Self Esteem and Vanity

This is about my creative ability. I finished pieces and proudly show them to my friends, I love showing them work. The down side is that none of them draw so even the crappiest 15 second scribble gets as much love as a piece I'll slave over for hours. It's almost insulting and I have to explain why the 15 second doodle sucks, or why I don't like it. They just can't get it.

When I try to actually consider selling my work I balk. I freeze in my tracks. I can dream of selling my work, I can imagine and plan, but when it boils down to actually selling it, I want to run. I feel bad for charging my friends for my pieces and then there's charging them for some and not for others. Gifts, or random doodles that they decide they like I have no problem giving away. If I really like something I feel bad about trying to charge them. It's less that I'm trying to short change myself, it's more that because they're friends I feel weird, I feel bad about charging. I don't really want to do the 'friend discount' because I have a lot of friends and plenty of them might try talking my into discounting their friends.

See, I'm worrying about something 80 million steps down the road, I haven't even sold a piece and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to deal with pricing. In the long run for actually pricing pieces I have to be fair and charge everyone the same, and then there's actually charging for a piece. Should I just charge based on the size of the piece and completion, or should I just charge by how long it takes me, with completion factored in. I don't want it to be arbitrary chosen with every piece I sell and if I sell something I did for me, but decide I need to sell, how to I price it then?

Tucked into all of this I've been offered an awesome opportunity, it's a cross between a commission and being allowed to just plain sell my work somewhere. I'm trying to figure out if how I'd end up making money would be fair. I also have to think about how much work I'm preparing, how long it would take and then how long it would be until I ultimately saw any sort of return. I want it to be fair for both me and the person who suggested this idea, but I'm trying to figure out the likely hood of my making anything from this project. I just about have to figure out ten things concurrently before I even get to work on this project, and in my mind I want it ready for next fall to sell. But based off it's sales I could have a relatively simple series to get going. I dunno, I'll hint at more information when I have more figured out. Buuu.

So, another project that I addressed a few weeks ago on Twitter was for a small published comic. In my mind it's regular comic sized, anywhere from 10-20 pages. I want that to have two short stories, I have one sketched that a friend has agreed to review for me before I actually draw the pages for publication. I don't have much more than fleeting thoughts for the second story. They'd be non-sequiturs, but I want the print to be worth it for whoever buys it so I figured two black and white stories comic book sized and only about $5 would be fair. Two people said they'd be interested in it, which was a friggin' ego boost, especially because this story would only be available offline, meaning it's not being posted on blogger, or on deviantart. It would be offline only. It would be a hard sale because the stories are so short I can't preview more than a few sketches or pin-ups online without telling more of the story than I want to online. And I would try selling the books online and see if my comic shop would be able to sell them. This would be an even smaller printing because it would be all paid for by me, but I feel as if I have to try. I love the first story, and it's incredibly open to interpretation and I think I would damn near die if I saw it published. I want the second story to be more concrete but equally engaging, I just need to figure it out. I was also thinking about adding one or two sketches or tiny tiny versions of the original sketches as special pages. Not too sure or set in anything yet. That I want for this winter, but unless I get the second story written/drawn it's going to have to wait until next summer or later.

This is all what's been going through my head, it's something I've been thinking over and fretting about. In my mind I see myself selling books or having people see me in the coffee shop selling one of these books and ask for a sketch or something and truly liking my work. I love my friends but I don't always feel as if I can trust their opinions about my work, I don't want them to say something is good because I made it, I want them to say something if good because it honestly is. It's weird, I seem as if the only people I can trust for this are faculty, they'd be supportive and would give me encouragement, but I also feel as if I can trust their critical eye to point out faults that I can work on. I feel as if I can get an honest opinion that I should try to sell my work, but also be told in a friendly way what needs to be improved upon. I feel as if they could ask the right questions.

