This post is going to be another vomit post. I have been thinking a lot about the difference between self esteem and self delusion. 

How does one honestly assess their own talents without being either too self critical or completely delusional?

When I was in elementary school, the world was in the throws of the "tell all kids they're wonderful so we don't hurt thier feelings" phase. Everyone won, everyone got ribbons, everyone was praised. At home my mother hardly had anything good to say about me. I think she thought she was helping, but I rarely heard anything encouraging from her.  Confronted with both extremes, it was hard to believe either were true. It was impossible to get a true picture of myself. I learned that when people say anything to me about me, whether it be good or bad, they are most likely blowing smoke up my skirt and that opinion could not to be trusted. I could never find that balance, because I never had a person who I could trust to give me an honest to god opinion: one that mattered and that I could believe.

I still struggle with that. I love my friends dearly, but I find it hard to trust when they say what I have created is good, because I always suspect they are just being nice. I look at my videos and think "Well, it's not Aardman quality". I see the flutteriness. I see the edge of scenery and the mysterious moving objects. I see my attempts at humor and think no one else finds them nearly as funny as I do. I read my writing and see how not Neil Gaiman I am. Or Amy Berg. Or Jane Espenson. I keep doing because I love doing it all. I have a deep down hope that something in that pile of muck is worth the space it is taking up and the time I spent on it.

Right now I am struggling again with my self image. I want to see myself as I am, warts and all, good and bad, and come out confident and happy with what I see. Am I wasting my time with all the crap I create? I love to create. I LOVE to create. It makes me deliriously happy, giddy even, when I make something. But what if I will never be good at anything? What if I am deluding myself into thinking I have a chance at being on par with Aardman, Gaiman, Berg et all? Or does that even matter? Should I be showing the world the humble progress so far, or should I be hiding my shame?

We are constantly being told not to base our self worth or our self image on what other people think of us. But how do you create an accurate image of yourself if you don't, at least to some degree? How do you see yourself if you are not allowed to look at the image that is reflected back at you?

How did you create your self image, and how has it effected what you do with your life?

SOooooo......

Working, I suppose. I am so far behind. I wasn't feel great for a while, then I procrastinted, so I most likely won't have anything done for Fandance. I am still going to try, but I am sooooooo far behind. I did not stick to my timetable at all. I also changed ideas midstream. That is a very bad idea. I still want to do my original idea. I have sets built and have done test dequences and stuff. But I wrote a filk to Princess fo the Night by Saxon. It is Doctor Who themed. So now I am leaning toward a music video for that. I want to do both, but reality tells me that both won't be completed in time. I need to stop being so indecisive. So now I am sitting in a pizza place forcing myself to plan and design, after which I will go home and build. And record the song. I ended up needing to take my uke in for a tune up. It wouldn't stay in tune for more than a few chords. Makes it difficult to record a song when your instrument won't stay in tune for the whole song. It is all good now. So I really need to do that today.

I also spent most of the day fueling my bad self with caffiene. Kind of over did it. My brain is kind of all over the place right now. I am hoping food will help drill down my focus a bit so I can get some stuff done.

Ok, I probably should finish eating and do some actual planning before ileave here. At least have a plan for the rest of the day. 

EDIT: So I came home and worked a little bit. I have decided to dress several of my little guy as Doctors. For your edification, as well as my memory of which soldier is to get which costume, here is a labeled picture:

So the next step is to glue magnets to their feet, then figure out how to clothe the little buggers. I made the ones with plumes to Baker, as I can hide with hat and hair, and Matt Smith, for the same reason. I plan to make little glasses for Tennent and go see if I can find teeny, tiny celery for Davison. 

I did not get anything recorded yet, though i did practice for a good long while tonight. My goal is to get it done tomorrow, post it to Soundcloud and then here so you can hear it. I think it is very clever, if I do say so myself. And it is fun. I just have to quit being so picky about how my uke playing sounds. 

So now I need to get to bed, as I haven't been sleeping well and I need to make myself sleep tonight so i can function. 

I leave you with a pic of my RPG test set:

Another day of writing. I am housesitting this weekend starting last night, so I thought this would be a great weekend to sequester myself with my computer and write. I have a lot of writing to do. However, now I am here I am having a hard time motivating myself to get started. It's not like I don't want to write. I love writing. As hard as it is, and even with how much I struggle with getting it just right, I love it. This whole frustrating, maddening, wonderful process I call stop motion is love worthy. I admit, no job I have ever had has made me as happy. Or as frustrated. And yet, in spite of the frustration, I still want to do it. I have not the feeling of "Fuck it!" and the urge to walk away, kicking everyone in face as I do so. The frustration does not make me mad. As much as I want to have an income, after experiencing this, I don't want to go back to crappy day-to-day stuff. I am still looking and will take what I can get, but I am realizing more and more that I need to get my butt in gear and figure out a way to make THIS my job. I need to find someone who can help me figure out what is crap and what is good, so I can improve faster.

I feel stupid just figuring out what I want to be when I grow up at age 37. I wish I had figured my life out sooner. Looking back on my life, I don't think I could have. I went from one abusive situation to another. I wasted my 20's on an abusive man who wasn't worth my time, and wasted most of my 30's getting away from the shit he lay on me. Only now am I realizing what I can do, and what makes me happy. Only now can I look at what I do and see the good as well as the bad. I guess I am getting to a point in my life where I really am getting too old for other people's shit, and their negativity no longer completely shuts me down. Granted, I have a long way to go before the fear monster sitting on my shoulder dies. He may never die completely. But it feels good to look back on something I made, even if there are flaws that need to be corrected, and be excited and happy with what I see. It feels good to make myself laugh. It makes me feel like running around yelling "Look what I did!" like a five year old.

