Howdy hey, friends!
I begin this month’s update with a bit of show-and-tell to partially describe how I feel at the moment.
(I know it looks like clickbait nonsense but it’s not, I promise)
(This next part will make less sense if you don’t watch it but, I mean, I can’t make you, so it’s up to you)
I certainly echo Brian’s feeling of angst in the face of my country starting conflicts, domestic and abroad, and being both powerless to stop it and forced to continue on in spite of the horrors. My experience differs in that my efforts to create art are often met with an external response that is indistinguishable from silence. It feels nigh-impossible, hinging on so many strokes of luck that it’s implausible, to make something that will reach and touch even a hundred people from where I sit at the moment.
As you might imagine, this is deeply frustrating!
There is, I suppose, a relief from a burden to create for the sake of obligation in my favor. However, that relief is counterbalanced by the idea that nobody will care whether or not I ever complete The Devil That Knows You Chapter 3 or The Hartvane Chronicles Book II or the game I’m working on. It is a rotten feeling to work on something for months and years and to have the collective response be less than an apathetic shrug.
And this is all against the backdrop of two major realities in my life: The aforementioned national/international horrors, and the reality that the best job I can land at the moment, while paying more than I made in five years as an artist within a paycheck or two, would not be enough to live on if I dared to have my own place.
I’m just… so fucking tired of it. I feel like I’ve been waiting for my life to start ever since I finished grad school, and it’s just not. That’s not to say there haven’t been moments of joy, but as the days and weeks and years and, in a few months, decades start to stack up since then, it wears on my soul.
I want to be myself and spread my wings, but self-being and wing-spreading is too expensive in today’s economy.
It is a rotten feeling to try to be someone for months and years and to have the collective response to one’s self be less than an apathetic shrug.
I wish I had a nice bow to put on all of this to say “But that’s all okay, because…!” If I knew how to finish that sentence, I’d be in a better place.
I’m not in an awful place. I have people around me who love me and a roof over my head. I do not take those for granted.
But I really don’t think it’s too selfish of me to hope for a job that doesn’t leave me feeling sore and soulless more often than not, or for my off-hours work feel like it’s having any impact on anyone other than me.
…And as I approach my conclusion, my cat just threw up on the carpet. I believe that’s as good a reason to wrap up as any.
Despite it all,
Love,
Josh
Josh Closs Comics and Stories 