I think I fear succeeding. I think I want to ask my teachers their opinions because they're not just going to tell me something is good. I also want to ask them because they have the ability to draw, they're creatives so there's in a way weight to what they'd have to tell me. I feel bad not wanting to accept my friends' opinions but I know they don't want to hurt me. It's an odd form of trust and not trusting people it seems.

If you look over these past two situation you'll see me proudly thinking of my art as sellable then turning before I get too far into the clouds and beat me back to having low self esteem and no body wanting to buy my work. Selling things is like a friggin' fantasy, like flying like a bird with wings and not inside a plane. I keep bringing me back to reality, even though what I want is entirely attainable. What I wonder because of this type of thinking is, is this me being frightened by people not liking my work or am I equally afraid of succeeding and never thinking my work is good enough.

I consider showing my work to my friends me being vain. I love showing off, I love getting the attention. It's always weird and different, difficult for me to deal with people giving me attention that I didn't command. When I take people's attention and force them to focus on me, that's one thing. When people invite their attention I feel like I'm inadequate of receiving it. [Holy fuck, I think I just realized something about something going on right now. Will think about and address later, maybe...] Maybe that's why I fear selling my work. Now to get to believing my friends when they tell me my work is good. Seriously, when people tell me my writing or my art are good I don't really believe them. In my creative writing class I was told my poetry was really good, I don't understand why I didn't like any of it. But another time, another friend, told me a blog was well written, I considered it to be more of a rant than anything impressive or well done. I mean, I understand and I know I can write well, I don't think it's impressive. I consider my abilities and skill to be normal, I don't feel as if I work all that hard to accomplish something. I mean, I rarely give these more than a typo skim, if even that, and I post them. I am now circling back to my blog from a few weeks ago about being intelligent and knowing I'm intelligent. Two radically different ideas.

Well cheers! I hope you enjoyed me fretting about my drawing ability and fear of selling work. I'm going to clean the apartment a bit, and maybe write some ideas I've had for the movie blog I've had since yesterday.

Jasmine P.

Visual Identity

I just read an article about a lesbian woman who is now with a man. She spoke about how she would display her lesbian habits and pro GLBTQ community ideas in her younger years with a mohawk, rainbows and radicallism.

I look at that, then I look at me. I have thought on more than one occasion that I am a gay man in a woman's body. Seriously, I don't dress like a woman, I rarely admit to liking woman's things, I enjoy hanging out with guys and to a point I'm much more comfortable around men. Something I working with at the moment though is how I present myself. Like I said, kind of, I'm straight. I like men. I've contemplated women and end with men. I dress like a lesbian and worry that other people think I'm a lesbian.

In saying I dress like a lesbian, I prefer wearing men's clothes, I keep my hair cropped short and rarely display my breasts. [I was going to use the euphemism 'assets' but decided we're fucking adults, call them what they are.] I have been called sir on many an occasion, which is irritating. I wear a cap every day very rarely outwardly display myself as female.

With how I dress and present myself and my vulgar sense of humor I'm really not trying to make a statement, I'm just trying to be comfortable. Because of my hidridenitis I don't really wear revealing shirts, I know it is possible to show off breasts without showing off arms. But, I can't wear tank tops because the edge of the material cut into the wounds or bandages causing pain, and I don't want people to see the bandages and judge or question them. They're kind of disgusting and not really socially fun to talk about. I accept my weight, but am still a bit self-conscious of it. That self-consciousness leads to what I wear, I don't wear sleek, tight or formfitting because it would show and highlight all of the fat. All of the fat everywhere.

Most days I'm wearing a tee shirt from Threadless, if it's cool or cold a sweatshirt or a light shirt/jacket. In the summer I wear man shorts, the ones that stop below the knee, and in the winder jeans or cargo pants. I prefer buying man pants because they have better pockets, I swear you can only fit a condom into woman's pants pockets. In man's pants pockets you could save the moon, or at least hold onto a sandwich.

