Blooming

I've had many people tell me that I'm creative. For a long time, I believed them. I used to write stories, draw characters, and invent things. I never wondered how to come up with an idea - I wondered how to choose just one to work with at any given moment.

Then I got on anti-depressants. Then I got a day job. Then that job became full-time. I bought a car. I moved out on my own. I started paying lots of bills. I became a grown-up in the worst sense of the phrase. And I forgot how to be creative.

For the first couple of years, I was nursing along a sequential art project. It started off well, but somewhere along the road I slowed down, and I found myself asking people around me, "Hey, what do you see happening next here? Because I'm just lost." My ideas dried up, and eventually my give-a-damn followed. Despite lots of support from readers, I let the project die alone in a ditch. Occasionally I glanced at it, felt a wave of guilt, and then went back to my hectic daily schedule.

Last year I decided I was going to resurrect it and actually make it my career. I wanted out of my day job, and that was the best way to do it. The only problem was, I still didn't have a story to tell.

In August, Aiden, Shelby and I went on vacation. While chilling on a patio in the middle of nowhere, sipping wine and enjoying our view of a lazy river, we started discussing a new project, a graphic novel that we would all write and I would draw.

I listened with interest and fascination while the two of them spewed ideas almost faster than Shelby could write them down. I had almost nothing to add myself except for technical data. I found myself wondering, How do they come up with these ideas? I was impressed, and mystified.

Over the last few months, I've paid off my debts, restarted the old project, transitioned from full- to part-time work, and moved...and it's coming back. After years on a shelf, my muse is starting to work again. I'm remembering how it works to actually have ideas on my own. I'm tapping back into the creative in me who actually imagines and runs with ideas, instead of cutting them off and returning to busywork.

It's a little intimidating some days. But god, it feels good.

Are We All "That Guy?"

I was talking to Eben a while back about the drug debate, and as usual, he had something to say that stuck in my head. I'll paraphrase as best as memory will allow.

"Changing your worldview can be awkward and painful. It's like if you were a bigot, and I told you that gay marriage is perfectly reasonable and I'm all for it. You like me and respect my opinion, so you're willing to hear me out, but your beliefs are deeply held and aren't just going to change overnight."

Please note that Eben is even more anti-drug than I am. In the course of that same conversation, he told me that he would absolutely not do even the small amount of experimenting that I've done. But he knew exactly what I was looking for, and it wasn't "Here's my opinion on drugs." It was "Here's an explanation for the depth of emotion this subject triggers in you."

I grew up with the largely unconscious idea that people belong to one of two categories: functional, drug-free human, or addicted loser. Each of those categories comes with a host of other descriptors, now with 40% more judgment free!

Basically, either you're addicted, broke, and living in a crackhouse on death's door, or you're straight-edge. (For this unusual definition of "straight-edge," alcohol doesn't count. Marijuana is an in-between, as in, "You're clearly not too bright, but maybe you won't actually keel over dead in the next 24 hours.") I'd heard tales of high-functioning addicts, namely lawyers who are secretly addicted to heroin, but I assumed those tales had all-or-nothing endings (they cleaned up or they died).

Then there's the designer category - the college kids and their club drugs. Some of them have fun and are lucky that the finger of fate doesn't bestow consequences. The others die horrible deaths. The rest of us are not that stupid in the first place. I actually wrote an entire novel based around an ecstasy-induced accidental death.

It was a new concept to me that people can do hard drugs "sometimes." What, isn't it all or nothing? You use, you lose? No, actually - some people are normal, responsible, functioning adults, with jobs and kids and mortgages and reasonably good health, who occasionally use highly illegal substances.

What? No.

The evidence is right in front of me and I'm still struggling with the concept. The idea that all drug use constitutes a druggie, a useless, dysfunctional drain on society, is deeply ingrained. The space in between has been labeled "limbo" to me - the place where you choose, where you shape up or ship out to the next life. You are either on your way up or down; you don't have to go home but you can't stay here.

Now they're telling me you can stay here.

