Selfish

Me. I'm selfish. I'm proud of that because I'm not using it in the same vilified sense that it gets injected into an insult.

My work comes first.

Also something you're probably not getting the context of because I haven't established any. I'm not one of those people that lives to work and the 8-hour work day is not the most productive once you look into it. Sitting at a computer all day is also a bad idea. Those 10 minute breaks every hour where I seem like I'm idling or procrastinating (when I'd rather be writing or drawing)-- those are there for the sake of this ideal of actual productivity.

It's true enough that most days I spend about 10-12 hours easy on work but it's all spread out over my waking moments (and sometimes perched around a nap when I'm really failing at real productivity). I don't ever take real vacations, but I play pretend and intentionally use that infuriating little 'stay-cation' word with a shit-eating grin to show you I know exactly how annoying it is.

I raise my nephews. (Like a boss.) I walk two hours a day. (Like a boss.) I have a social life so rare, it's still mooing.

(Like a cow.)

It's cool. I love the little guys, I don't hate walking, and I also have the coolest most understanding friends who get what creativity entails. They've all seen my room and wonder what Narnia vomited its idea of interior design into such a small space. 'Selfish' is what it took to chase the dream, but I've sacrificed. I pray to the tech gods that my shit won't break because I'm pretty broke and nothing is easy to replace. I miss when I could just go ahead and call someone up because I'm bored and I want to hang out with someone. Most days, my head is so into what I need to do that I plan social visits just so I can be sure I'm actually present and NOT thinking about what's waiting at home.

Work comes first, but to be honest, first place isn't a static factor or at the least, a lot of things share it simultaneously. It's possible to feed a hungry nephew while daydreaming what I stopped writing about and it's oddly possible to have a conversation with them sometimes while drawing (although it's also very likely I'll let slip what I'm doing in PhotoShop instead of what I actually meant to say). It's not exactly the most coherent or fully present version of me but it's a compromise. There was a time I'm not particularly proud of where I'd yell at any interruption or use the possibility of being interrupted as an excuse not to work at all. My nephews are at least old enough now that they're polite about interrupting and even supportive of what it takes to do it.

Gone are the days of putting myself last. It's not just society that makes women feel like it's okay to be self-sacrificing in terms of domestic or nurturing instincts-- sometimes it just exists in us and it's something we have to correct if it doesn't align with our ambitions. Women are encouraged plenty to embrace their nature and we can access self-empowerment without permission so I never blamed men or society for retreating into instincts against my primary ambitions. I also don't regret not going to college sooner or being who I've needed to be to balance raising kids and still being a creative powerhouse. I don't pretend my life is harder or easier than it is and I own the ups and downs. I'm okay with not fitting into liberal or conservative boxes. There are more than enough breeders and homemakers and laser-minded career bitches, etc. Human survival is not at risk for lack of any type of person. I'm okay with swatting flies coming at all sides.

Women like Christina Hoff Sommers exist. Level-headed and self-possessed people who operate with integrity, who push ahead with a clear voice and infinite patience. We live in a country that doesn't quite understand that true acceptance is within and too often it's an outcry for more boxes and less actual freedom of choice for anyone. It's less about respect and more about power/control over strangers. Expectations for the world around you are becoming the greatest source of misery in a country that should actually be flourishing. Who we project ourselves to be is just as vital as who we are. I can't tell you how often I see people completely baffled that they aren't seen as good people because they have 'good hearts' when they actually aren't aware that outwardly, they're projecting their worst defensive traits rather than their ideal. You know, like the 'nice guys' that feel entitled to the world's most 'beautiful' women simply by virtue of having a penis. Lack of self-awareness and entitlement is an ugly trap.

