The Desire for Shared Misery

I'm probably not going to tell you anything you haven't heard before, but I'm also sure that there's a first time for everything and I may be breaking a thought cherry that you've overlooked many times over. That's reason enough to go for it.

What I'm doing now, it's my dream, you know this. I used to fantasize about a day when I could write and draw my stories with the stars in my eyes that everyone else has when thinking about the things that they either won't do or lost interest or hope for somewhere along the way. It should be glorious, but it's the human condition that when we attain those difficult goals that we are always looking ahead to the next. We ascend to bigger things, but there's always something more. They say that the highest achievers sometimes reach these places where there's just a big empty space above with the mountain of all attained below. I can't tell you how, even as an atheist, that seems absolutely impossible to me. I wouldn't feel like a god nor feel the need to create one. In life, there will always be something above as long as I don't wave off everything as below me. I carry this attitude into a situation where I am asked to teach-- I may be the one viewed to have the authority, but I go eager to find something to learn as well.

I probably seem pretty zen about life, but appearing stoic is an everyday struggle. The idea that I am not capable of misery or knowing real pain because I'm not 'woe is me' is a fault in logic. My threshold is just different, tailored to my own survived trauma, and when things are hardest, I'm just more likely to clam up and power through. When I do whine, you'll notice it's oddly minor-- I have a cold, my back hurts again, I'm anxious about doing something. It's not commendable and it's why modern people are so inclined towards mental illness, this idea that suppression is strength, but it's also not a habit that is broken easily nor safe to do in certain company. Modern attitudes can be predatory at any sign of weakness.

You also see how many people seem almost excited as they compare how awful their day was, how it actually worsens mood when people enter this frame of mind. Can't say I didn't do it because in some work cultures, your level of perceived misery often calculates how well you're received and if there's anything worse than being on your feet for 8 hours, it's having no one to talk to to pass the time.

Somehow, people perceive a 'dream' career as a break from the fold and can unintentionally isolate you, more than that kind of effort already does. I can set my own hours, but if I treat it like a part-time job, it will take me years to do what could be done in months. I could work 8 hours a day, but again, creative demands often press you to strike while the iron is hot. I've come to operating my life on a series of alarms just to remember to eat, stretch, take a walk, check on what the kids are up to. Those things that people think I can do 'anytime I want' disappear, not because I'm engaging in escapism but because I struggle to make something that maybe, just maybe, might give that joy to someone else.

Have you ever psychologically profiled someone? Have you done it for all 30 characters in a book? Have you ever had an idea you know jack shit about and realized you have to speak to people or otherwise research it so it still bears logic? Has two weeks ever passed before you really paid attention to what day it is?

Writing is not just a career and it can border on obsession. Some writers build soundtracks for their characters, draw them, make maps, a lot of 'extras' that they use as devices to make something unique of their ideas. It's often something they only talk about with other writers because even people who obsess over a fandom struggle to comprehend that sort of obsession with your own unfinished work. It can be dismissed as narcissism rather than the struggle to translate these worlds into something legible to others. In fact, writers can often seem 'mute' while mid-project to resist the temptation to just talk endlessly about the made-up issues they face and struggle to help you relate to. Even once they finish, many writers don't find it any easier to discuss it, hoping to lure people into discovering it without what is tantamount to spoiling it. When your friends and family aren't reading it, that too can create a silence.

Don't get me wrong-- many writers actually prefer some or all of their family and friends don't read it and we also don't want to have to force it when we do, but it inevitably causes a gap in interests. This is why many, many writers almost have to have other jobs and interests even when they can be a full time writer. There is literally nothing we can easily say about it unspoiled, especially when it consumes our life. I'm a full time writer and illustrator, but I also take time to watch TV shows, read books, crochet, learn new skills, because I need things in my life that won't turn me into a monk locked in a vow of silence when I'd like nothing better than to talk about my books. Of course, a quest for knowledge is part of who I am, so I'd still find ways to break out of any one thing to experience something else. It is just a thing that comes rarely.

The thing is, my misery is a different creature, not one I'm flying above on to laugh at all the peasants below. Writing is as emotionally, physically and mentally draining as any other job. If I had been an archaeologist, a zoologist, a radiologist, a physical therapist or a lifeguard (yeah, when I was six this was somehow my dream job), it would have borne the same weight, but I would pay taxes, hate customers/patients/dinosaurs/colleagues/bosses, in the same ways most people do. People see my pajamas (which are more attached to the fact that most regular clothes are physically painful), my flexible hours and my unfailing faith in my work and think I'm somehow above it all when much of the time, I'm scrambling out from under a rock and begging people to believe I'm human.

And no, I don't want you to think I'm below anyone either. You probably haven't seen me talking to celebrities either, but I'm not someone who gets starstruck. I imagine they're plenty used to being treated like aliens and there's absolutely no surer way to get them on autopilot than doing so, for better or worse. In my own mind, I'm both a celebrity and a nobody and I'm not that different from anybody until someone insists on treating me that way.

FYI, if you ever want a room full of pregnant women to look at you like they suddenly think cannibalism might not be a bad idea, then say 'oh, god, no!' when they ask if you have kids. It will also give you a good idea on how it probably feels to be... Kanye West with anything he has said in the past few years. (Sorry, no sorry, but I laughed at the Swift drama; the Kardashians were the point of no return.)

Damn it, Kanye, I used to be able to tell people I adore you. But I still love your music.

In any case, sometimes shared misery is something we aim for to be the only one not miserable alone. I've been there, even spent years believing that doing the 'right thing' makes it okay to feel wrong about everything. Now, sometimes I go ahead and risk some infamy to release my obligation as an impostor. To be fair, I honestly loved my job in floral at Kroger, I just hated that one bitch assistant store manager. I could dodge the bitch competition and go outside to water flowers and hum. Nothing makes a manager angrier than someone enjoying their job.

My boss is still a bitch, but with flexible hours, engaging work, and not having to cry in the bathroom or explain it to coworkers that it's just frustration and I'll be smiling in about five minutes, I'll settle for the bitch I choose rather than the bitch I don't.

I'd say I've ranted thoroughly enough to wonder if I've gone too far. And my finger still wanders towards the Publish button anyway... Sllllooooooowly, and--