What's on my mind?
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Yeah.
Transition.
Where is the line that crosses “I want to make a comic” and “I’m working on a comic”? Is there one? Are you not “working” on it the minute you start thinking about it? Sketching out characters, thinking of stories?
For some reason I envision it in my mind as the minute I start the script. Even though I’ve done all this sketching, concepting, thumbnailing. I still feel in my mind this is a not for sure yet thing, but here I am, dreaming up entire lifetimes for these characters and putting fingers to keyboard. Pencil to paper and sketching, evolving these characters and this world. Everything I do, see, taste, new and old is an element in this universe. The characters are me, my mind split apart, spread across a cast of characters on the edge of reality.
But yet, I feel still so unsure about so many things that I still just feels like an idea, not a work in progress. Might feel that way all the way up till I get the thing printed, but the day that switch flips will be an important day.
you're boiling over the edges, beautiful
Allow me a moment.
I haven’t gone on any rants on this blog for quite some time (if ever), so I feel pretty safe in asking you to sit back and listen for a moment. I’m going to use this blog for its actual purpose for a moment, and then I’ll return tacitly to posting pictures and music that I enjoy. I just feel the need to get a little something off my chest at the moment, before I return to school and no longer have the time for it.
In my senior year of high school, I took an Intro to Psychology class the first semester as a way to fill credits while still maintaining some academic integrity. When we started the unit on psychological disorders, the teacher issued a policy that was to remain in effect throughout the discussions for the unit - we were not allowed to ‘diagnose’ any of our peers or family members with a disorder. “Just because someone has mood swings,” she told us, “does not mean that they’re bipolar. It probably means that they have PMS.”
With this in mind, we successfully completed the unit without anyone attempting to convince the class that their ex-boyfriend had dissociative identity disorder, or that their little sister was clinically narcissistic. After the class ended, I promptly forgot about the fairly complete state of ignorance that the majority of the world lives in concerning psychological disorders. This mental omission on my part, however, has allowed it to come crashing back down on my head and shoulders with even more force as a result of my respite from humanity’s idiocy.
I have been reminded lately, on more than one occasion, of society’s overwhelming and irritating tendency to compartmentalize people’s personalities: if they have mood swings, they’re bipolar; if they like their living area to be neat and tidy, they have OCD; if they’re unusually eccentric and unpredictable, they’re likely schizophrenic. The media has saturated the current generation with so many images of what they depict as “psychological disorders” that everyone now believes themselves as qualified to diagnose their classmates, family members, and friends with a disorder as any educated psychiatrist. Never mind if they’re correct, because in most cases, it’s the labeling that counts. The act of putting someone whose actions they don’t understand into a neat little box makes them feel safer, makes them feel like they’re in control.
This, in turn, has led to an extremely strong mental and cultural stigma towards those actually diagnosed with those disorders - often the villains of horror movies and featured in news stories, those “afflicted” with X disorder are viewed with discomfort and a degree of fear. Because, apparently, dealing with the internal mazes of the psyche isn’t enough of a responsibility and plague, they (and those actually conscious of the complexity of psychological disorders) are forced to deal with a constant onslaught of ignorant drivel about how they have potential to be dangerous, and how it’s important for them to stay on their medication - not for their own good, but for the safety of those around them. Because they’re “crazy.”
All I’m hoping for here is a little awareness. Think twice before you diagnose someone. Think at least three times (and consult a psychiatrist) before you diagnose yourself. Don’t let the entertainment industry suck you in. Practice a little compassion.