I get how hard it is to be yourself and I'm going to deviate from my original topic a bit because this just in: sometimes people suck. Today, I had to be polite to a man I wanted to punch in the face. I was out walking and saw this guy ahead of me, so I didn't think much of it. I turned down a street and no one was behind me-- until I noticed a shadow picking up speed behind me. I was almost immediately afraid because it was the guy who had been walking ahead of me before but I smiled despite the urge to scream 'creep!'. Not only did I thank him (with clear reluctance and no smiling) when he said I was 'cute' but I gave yes or no answers when he was asking personal questions because the details weren't really any of his business, but I wasn't sure if it would be safe to look away. I hated it, but I also didn't know what kind of psycho I could be dealing with who thinks approaching a strange woman like this was okay. I kept trying to put my earbuds back into my ears in a nervous gesture to signal I didn't want to talk but instead he asked me if I wanted to make five dollars. I had no idea if this was about drugs or sex but I doubted he really thought I was 'cute' but just trying to flatter me into doing something I didn't want to do (and I was insulted that I looked like I'm hard-up for five fucking dollars, possibly). I sped up past him and still I could hear him trying to press me to change my mind. In my mind, all I could think was 'go the fuck away' and' please don't stab me'. Or worse. I wasn't entirely convinced broad daylight or even the risk of neighbors coming to my aid was a deterrent at this point.

I was never more relieved when he gave up, but for the rest of the walk, I kept looking behind me and I never really relaxed. I didn't go home though. I was angry and I didn't want this to mean I'd be too afraid to leave my own house. Look, anything can happen out there. I'm always aware of that. Because of that, sometimes we don't survive by being 'real.' We have to forgive ourselves for what we lose sometimes to see another day (or greet another day without the shame of regret for what we didn't do). There's no manual, and we can't 'have it all' but coming up with a strategy for self-acceptance and survival is worth it. Locking yourself up in safe spaces isn't going to keep you safe from it all either, so risks are necessary to properly understand what is worth trying for.

Writing and drawing, they have their ups and downs too. It can be maddening and isolating if you are able to lock yourself away into it. People see working up to full-time writing as some utopia but it can be abused to self-destruction too if you don't exercise boundaries with it too. You can have too much of a good thing. You can lose a good thing if you take it for granted. Such is life.

Enjoying selfishness is a responsibility, but one you don't have to feel guilt for. Regret? Now there's something that can haunt you. Before I learned that missed opportunities aren't always the end of the world, I knew the sting. It's also useless to let them stick around rent-free. Writing does give me a good place to channel them, but writing is also not about me. Once I pass the baton to a character or a story, it's not about telling my story (because some of it is just not that exciting)-- it's about telling their story and detaching from the consequences and triumphs alike. At some point, I'm just their completely useless therapist, cashing in on how well I turn their life into a book.

Benevolent. Selfish. Hard-working. It's whatever. Just do what it takes to like yourself.

I blame the cow with the incredible hair.

Fish Shtick

At one time, I might have said that I'm just talking out loud. Now, I can say for certain that I actually talk to my pets. Not in the way you would with someone who might converse WITH you in return, but I raised human children. Boys especially have the tendency to delay speech even when you suspect they understand damn well what you're saying. In the same way, I believe creatures that spend enough time around you start to learn what you're communicating in some degree just as you are.

Don't eat each other? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.

I'm sure there are arguments for their level of intelligence or retention or position on the food chain, but there are some parts of interactions with sentient creatures that doesn't fall under mere coincidence. It's not the same as fanaticism or fervor-- I've said before that while there are distinctions between being a critter mom and mother to your own spawn, there are certain convictions where it's not important if they are real or imagined as long as they are beneficial and the connection is genuine enough to have a real impact.

