Dumb but Happy
Back is feeling a whole lot better today! I want to run out into the grass and wriggle and mow my lawn and clean my house and walk to the library! And I still can't, because healing requires patience and this is exactly what happened last week and look where that got me. Thhbbt. I solemn swear to protect my spine and give it the TLC it needs to make a full recovery.
Maybe it feels better because I took care of the gargoyle (or one of them) perched on my shoulders. Anxiety and procrastination are such close bedfellows, and the one has been driving the other for too long in regards to Origins this year. I just can't do it-- I have had too rough a winter and I am too damn poor to manage operating a booth this year. I wish it were just a matter of not exhibiting, but I'm supposed to have done the picture for the Artist's Section of the Con book, and . . . it just ain't happen. You guys, I missed a deadline. I missed SEVERAL. And in my stubborness that no, I WILL go, I WILL finish this piece of art, they're now close to print and have no picture.
Dick move, Avery.
Guilt aside, admitting defeat is the best decision I could have made, and I feel so much lighter for having sent that email off.
****
Random thought of the day: Pinterest and I have a complicated relationship. I like it, and it is pretty, and easy to visit, but I don't do so very often. I get this little trickling dread-stream moving through me when I'm there, despite the pastel mochachino feel-good flower madness of the place. Tumblr, on the other hand, I am on *all the time* despite a design team that seems to hate users and the most unintuitive, nonfunctional operating system I have had the displeasure of using. Why do I relax there?
Because, I realized, I only want to visit Pinterest when I have money. It is a site about consumerism, aspiration, *wanting*, the pursuit of perfection in all things. Pinterest is about the life you'll never have (and can't afford). Underneath that polished exterior it reeks of a sort of dishonest, competitive desperation, even if the people who use it don't fit those adjectives. For the most part what are people pinning? Products, or places that you need lots of money to visit, or projects that you need the luxury of not working to do or maintain. Recipes with expensive ingredients or for parties that are hard to afford. Clearly not *every* pin falls into this, and I don't blame the users-- I don't even blame the network. It's like . . . Pinterest is the garden, all of the toxic societal expectations of women and affluence are the fertilizer, and what has bloomed is a beautiful flower that I'm allergic to.
Tumblr, for all it's structural faults, is full of ridiculousness and messy fandom stuff and people circulating lots of art of *all* kinds and funny things and dumb things and it's just . . . fun. Once I got the hang of it, popping in over there is entering the coffee shop where my favorite geeky, arty college friends hang out. We squabble and talk deeply about things and are interrupted by someone doing a break dance routine to a dubstep Legend of Zelda cover. But most of all, it's *earnest*. Pinterest is about the life you want to live. Tumblr is the life you're living now, in all it's stupidity.
Though I still miss LJ the very most.
Maybe it feels better because I took care of the gargoyle (or one of them) perched on my shoulders. Anxiety and procrastination are such close bedfellows, and the one has been driving the other for too long in regards to Origins this year. I just can't do it-- I have had too rough a winter and I am too damn poor to manage operating a booth this year. I wish it were just a matter of not exhibiting, but I'm supposed to have done the picture for the Artist's Section of the Con book, and . . . it just ain't happen. You guys, I missed a deadline. I missed SEVERAL. And in my stubborness that no, I WILL go, I WILL finish this piece of art, they're now close to print and have no picture.
Dick move, Avery.
Guilt aside, admitting defeat is the best decision I could have made, and I feel so much lighter for having sent that email off.
****
Random thought of the day: Pinterest and I have a complicated relationship. I like it, and it is pretty, and easy to visit, but I don't do so very often. I get this little trickling dread-stream moving through me when I'm there, despite the pastel mochachino feel-good flower madness of the place. Tumblr, on the other hand, I am on *all the time* despite a design team that seems to hate users and the most unintuitive, nonfunctional operating system I have had the displeasure of using. Why do I relax there?
Because, I realized, I only want to visit Pinterest when I have money. It is a site about consumerism, aspiration, *wanting*, the pursuit of perfection in all things. Pinterest is about the life you'll never have (and can't afford). Underneath that polished exterior it reeks of a sort of dishonest, competitive desperation, even if the people who use it don't fit those adjectives. For the most part what are people pinning? Products, or places that you need lots of money to visit, or projects that you need the luxury of not working to do or maintain. Recipes with expensive ingredients or for parties that are hard to afford. Clearly not *every* pin falls into this, and I don't blame the users-- I don't even blame the network. It's like . . . Pinterest is the garden, all of the toxic societal expectations of women and affluence are the fertilizer, and what has bloomed is a beautiful flower that I'm allergic to.
Tumblr, for all it's structural faults, is full of ridiculousness and messy fandom stuff and people circulating lots of art of *all* kinds and funny things and dumb things and it's just . . . fun. Once I got the hang of it, popping in over there is entering the coffee shop where my favorite geeky, arty college friends hang out. We squabble and talk deeply about things and are interrupted by someone doing a break dance routine to a dubstep Legend of Zelda cover. But most of all, it's *earnest*. Pinterest is about the life you want to live. Tumblr is the life you're living now, in all it's stupidity.
Though I still miss LJ the very most.