I wear what I consider to be comfortable. Dressing like a woman is rarely comfortable in my mind because there's heeled shoes which I rebel against. There's primping which I dislike because that hiding who I am in a way I don't like. Make up and nail polish, why? I don't want it so I don't wear it. Then there's tight, form fitting clothes, or even just clothes cut for the female figure. I prefer to know my breasts aren't going anywhere. I don't care if people stare, they're fat. Breasts are fat, fat my body decided I needed hanging off my front. I don't understand why people are so uptight about men looking at their breasts and I'm tired of that joke in movies. I actually find them to be annoying, seriously. The pains that you go through with large breasts, not worth it. If you have average or a small sized bust, rejoice! Bras costs too much as is, but the bigger the boob the more they cost. Hell, my bras cost more than the shirts that cover them, seriously. It's fucked up.

But as I was saying, sometimes I feel as if people give me the title of Lesbian when they see me without knowing me. Everyone judges on first sight, but I want people to value me for my mind and not because I have a large bust that is on display. My figure is far from an hour glass, but I like it, it's mine dammit. I do want to lose some weight, but I am happy with where I am.

I dunno, just some thoughts. 

Jasmine P.

"Adult"

This is bullshit. Applying for FAFSA is fucking bullshit. I jump through all these fucking hoops and now I get stopped just because my father's alive. To quickly explain why his living is a bad thing: my parents have been divorced since I was about 1 year old. My mother had sole custody over my brothers and myself until she died. She died when I turned 18 which automatically makes me an independent. I checked that box on FAFSA because my father does jack shit to provide for my well being. He doesn't even send me money once a month, which he did for my brothers. If I want money from him I have to either directly ask him for it, or I have to try to beg for it by sounding as pathetic as I can to see if he gives me anything. It's gatdamn bullshit.

Cut to now. My mother has been dead for three years, I've been an independent and my father isn't giving me shit. I haven't been working but I've had my inheritance to spend on school for three years, it's running a bit low. I call campus Financial Aid to figure out why they need my father's information and it's because he's alive. If I say I made an attempt to contact him they'll say that and I guess I'll be awarded the money they tentatively told me I could receive. The problem herein lies in the fact that my father will respond, he will fill in his tax information and FAFSA might not give me any money because he of whatever he fucking makes. Or they'll give me less. Either way it works out not in my benefit and I might be screwed and have to apply for a loan from somewhere else.


I guess I understand where the government is coming from in wanting both parent's information, but he's dead. If my mother was still alive they wouldn't have needed his information because she had custody, so now, just because she's dead and he isn't they need his information. I honestly don't know how much he makes, I'm just assuming it's more then enough to keep me from getting shit and that makes me a very sad Jasmine. Sad and furious. I bet you that if I had been in trouble and I told the government the same shit about m father they wouldn't care that he's alive. But when I need money from them they make me jump through the most idiotic of hoops to get a few pennies. In the grand scheme of things $20k isn't that much to the government, I don't understand why they're trying to hard now to not spend it when they spend a few million if not billion every fucking day. I mean if education is so important in this country make it easier for people to either afford fucking college or make it easier for people to get money to pay for college.

I just want money for school. I want to be done with school and I want to really be perceived as an adult because this shit makes me feel like a child. I hate feeling like a child.

Jasmine P.

Journalism, What the Frig?

How Celador Stood Up to a Bully in Taking Disney Down| The Wrap.com, By Dominic Patten

I read this article. Then I had to read it a second time to get what the hell they were talking about. It's like this person took the inverted pyramid that is the general consensus of form for jounalistic writing and played Jenga with it, remembered he had an article to write and used his Jenga-upped pyramid to write.