I don't actually believe it, but now I'm paranoid that I'm the bigot.

Recreating Blog

The old blog refuses to show itself to anyone but me, no matter how many settings I tweak, and the Google people can't fix it. I've exported the old blog into this one. Unfortunately I cannot move the comments, but at least now the blog is back. Ish.

[Edit] Never mind, the comments actually got reproduced! Wow! I'm quite thrilled.

Let's Go Fishing

I just reread the "Speechless" post, and it fished up the bucket of things I want to try.

Augh, I'm not actually patient...I just get distracted sometimes. And then when I realize that that thing I wanted to try so long ago hasn't happened yet, it's intensely annoying, and I feel like I'm slogging through mud.

What does it take to try something new? I'm so easily bored. There are so many things in the bucket that can quench that problem before it really becomes a problem, and yet it always has to become one before we can go fishing.

I'm working on the patience. Really, I am. But when enough time has gone by, it's not patience - it's giving up.

Defining Boundaries

The moving part is finished, and the adjusting part is now in full swing. I'm operating in my new part-time schedule, doing two ten-hour days a week at my old job and three days a week at my own business (which was supposed to be just art, but has ended up including a lot of time devoted to league business, as well).

The first week in my new home, I had a lot of little moments where I would pause suddenly at the start of a task execution, imagining a spinning progress bar over my head and the word "Recalibrating..." That has mostly subsided, and now I'm dealing with another set of change impacts, those of seeing the people I know in very different allotments of time, and not having nearly as much control over my own surroundings.

I came home last week from practice expecting to find Aiden and Shelby playing games with a pair of their friends, but the friends had gone home early. The change was unexpected, and though I recognized it as neither my problem nor a big deal, I still felt disgruntled at not having found what I had expected to find in my own home. Last night, a similar thing happened, in which I came home from a class expecting to find Aiden preparing dinner for Shelby, her friend Posie, and his and Posie's kids. When I got there, everyone was pretty much done with dinner, and Posie's husband was also hanging out.

Again, I recognized it consciously as not being a problem, but couldn't help feeling put out. I did realize eventually that making the kids wait until 8:30 for dinner was maybe not the best plan and managed not to take it personally. After the guests went home, Aiden still hadn't so much as touched me, and I pointed it out. He said he had tried to hug me when I walked in the door, but I had seemed grumpy and not wanting to be touched, so he just handed me food and sat back down. I didn't remember that interaction.

This conversation continued for a few more minutes, and then there was silence. In which Aiden still had not actually touched me. My primary love language is physical touch, so avoiding touching me is something I tend to read as very insulting.

"This is your opportunity to fix this," I finally said, smacking him lightly on the side of the head a few times, "And you're missing it."

"Don't hit me in the head," he said, turning to look me full in the face. I paused. There was an intensity to his voice that surprised me.

"Really," I finally said. "What are you going to do?" Some part of me wanted to know, but the part controlling my hands decided it was a bad idea.

"Just. Don't," he said. He wasn't yelling, and he wasn't quite angry, but I honestly didn't know what might happen if I pushed. I desperately wanted to find out, but for just a moment, I was afraid.

We stared each other down for several breaths, until Shelby said, "You know what that makes me want to do?" and I started laughing.

He caught me alone a few minutes later and gave me a long kiss.

"I apologize for hitting you in the head," I said. "I'm sorry."

"And I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear that I wanted to hug you," he replied. I appreciated the apology, but I was excited about something else.

"Thank you for showing me a boundary," I said. "It's good to know where those are."

"Usually you approach them but back away," he said. "And I don't see a point in snapping at someone for just 'tap-tapping' on the wall."

"But sometimes that's what I'm looking for," I said. "I want to know in no uncertain terms that that's where I am."

Thinking about it again later, the more succinct explanation is that if I back away from a boundary before he's shown me where it is, it feels like he's willing to take more disrespect than I'm willing to dish. And that leads to further disrespect. But it would be pretty easy for him to push the balance back.

Have I mentioned he's hot when he's angry with me...?