Actually, I take that back. I am not just discovering now what I want to be when I grow up. I am only now rediscovering what I wanted to be from a young age. When I was in elementary school I used to write little stories all the time. I used to amuse my teachers with them. One of them even encouraged me to submit one of my stories to the district wide writer's conference. Somewhere there is a published volume of elementary school kid's stories from 1984, and one of mine is in there. I believe it was a story about a witch. I LOVED melodramas, and as an extension British pantos. One summer I wrote a melodrama, and I roped my siblings and my cousins into performing it for all the adults. I think I was 10 at the time. When I was a teenager I wrote books to take with me babysitting. I had what I called my babysitting bag. I found that although kids had books and toys and videos at their houses, usually they had played them all to death and didn't really want to do any of that stuff. So in my bag I put a bag of chocolate chips with which to make cookies, a jump rope, paper and colored pencils, dress up clothes  and cheap McDonald's toys. And, of course books. My mom wouldn't let me take our books out of the house, so I wrote my own and my best friend illustrated them. We made several for my bag and several for hers. So what happened? Several things. There are circumstances I don't want to bore you with, but mainly the end result was me giving up on myself. I honestly thought that the best I could do was be someone's wife and raise kids. (The ironic thing is I still don't have any kids) That I was too stupid and incompetent to be creative. That my ideas were cliche and stupid. And it has just taken me this long to wade through all the bullshit and realize what I have known all along.....that I can do this, and whether or not I am good enough at it NOW for people to pay me for it, it makes me happy. "It" being stop motion animation, storytelling, writing, comedy....anything and everything that I have been working on the last year to keep myself sane.

Because in the end, all THAT,  is what makes me happy and sane.

Well, look at that. I think I just knocked my motivation loose. See ya either when the weekend is over or when I hit another rough patch. Enjoy your weekend. :)

BIG SIGH. I think I have a good draft of my first episode. For the series I am going to do. I am kind of excited. This is fun. There is probably a lot that needs to be done to modify it, but I like it how it is. I would love to have people read it and give me feedback, but I am not ready to make it public for everyone. If you want to read it and give me your opinion, go to the contact form and send me a request. I will send you the private link to it and you can let me know how bad it stinks.

As is evidenced by my fragmented sentences and half formed ideas, my brain is fried. It has been fun, but a challenging fun. I know what I want to do for the second episode already, so tomorrow will be fleshing out episode 2. It would be nice if I could finish it tomorrow, but I don't see that happening. Sometimes it takes me longer than I like to get me into writing mode. I have to get past the "Oh my god what if it blows" wall that my brain throws up every time I try to write. I am hoping the more I do this the easier it will get to tear that wall down and start something. The fact that I got through it, whether it is trash or treasure, makes me so happy at this moment.

I don't have a lot to say today. I just don't want to go too long without putting in a post. It seems to be a habit with me to leave it for too long then say it has been too long. I have been working on writing scripts and fleshing out ideas. I made an attempt at taking a picture of the brickwork on the castle (see previous post) and replicating it over and over to cover the white spot in the middle of it. I failed, but I think that is mainly because I am not sure exactly how to do it. I will try again later when my frustration at myself has died down. Or it might just end up a cheesy grey piece of construction paper. We shall see when I get closer to needing it.

Last night I was laying in bed flipping through my list of eBooks, and came across The Meaning of Liff. If you haven't encountered this book before, it was written by Douglas Adams and it is a "dictionary" of terms. He made most of the words up, but he constructed the definitions for all of them. In my tired haze I thought "hmm....a book based on the word in this would be hilarious". In my end of day not-so-tired haze, I still think it is a good idea. I think it would be fun. I also need something at which to direct my writing practice. So I have decided I am going to try to write a book using all of the words from the Meaning of Liff. Of course, I would have to preface it by saying "USE THIS BOOK, NOT YOUR BRAIN TO TRANSLATE", as some of the words have real world definitions that are completely different than his. To tie it into my Rl-RPG, I am going to write 1000 words a day on it, and get XP points for it. I am barely at level 2 in most of my categories. I don't even want to make a new infographic, it is that pathetic. I am still working on it, just not as enthusiastically. I think I may need to change the nature of my game as well. I want to make stop motion more an integral part of the storyline. I have some definite goals now, so it will be easier. And I think I may cheat and start my character at level 6.

I have also decided to redesign how I set up my sets. Right now it is all based on an old cookie tin, which is deep enough to set the camera in the set, but too deep to use the tripod. The bonus so far has been that it brings the set up to a height that is less straining on my back. I can sit in my chair and not hunch, or stand a hunch a little. I am going to play around with cutting a hole in the backdrop to see if I can move it forward and back without making too many issues. I could slide the cookie tin further back through the set if I want it closer to the tripod. Or maybe I should redevise what I use for a floor. I haven't decided yet.

Any suggestions or comments about anything here are welcome.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say. Nothing profound. Nothing really interesting. Just daily life stuff. Just cause I am in a random mood, here is a pic from the Eddie Izzard Cake or Death video I did last year. Enjoy.