It's been a funky week, stretching back into the end of the previous one. I hope today signalled the end of this.
There were several bits of drama stirred up, a bit of Not Being There For Someone When They Needed It that really ached when I found out about it later, a party that looked good but wasn't, and a couple of things I'd been keeping inside and holding on to that I never should have finally came out. Noisily and at length.
Things seem to be calm with me now. I can actually try to get things done again instead of brooding. I think I lost about two weeks, at least, to brooding. Maybe three. No art, no job-hunting stuff, just brooding. Some moments of brief delightful happy creativity, but ones set in brooding and evasiveness.
This is a habit I really need to kick. I don't think it's ever helped anything at all, it's just resulted in time wasted, opportunities lost, and made things worse when what I'm brooding about finally boils over.
I say that one reason I haven't thrown resumes and reels around the places that might employ an animator in the Bay Area is that I look back at my possible reel and hate it - it's all Flash crap, full of the limits of the media, most of it more limited by being for the web, with little of me in it because of the division of labor in Spümcø's methods. That it's all stuff I did when I was a depressed shard of self-hate boy and looking at it reminds me of that time.
I bet I'm just lying to myself when I say this. What's the real reason, Peggy?
I got a brief phone call from an ex-Spümcø person. Seems Kevin is working at Frederator now. I'm glad he found some work after the studio ended. Rumor also puts John K at his father's home now. Not so good. I hope he's doing alright. I learned a lot from lurking in the shadows of his studio, watching him draw. Some of his style is obvious in mine, like the crazy way I sometimes do hands, most of it isn't anything that says "I learnt to draw from John K" but I got a lot of my philosophy of how to manage one's diverse and contradictory influences from analyzing his drawings. I'd e-mailed him a couple weeks ago about something silly - thanking him for accidentally teaching me the basics of yodelling, of all things - and signed it "Peggy, formerly Paul". He hasn't written back and I dunno if I expect him to.
I guess my suspicion when I visited before leaving LA was right, and Spümcø is over. I feel like it should affect me more, like I should go over the good times and bad now, but really, everything after WPH for me was a litany of wasted opportunities and poor performances. (Well, I guess I did just reminisce, what with going back up and writing that stuff about John, and the stuff below here, after I said I should reminisce.)
I mean, the head of the US layout team asked me when I was gonna do a layout test early on in the new R&S, and I just curled up and gloomed and put it off. If I'd gotten some self-belief going and just done it I'm sure I'd have managed to do it by after a couple of goes. But I hated all my attempts before I even began them.
I had Ralph Bakshi rave over some of my art and story concepts while I was there. Ralph fucking Bakshi. One of my idols in the field of animation. You know, I really should mention that in my resume somewhere. 2004, Spümcø: involved in developing a SF noir show with Ralph Fuckin' Bakshi, the original crazy beatnik animation director, you fuckerth, if he doesn't come out of retirement again I might be one of the youngest people who can say that, and maybe that's worth something? He's behind my second favorite animated feature ever*, and he liked my stuff, and here I am constantly worrying it's derivative shallow crap.
* Coonskin, sometimes maybe WIzards, but usually Coonskin. All his stuff is confused and fragmented, but there are these moments of brilliance, and these are the ones I've seen that're more coherent and more full of wonderful. Oh, and Yellow Submarine is the top one because it was the first sight I had of something besides the Disney Formula, my introduction to the Beatles, and a bonding moment with my father.
It's raining. Wasn't I walking in light drizzle earlier today, gleefully anticipating that, shouting up to the clouds to gather, to darken, to merge, to RAIN, to wash some stuff clean?
Did I forget to take my progesterone tonight? I was later on my estrogen than usual this morning, due to cleaning up after some of that noisy long-held drama. Hmm. Nope, I took it. I can't blame the hormones. It's just been a complex week with a bunch of stuff bobbing to the surface, and here I am looking at some minor side bits while it rains outside. Poking at loose ends I'm noticing. Thinking about things said and things hiding behind things said.
In an attempt to perk myself up, I will remind myself of this: I wore one of the XL shirts still in my wardrobe, from when I constantly tried to hide in them. I know intellectually that my new gender has been quite visible in them for a year and a half or so, but I still feel like a little like a guy when I wear them, when I look down and see myself kinda shapeless. But I saw myself in the mirror tonight and it was clearly a girl in there, with a big loose shirt draped over her tits and swaying around her waist. It was kinda cute.
I say I'm trying to grow from a broken fake boy into a woman, but this week I really feel like a confused, crazy teenage girl. It sucks. A lot.
