A little post

Maybe there’ll be a little more later, but … probably I’ll go to sleep. Depends on what/whether I decide to have soda with my movie. See, I’ve got the next … thirty minutes or so to write here, then I think I’ll walk down to the local theatre and watch a sequel to a movie I’ve never seen. I made the determination about which movie to watch based on running time more than anything; I also want to see Johnny English, but Bad Boys II is nearly twice as long for the same $6.50 ($7.50 if I get that drink). There are screenings of Seabiscuit Tuesday and Tomb Raider 2 Wednesday nights at Fashion Square, but while I would perfer not to have to pay to see either movie, I find myself without available transportation to either screening. I will be in town until Thursday morning though, so if anyone is free and wouldn’t mind getting me from North Phoenix (around 32nd St. & Bell) to Fashion Square to see a free movie, give me a call. If you don’t have my new number, email me: teel@modernevil.com.

Okay, so. I got home from Comic-con last night. Had a good time, overall, I’d say. There were some disappointments here and there, but the bulk of the good stuff I was expecting was there and there were not too many temporal conflicts. I’m thinking of getting a booth for Modern Evil (and Darwin’s Complex, if they’re interested) for Comic-con 2005. The next 12 months to raise the money, and if we pay at next year’s con for a 2005 booth, we save big. Plus, that will give me two years to have some sort of concrete content to offer and promote. Obviously I’ll have the novel done by then, and the ‘Mouse’ Project will be done within a month or two of now… I’m hoping to have some significant work done on the much larger and more complex collaborative comic I’m working on by then, too. Plus, I’d love to have made at least one (if not several) short films by then.

That last dream is dependent on a certain level of income. I’m hoping that my art continues to sell. If I am able to sell a couple thousand dollars worth of paintings, I can buy equipment like a DV camera and some sound equipment to get started. I have access to space in Pine that I could theoretically use as a ‘sound stage’ of sorts, with enough hard work. Such dreams I have. I made some contacts with more independent filmakers at the con, and learned more about the entire process; something I am trying my best to do as often as I can. We’ll see what I can get together.

Things like this convention always seem to show me a side of things that I like to pretend isn’t there; my lack of passion. Actually, that’s not quite right – I have passion, but not the way so many other people do. There are people who know from early in life what they are passionate about, comics-making, movie-making, writing, whatever, and from that moment forward it is their passion. It is what they dream about doing, it is their hobby, it is what they do with their spare time and spare money, and it is what they become an expert at. Some of them succeed, more of them fail, but they are passionate about it. See, and I don’t have that.

I like to paint, I like to write, I like making comics, I’d like to make films, I like programming computers, I’d like to compose music… so many things… no one is king, no one is my real passion. I try to work on all of them, and they all suffer. I am expert at none of them yet, and may never be.

And I just got distracted talking to my brother for fifteen minutes, so this is it. I’m leaving. I’ll think about coming back later. I’ll also think about a comic and a movie and a song and a book I want to write. Mnyeargh.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

6 thoughts on “A little post”

  1. Passion is not the right word here teel, the correct one is “focus”. You have passion, but lack focus, and you need both to be a virtuoso, but, you can be great at many things and not a virtuoso of any of them and still do great things. Look at Da Vinci for an example.

  2. Passion is not the right word here teel, the correct one is “focus”. You have passion, but lack focus, and you need both to be a virtuoso, but, you can be great at many things and not a virtuoso of any of them and still do great things. Look at Da Vinci for an example.

  3. AH, but Zoe, what I mean is something like what Mo was describing here. See, when he was a kid he started drawing, passionately, and he continued for years, gaining technical mastery of the skill through years of focused (yes, focused, but I believe the focus is created by a particular type of passion) effort.

    Now, he didn’t follow through with it, and isn’t today a struggling artist, but he laments that he let it go, and may in fact hitch his wagon to that star again. And if he did, he would be immediately a better “draw-er” than I am, because of that unique passion.

    I did draw when I was a kid, and for a week or two (at most) I made comics, but that was about it for drawing, and I was probably 4 or 5 years old at the time. I never had much desire, much passion, behind my drawing, so never pursued it. Same with painting. When I was 12 or 13 years old I tried painting, ’cause I thought I might like it, but I wasn’t immediately good at it, and simply didn’t have the passion to make the effort to learn it. So I didn’t paint again for 8 or 9 years. Same with writing. I wrote some stories when I was 6 or 7, but it was just something I did, not something I was passionate about. I did some more writing in High School with mixed results, but I liked the attention I got from my friends who liked them than I liked writing them. I stopped writing for 6 years.

    Now, as you creative types may know (or not know; I am always surprised by someone who does something creative and has no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about), the ideas in my head want to get out, and until they do they stay in my head, trying to get out. Except that more of them show up every day. And it gets crowded and noisy in my head, and I have to let some of them out. One way or another. For a while I channelled them into emotional abuse directed at friends and lovers, but obviously that was not the most constructive way to go. Then a funny thing happened; I finally figured out how people decide what their goals are going to be: They select them randomly. I figured I do them one better, and randomly select some goals that weren’t things I hate.

    I’ve always liked the idea of being someone who had written something interesting. I’ve always liked the idea of being some acclaimed artist, doing groundbreaking work. I’ve always liked the idea of being one of the people who make the movies. In fact, while I’ve always like the idea of comics, I’ve almost never read them or thought about making them until Iain and I discovered online comics.

    Do you want to know why so many things?

