend the rest of our lives together

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being sexy literally has nothing to do with looks... you need to be a little bit weird and strange and unusual. people who are physically perfect by societal standards are not sexy like where's the flavour. the body hair. i'm right

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more disabled mad scientists. you’re telling me that this bitch follows perfect lab safety and has never injured themself? are you sure? no brilliant flash of eureka and then realizing that actually that was just a normal kind of flash and now they are blind? they never experimented on themself? they put on that psychic helm and it didn’t give them brain trauma the first time? i want the wizard who invented the fireball spell to have also invented prosthetic hands

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I accept that this task is difficult for me.

I accept that this task will take more time for me to complete than my peers.

I accept that I may not meet every aspect of the expectations for this task.

This is ok because I am doing my best to complete it anyway. I am making progress and I will eventually complete this task to the best of my ability.

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So a few months ago I learned that when you have ADD/ADHD, in order to efficiently manage it (and thus reduce the stress that comes with it), you need to concentrate on four things:

Sleep Nutrition Activity Personal time/space

OH HEY GUYS LOOK AN ACRONYM THAT’S ACTUALLY EASY TO REMEMBER! 

SNAP

Do you feel yucky and aren’t sure why? Look at your SNAP. Figure out what you’re missing. 

Are you getting enough sleep? 

Are you eating enough, and is what you’re eating mostly made of nutritious foods? 

Are you getting enough physical activity?

Are you getting enough alone time to decompress, to reset your sensory overload, to spend time in your head, and relax?

I have found that 1) I feel so, so much better when I’m actively putting effort into my SNAP, and 2) if I feel weird, it’s way easier to narrow down what might be the problem by asking myself those questions. 

10/10 would recommend.

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My life has been so much better ever since I traded my impostor syndrome to brilliant conman -syndrome. Do I deserve anything in life? Fuck no! Will I grasp it anyway? Fuck yes!

 My art has never been worth shit, but watch me bullshit my way into art school! I am a horrid goblin, but watch me make these people like me! Am I qualified to do this task? Well I sure have the certificates that say that I am! And how did I get those? Who knows! Not me! I am so good at cheating, I don’t have to break a single rule to do it!

 I am brilliant, fast, and absolutely drunk with power!

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Feeling empty or your feeling you mood darken? You might be very unstimulated.

I know its hard to find something that truly interests you; I’ve only found it recently (its this: my blogs and such), but keep trying different things. I know its hard but you won’t find it unless you keep looking.

- DEPRESSION: Is It ADHD, Depression, or Both?, ADDitude

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“If you want to go somewhere you like but no one else wants to, go by yourself. You’ll meet people with similar interests as you.”

—

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Instagram source: X

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I’m saying this as someone who deals with RSD almost daily and has seen it tear apart my friendships, at a certain age you HAVE to work on getting a grip with it and stop with the guilt tripping. You have to realize that your friends do not understand the very intricate triggers for RSD, most people don’t notice their tone of voice being interpreted as rejection, don’t notice their behavior, and it’s hurtful to them to see you acting out and accusing them of being manipulative and ignoring you. I’m tired of seeing other 19-20+ year olds using their RSD as a crutch to guilt trip and manipulate people.

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When I started taking Adderall for my ADHD, the one thing I did not expect it to do is help my drawing

It’s not that it necessarily made me “better”, it’s more like it helped me in smaller ways.

I can now sit for longer periods of time to work in pieces

I can focus on what I am doing and notice the tiny details in my work

I find myself getting less discouraged and overly irritable when I am stuck trying to figure something out

I feel motivated to work. I feel more goal driven.

And I feel like the most drastic one, is that when I use references, I find that I can actually understand them. I struggled processing shapes, especially in a 3D space, and it left my work with no concept of anatomy at all and very flat. Things looked very broken. Now I can actually see the shapes, and when things still look wrong, I can actually go back to references and identify where I went wrong. These are things I could never process and it’d shut my brain down. I didn’t not even realize this was my struggle, I just assumed I was a bad artist!

It’s also just allowed me to feel happier. Happy doing something I used to do years ago and actually feel proud about it. I haven’t truly drawn since 2013, when things slowed down and I really stopped drawing at the end of 2015. I see where I need improvement, but I can draw again. I’m not discouraged by needing improvement I’m having fun. I see an idea in my head, and I do it!

I did not realize my ADHD took this away from me. Now I feel accomplished!

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(1/2) Do u think it’s possible to be traumatized by ur experiences with someone even if they weren’t abusive? a best friend from hs started all but ghosting me and our other best friend after hs, and now it’s like two years later and i get a lot of anxiety on the really rare occasion that they do text back or i see them post on sc. i fully believe they aren’t doing it to be intentionally cruel, but my already present abandonment issues have intensified? Idk, I’m just sad and angry and confused

“and i know people have a right to cut off contact if they need to & I’m not trying to be disrespectful of their boundaries. but they’ve told me multiple times that they feel bad for getting so distant and avoidant and they want to stop disappearing for weeks or months at a time, but every time it happens again. & i get that they have their own stuff going on, but i just end up feeling shitty all the time. they don’t mean to hurt me but i think I’m really hurt by them anyways?”

I am no expert on trauma, but yes. It is entirely possible to be hurt - or even traumatized - by certain experiences even if the hurt wasn’t intentional and even if what happened cannot be classified as actively abusive. It happens and it happens pretty often, so you’re definitely not alone with this experience.

But even if this person isn’t abusive and isn’t hurting you on purpose, if their distant behavior is affecting you like this, I’d seriously reconsider whether maintaining this friendship is a good idea. Even if they don’t mean to hurt you and you care about each other, you ARE getting hurt - not just once, but repeatedly - and even if this person isn’t mean or abusive, they obviously can’t provide the kind of friendship you need to thrive.

So I think it’s time to respectfully distance yourself from this person. Even two good people can end up hurting each other if they aren’t compatible and if their needs and wants conflict - and it honestly sounds like you are getting more hurt out of staying in touch with this person than what’s healthy. If you need someone you can rely on and this person isn’t it, don’t waste all your energy on them.

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I used to think it was important to have common interests with the person that you are in a relationship with but now I think it is more important to be similar in other aspects. like how kind you are. how you treat the people you care about, how you treat strangers. how you deal with anger. how you deal with pain. and not necessarily dealing with all these things the same way but being perceptive enough to understand what action each situation calls for. it’s important for both people to be on the same page about what that action should be. it’s important to me to have that kind of synchrony.