Keepin' It Unreal

I haven't forgotten the blog. For multiple days at a time, it slips my mind, and there are times when I feel like writing something, and it just doesn't happen. There have been plenty of blog worthy things, such as my new brothers of the Hawaiian shirt wearing clan at Baker Park on the fourth. There have been plenty of things going on with Ben and Justin.

Problem is, all of these things are tainted. It's been a long time since I've felt bad about how I handled something. guilt is not a feeling I like, a feeling I took great lengths to avoid. I'd like to say this thing brings out the worst in me, but maybe it just reveals who I really am. I take a malicious pleasure in being a jerk. I feel I take more pleasure in the pride of not being an ass, but one is easier than the other sometimes.

Point being, this last project I've been working on, I love it. Thing about it is, it's real. It's not something born in my head. I've, with Justin and Ben's help, documented it, and embellished it, but I've made almost nothing up. And while I like that my life is for once interesting enough to to merit something like this, in this case, a screenplay, it's all very real, and I'm having doubts as to whether I'm the protagonist of this story, or the antagonist. The wanderlust I've been feeling lately isn't because I'm a gypsy at heart. It's because once again, I'm finding myself unhappy with who I'm becoming, and I'm too afraid to fix it.

I don't really know. It's an ugly situation, one that has no easy solution, only the promise that the situation will go away at the end of the summer, at least temporarily, so I have the option to ignore it until it goes away, which is not what I want to go away.

I've been drawing though. I'm not very good, but considering how good the women in my family are, I have to at least have some talent. I don't have anything I consider good enough to put on the blog yet, but I'm trying. I've just got some stories that I envision more as graphic novels than books. Some things are said better with pictures than words, and while I doubt I'll ever be good enough to do these as a solo endeavor, I've got some characters that I want to actually see somewhere other than in my head. Some of my more recent stories have started with a simple image, my latest was what I believed to be a character from another story, whom I thought had died much younger than I saw him there, oddly, on metro. I don't know if it means anything, other than that my imagination has totally stepped out of my control, not mention my understanding.

But it's what I should be doing. Making stuff up. It's not a guilt free place, and there is still question over who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, but at least I'm still rational enough to know that while it matters to me, it only matters to me. I can maintain my self image as a decent human being. What I'm working on now, the real stuff, I'd like to leave it alone for a year or too, come back to it, and see what's changed. Once I can separate it from reality, then maybe I can finish it, guilt free. Once the people in it are characters, and not people I know.

Still, I wanted to try my hand at drawing, and I've been reading some web comics lately, paying almost as much attention to the artwork, or more importantly, the changes and improvement of the artwork, as the stories themselves. I think if I keep at it, I might produce something decent. I'll never do anything that compares to my sisters, but if I can do the cover art for at least one book, I'll be extremely happy. It's probably just another excuse to do something besides actually write these stories. I think my skill at procrastination would let me put off my own death. That is the dream, anyways.