Tragedy

I really liked Daisy Owl. It was a webcomic that was rather quirky, about a brother and sister who were taken in by a talking owl. Mr. Owl had a friend named Steve. He was a bear. He worked at a Honey factory.

Past tense. See, Daisy Owl hasn't updated in months now. The writer posted on a forum someplace that he just wasn't enjoying it anymore. It's a shame, but I understand. Doing something for fun and enjoying it is different with deadlines, with expectations.

I can't help but go to a darker place thinking about it, though. What if he was providing lip service? Maybe his last storyline was him just throwing out whatever he thought of. For example: Daisy and Cooper get stolen back by NASA who were initially instituting them in the Space Baby program. They are sent to the moon and trained there on how to repel aliens, in the off-chance aliens are ever discovered and/or wish to invade Earth.

It was just that kind of comic.

The comments posted throughout were always the same thing: People creaming themselves over how great and off-beat and quirky and awesome the comic was. Even if it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

I began to wonder if maybe Driscoll just started to resent everything. He wasn't enjoying his comic anymore, as he had posted previously. Maybe his desire to do art was being traded in for him putting on a show for what people who would never say a mean thing about him about the content. Maybe he was just putting down things that made no sense or were out there even for his own standing and hating the fact that, no matter what he produced, it was always met with the same copy/pasted commentary. Excellent work! Driscoll sir, you are a genius. And on and on it goes.

I find myself torn. I want to write, I always have, really. But what if these are the kind of feelings that come when you've finally carved out your niche? It would be a challenge, a rewarding one, to penetrate the world of written work, to build worlds for people to be in. But when everyone just cheers on whatever you do, what's the point? This is the reason I hated poetry in school. A lot of times it was just words, noises, things that SOUND important but provide no pleasure to the author, in my case. But my teachers and classmates would usually remark positively on it. In middle school, they got published every trimester in the school newspapery thing. I wasn't getting anything from it, though. When a crowd is expecting something of you and they've decided that it is good, then it is good. Even if it's Star Wars 1-3. Even if you intentionally try to sink whatever it is you're producing.

I've got enough struggle with my own writing now, nonexistent as it is. I don't really like most of what I put effort into; I am not a constructive writer but a fluid one. More organic than framed. I don't do well with plans, you see.

I don't know. Just one of those moods. Kincade and I had a talk tonight about our home lives. He told me that I was one of the good guys, and wondered how I ever wound up homeless. I told him the story, and he told me some of his, but I can't help but wonder (again) if I'm actually one of the good guys. I feel like my life is going to fall into one of two categories: The often-used concept of someone crawling from the fire and working to overcome their obstacles and succeeding...

And there's Lenny and George, of Mice and Men. Where no matter what, no matter how hard the struggle is or how good the break is, that it all goes nowhere in the end. It's a depressing school of thought. I don't know if I can chalk it up to a self-esteem thing or what. I'm a Leo. I feel very strongly about myself, that's for sure. I'm just not sure what those feelings are quite yet, given my wide-reaching notions of ego and self-hate.

I think I'd like to think of myself as wanting to be one of the good guys, but I'm not really sure, especially now that my foundation has eroded. I'm back to being a lump, to being up too late, to scraping the bottom looking for a job, back to sleeping too little and worrying too much.

I worry that this won't ever change, and I'll just end up like Lenny. I feel like I already used my extra lives just getting here, and I don't know what to do if this ends up failing.

Wow, this went in a direction I didn't expect.