    Because no one of them could really hold my attention full time. Seriously, I’m not passionate about any of it. But I can write for a week (or four), except that half-way through I’ll get an idea for a comic, and then I can work on that comic for a week or two, but then I get tired of that, too. Now, I can theoretically paint any time, but it’s almost painful to try to paint when I haven’t got an idea for a painting; that random painting business … seems worse than not doing anything at all, to me. Now, if I’ve got a good idea for a painting (or a set of paintings), once I get started on it, I can work on it for … well, about a week. And then if it isn’t done, it goes (permanently, it seems) into the “not done yet” pile. And movies? Man. Whew. i can watch them with the best. I’ve even started reading books about making them. When I get the capital together to buy the equipment needed, we’ll see exactly how long movie-making can hold my attention.

    And don’t say I have attention deficit disorder. ADD people, and ADHD people can’t pay attention to things for five minutes, let alone a week or a month. I can stay focused on one thing at the exclusion of others for plenty of time longer than ADD people can. Heck, I spent 6 hours making that interface for the Mouse Project the other day, and didn’t think of much else the whole time. I was focused on it, and on getting it done. The problem is that I don’t have the passion to keep me focused for months and years at a time on a single thing. I lose interest. After doing the Mouse interface, I didn’t particularly feel like working on other web-coding stuff that needs to be done.

    Because I’m certainly not passionate about web design.

    So what I did was select all these things as ‘goals’. They’re good as goals because they’re open-ended; when can I say I’ve finished, completed, being an artist? Or a writer? Or a movie-maker, a web designer, a comics-creator? And except for the movies thing, they can almost always be broken down into chunks small enough to hold my attention.

    Like right now I’m going to try to get one transitional segment of my novel written, after which I will either be finally into writing enough to maybe keep going, or I’ll watch the videos that are supposed to go with this part of my art class. And maybe April Is My Religion.

  4. AH, but Zoe, what I mean is something like what Mo was describing here. See, when he was a kid he started drawing, passionately, and he continued for years, gaining technical mastery of the skill through years of focused (yes, focused, but I believe the focus is created by a particular type of passion) effort.

    Now, he didn’t follow through with it, and isn’t today a struggling artist, but he laments that he let it go, and may in fact hitch his wagon to that star again. And if he did, he would be immediately a better “draw-er” than I am, because of that unique passion.

    I did draw when I was a kid, and for a week or two (at most) I made comics, but that was about it for drawing, and I was probably 4 or 5 years old at the time. I never had much desire, much passion, behind my drawing, so never pursued it. Same with painting. When I was 12 or 13 years old I tried painting, ’cause I thought I might like it, but I wasn’t immediately good at it, and simply didn’t have the passion to make the effort to learn it. So I didn’t paint again for 8 or 9 years. Same with writing. I wrote some stories when I was 6 or 7, but it was just something I did, not something I was passionate about. I did some more writing in High School with mixed results, but I liked the attention I got from my friends who liked them than I liked writing them. I stopped writing for 6 years.

    Now, as you creative types may know (or not know; I am always surprised by someone who does something creative and has no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about), the ideas in my head want to get out, and until they do they stay in my head, trying to get out. Except that more of them show up every day. And it gets crowded and noisy in my head, and I have to let some of them out. One way or another. For a while I channelled them into emotional abuse directed at friends and lovers, but obviously that was not the most constructive way to go. Then a funny thing happened; I finally figured out how people decide what their goals are going to be: They select them randomly. I figured I do them one better, and randomly select some goals that weren’t things I hate.

    I’ve always liked the idea of being someone who had written something interesting. I’ve always liked the idea of being some acclaimed artist, doing groundbreaking work. I’ve always liked the idea of being one of the people who make the movies. In fact, while I’ve always like the idea of comics, I’ve almost never read them or thought about making them until Iain and I discovered online comics.

    Do you want to know why so many things?

    Because no one of them could really hold my attention full time. Seriously, I’m not passionate about any of it. But I can write for a week (or four), except that half-way through I’ll get an idea for a comic, and then I can work on that comic for a week or two, but then I get tired of that, too. Now, I can theoretically paint any time, but it’s almost painful to try to paint when I haven’t got an idea for a painting; that random painting business … seems worse than not doing anything at all, to me. Now, if I’ve got a good idea for a painting (or a set of paintings), once I get started on it, I can work on it for … well, about a week. And then if it isn’t done, it goes (permanently, it seems) into the “not done yet” pile. And movies? Man. Whew. i can watch them with the best. I’ve even started reading books about making them. When I get the capital together to buy the equipment needed, we’ll see exactly how long movie-making can hold my attention.

    And don’t say I have attention deficit disorder. ADD people, and ADHD people can’t pay attention to things for five minutes, let alone a week or a month. I can stay focused on one thing at the exclusion of others for plenty of time longer than ADD people can. Heck, I spent 6 hours making that interface for the Mouse Project the other day, and didn’t think of much else the whole time. I was focused on it, and on getting it done. The problem is that I don’t have the passion to keep me focused for months and years at a time on a single thing. I lose interest. After doing the Mouse interface, I didn’t particularly feel like working on other web-coding stuff that needs to be done.

    Because I’m certainly not passionate about web design.

    So what I did was select all these things as ‘goals’. They’re good as goals because they’re open-ended; when can I say I’ve finished, completed, being an artist? Or a writer? Or a movie-maker, a web designer, a comics-creator? And except for the movies thing, they can almost always be broken down into chunks small enough to hold my attention.

    Like right now I’m going to try to get one transitional segment of my novel written, after which I will either be finally into writing enough to maybe keep going, or I’ll watch the videos that are supposed to go with this part of my art class. And maybe April Is My Religion.

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