Many times, I've been told my fish would make a great subject for my comics. It would be hard to express the level of passion I get into when I'm lovingly talking about my 'jerks', but whatever it is, it's clear that the way I observe their behaviors does ignite my imagination. It's a mini soap opera in there sometimes. The big pink jerk and dominant male, PinkiePie, tends to be everyone's favorite (and I can't say I don't share that sentiment). He patrols around with the fish version of a strut or he blubs around, sort of lazy in his insistence on claiming two of the rocks (yet benevolent enough to let another fish occupy the one he isn't claiming). He watches me more than the others and likely wonders if I'm a threat to his dominance. He's also vain and insatiably curious. If I'm taking pictures or videos, he follows the camera almost ruthlessly. He hates how I arrange the tank, but his own ideas seem more borne of spite than actually improving things. He's smart though, so if I want him to stop trenching under big rocks, I have to block his efforts with smaller rocks. He's gotten stuck in rocks that I've warned him he's too big for. I can almost see the defiant glint in his eye when he looks at me and does it anyway.

I don't have a feeding schedule for them, but they seem to know why I'm coming near their tank based on their behavior. If I'm coming over to look closer, they wiggle around mid-level and gravitate towards my face or hands. If I'm feeding them flakes, they start to agitate the water before I even lift the lid. If I'm about to feed them pellets, they know they sink so they wiggle near the surface (sometimes splashing because who has time to wait?). Whatever you want to call it, they observe and learn. Even if I throw in an exception, they are pretty quick to solving the new problem. When I started feeding the brine shrimp in freeze dried cubes, one of them learned that sticking it under the water coming out of the filter broke it up. He was like a dolphin pushing a ball around, immediately repeating the behavior that led to the reward.

And yes, they do ridiculously stupid things, but that has little to do with brain capacity. They tend to do stupid things for the same reasons humans do: Attitude, lack of forethought, forgetfulness, ignorance. We're all creatures limited by our circumstances. One of my earliest posts has a concept I've always loved in terms of measuring intelligence (and it doesn't matter who said it because chances are, it's been said many ways by many people)-- if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid.

If he can do it, why can't you?

In a literal sense, it's laughable. Fish don't suffer from crises of conscience, at least not in any observable sense. I've seen what might be regret (getting stuck in a rock) or even mourning (when my big pink jerk lost his breeding mate-- he's never bonded to a female fish again and looked for her for days, but didn't eat). Inferiority is non-existent in cichlids, even to the point of blatant stupidity. They're proud to the point of causing stress to themselves for not backing down or not hiding from an aggressor. 

"I'm gonna kick your butt."

I know, I know-- not the point of the quote, clearly, but as much as I love the quote for simplistically relating that intelligence has layers, it doesn't do the nature of fish any favors. Not all fish are created equal after all. Most species of fish although ranging from dull to beautiful are also somewhat boring in nature, so my own experience with fish is still limited to cichlids, but I can vouch for them. If I put a tree in their tank, they'd uproot it. In fact, I suspect their nature is to get rid of anything that isn't weighed down. They dig up and push around the fake plants and rocks and gravel and one time they even figured out they can scare the crap out of me by pushing the airstone into a rock or log and float it (I make sure the tube can't stretch that far anymore). You could make the argument that it wasn't deliberate, but I pretend like I'm not watching and see that they wait until they think I'm not looking to do something they know I don't like them doing.

You could be delicious, so keep it up and I'll find out.

Haaaaa, as much as I observe, it really sounds like I do nothing but study fish all day, but women-- we are the ultimate multi-taskers and this is an activity that actually aligns with writing, designing, computer work. In fact, you can say my productivity even increased despite their 'distraction'.

Affinity isn't an easy thing to explain. I love the little bastards. I talk to the little bastards because there's some gratification in the response to the stimuli. Sometimes they seem to understand and obey, other times they seem to deliberately disobey. It doesn't really matter which it is. Like faith and fantasy, not every aspect of it needs logic. They do like when I talk to them. They do get extremely interested when I dance around or exercise. They even seem to enjoy mimicking me when they can. It's symbiotic and beneficial and a sounding board that works. 

Often, writers don't always need input. Sometimes it's just nice to have a sentient being to throw things at. It's kind of nice when that being doesn't actually have the capacity to give advice even. Sometimes we just need unblinking encouragement. Or judgement.

Probably judgement.

Needs more work.