The inverted pyramid, a quick explanation, is a guide for format of an article. The journalist puts the most important information at the top of the article, then any details pertaining to the story go in all the successive paragraphs in order from most important to least important. A slightly longer description can be found here, on wikipedia. This can successfully be seen in this article from the New York Times and the same story written for the BBC. This is interesting because it's the same story with more or less the same information presented in each. The NYT article has more anecdotal information keeping the story entertaining that way. The BBC article has more numerical information which is interesting in comparison and more facts. Between these two, in my mind, the BBC is more valuable because of the the greater amount of numerical information.

When you look at both of those articles you can stop reading abut three or four paragraphs in and have the most important information and not missing any part of the true story. Now when you compare those stories to the one from The Wire about Disney, four paragraphs in you're only just getting to the information that you're seeing in that story. It's a bit different on the BBC article were every sentence is a paragraph, but if you read until 'perpetual flight' where it's bolded you get the important information of the story. If you choose not to read the entire story you've still read the most pertinent information.

When I look at The Wire article I want to know who Celador is, we learn that in the third paragraph with the littlest amount of information explaining who or what Celador is. In the fourth paragraph we get three overly used cliches, a sign of a weak writer. He uses 'shell game' and 'Hollywood underdog' and 'tip the scales.' Calling someone an underdog is so over played, and using three incredibly weak cliches is an insult to your readers. It doesn't need to be too high brow but use something that is more clever. I can think of few situations where cliches need to be in a new article.

Well, after the third paragraph where we learn who the hell Celador is I want to learn what Disney did. Oh, it's six paragraphs down after a poorly placed quote. Wait, that's quite distracting, who is this Stanton Stein? Oh, he settled with Disney about Home Improvement some years ago. He worked with Celador for a while, is he still working with Celador? Why was this not said before, or his stud quote left until after we've been told what Disney did wrong? Oh hay there studio jargon, what do you mean? I understand this may be a trade paper but a few more context clues would be helpful.

What Cliche?! Can I call you Clich? Cleesh? Aww, this one's inside a quotation, I guess it's fine. [Not really.] Alright! Only nine paragraphs in and we finally meet someone from Celador! He's only their CEO. Alright we're getting to the case, nope! I spoke too soon, an anonymous NYC-based marketing analysis interjects with something that's marginally useful! I don't get what the Tory Story 3 thing has to do with this case, but whatever.

13 paragraphs in we learn what Celador was seeking. 14 and 15 paint Michael Eisner to be a prick, especially he never showed up to court that day to argue he's more of a dick than a prick.

Oh hay, it's the Internet, let's use a second page! And another paragraph laden with cliches in paragraph 17. This writer loves paragraphs chocked full of cliches, doesn't he? And another vague quote, but I'll accept this one as anonymous because it's from a juror.

--

My verdict on this article is the author scrambled what came across the journalism wire and added his cliches to make it seem like he wrote more of the story that he actually did. [The Wire I spoke of is the press release from some other reporter from the court. It used to be sent by telegraph, then fax and I'll assume now by Internet and e-mail.] It's shit like that that make people not want to pay for news, poor writing. It doesn't help that the author's name is a false link, it's just be colored blue.

Now, I just ranted, spewed words onto the Internet. I was not attempting any proper format, this is closer to five paragraph essay than journalism, but it's not that, it's all opinion. I don't understand who taught this guy to write, but he needs to go back to school and be taught how to not suck. I only got what the article said when I was making fun of it, and then it's still quite poorly written.

If I were to write this story I'd start be introducing Celadon and Disney in the first paragraph and I'd explain why Celadon took Disney to court. I'd move on to explain what self-dealing is, why it's bad and why this is a landmark case. I'd introduce Stein, possibly before explaining why who case is important for small production offices. I'd describe some of the more important court days, like the one given with Eister not showing up to defend Disney. I might not use the quote from the New York analyst. I'd end with the quote from the Celadon CEO, maybe, or some stupid anecdote or joke maybe.

That story written as I proposed is simple and to the point. It would explain what the situation was and why this is important, especially if Disney loses the appeal. It would also be a lot stronger because it isn't pussyfooting around the subject.

Jasmine P.