Friday, 08.04.2017 - 8:49 pm.
It’s Friday night and here I am, in my house, writing. That’s my nature, one that I’m sometimes uncomfortable with. I sometimes feel like going out, socializing. Today I’ve realized I’m craving social gatherings, getting together with people. But I don’t quite have a group of my own, and the few friends I’ve managed to have here move in circles that are far away from me, or we just don’t really have much in common.
This week I’ve spent it stuck on two pieces of writing. The working hours were devoted to a small study I finished in my PhD, a promising little number that will hardly be taken seriously in the scientific community because of its lack of statistical power. The leisure hours were devoted to reading my AF story draft, and thus I’ve been in dire need to be left alone. I was hoping there wouldn’t be many corrections to the story so I could print it out soon and have it ready to enter that novel contest the next month.
I found many, many things to correct in the story. Furthermore, I was sucked into it, I just love that world and the characters in it, and when I start reading, they’re all I think about. They are the characters from my stick-figure comic strip, so this a live-action version of the strip if you will. I’m amused by the story, the content and how it’s built. It has a regular three-act structure (look at me, talking about acts), but it has consistency and foreshadowing to the point that I think a second reading would be a delight as much as the first one. Even I, who’s supposed to know the characters like the palm of my hand, keep finding out about some things that they’ve done behind my back.
I go back and forth regarding the merits of AF. I don’t think this story would win the contest I’m trying to enter. It’s not quite the style of the publisher, I think, but hey, I’m not so much aiming at winning but at getting noticed and published; I don’t care for the award itself. Just tell me that this story is fantastic and it’s worth getting it out there and millions of people will enjoy it. That’s the back and forth. I can find lots of flaws in the story and yet I believe it is a masterpiece.
If only the rest of the world saw what I see in my own work. Is it that bad, that boring, that uninteresting? It’s never read beyond a few acquaintances of mine, family and friends, who sometimes provide one-click feedback. Yesterday I uploaded the sequence of my favorite comic strip, which I made earlier this year: it’s at the beach, it has colors, and it strongly suggests that one of the guys in the strip doesn’t only like girls (the one, precisely, that helped me come to terms with my bisexuality). It’s the only IG post of mine that’s gotten zero likes on Facebook. I don’t live for likes but, again, I can always count on one or two people to provide them.
It’s not just that one instance in which I’ve felt my work seems to be invisible, or just plain unworthy of attention. I suppose I resent feeling…misunderstood? Look, no one *should* like my stuff, and I am aware that there might be this HUGE gap between what people see and what I see in my stick figures, precisely because they are only stick figures to begin with. But the two times I’ve gotten zero reactions to my posts were when this one character is being queer. To be fair, the post I mentioned above got one rewarding two-word comment on IG from a friend, so not all is lost.
I know, I know, I’m tracking Instagram and Facebook likes to my posts on a Friday night. This is why I realized I’m craving a social life, but I’m not good at dealing with it when the opportunity arises. I feel I need attention, some validation, I need -hell- to be worshipped a little, little bit, to be told that I’m cool and that what I do is cool. I’m not cool, though, and clearly what I do isn’t either. Or at least the generation that will think it is cool hasn’t been born yet.
I’m done rambling.
Wait, quick item: this week I was, again, slightly besotted by Boy, a fellow PhD student I’ve mentioned before. He doesn’t pay attention to me, and even refused to sit next to me during lunch one of these days (the whole story: I was having lunch alone, but he needed an extra chair for another student, friend of his, who was joining him, and my table didn’t have that extra chair), which I took as signs that he likes me. Yes, LOL.
He doesn’t like me and I’m married, there isn’t even a problem here. But still, I daydreamed a bit this week, and I even played the game of perfect timing once I saw him go out to the toilets. I calculated my actions so I’d leave my desk when he walked back into the office (PhD students are in an open plan space). I did it, and we crossed paths and we smiled at each other, then I walked in front of him all the way to the printer. The end.
Also, Andrew and I are going to Barcelona the first weekend of September. WE’RE GOING TO THE “DAVID BOWIE IS” EXHIBITION! And to see a friend. And to see Bowie.