There’s a quote by Douglas Adams that goes, “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” I undertook this project to get a number of things done; namely, publish my book, make my cartoon show, and revive my company. However, behind all those tasks was one big giant goal, and that was to get my life started.
Does anyone else out there have that feeling, like their life hasn’t started yet? You go through school, do your work, and then after ten months you’re rewarded with summer vacation. Complete that loop twelve or sixteen or nineteen times, and then you’re rewarded with a job (maybe). The job offers no summer vacation, but you get money. Finishing your education and getting a job is allegedly the rite of passage that means you’re a Real Live Adult now, but for me, it never clicked. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. If my first job out of school was secure and permanent, I’d still feel like a child. Only, you know, one who gets no summer but is paid a salary. That’s not what I’m meant to be. I want to see (and maybe even build) a world where childhood is for learning how the world works and adulthood is for using that knowledge to act to improve it. That’s the problem with most people’s jobs. They are unrewarding, and they waste tremendous amounts of talent. My current job has me working in retail, and I find myself folding sweaters and cleaning the floor and working the cash register alongside a scientist and a dancer and a nurse and an administrative worker. Okay, so the world needs its sweaters folded, but I’ve been spending the past two months going “this can’t be right.”
And it’s not right. I spent 2010 in an equally disappointing situation (which is what prompted this push and my documentation thereof). I had quite a bit of creative material prepared, and all that was preventing it from becoming reality was that I didn’t have the money to make it so. I networked, went to events, and made phone calls, but none of it ever warranted a response. And why should it, if I haven’t accomplished anything yet? So, to break out of this catch-22, I figured I would do it entirely myself. I began 2011 with the goal to make a book, a show, and a company, so let’s see what happened.
The Book:
I admit, I procrastinated with this one. Time after time, my search for an agent and a publisher was fruitless. I had told myself I’d just self-publish if no one wanted to pick it up after X amount of time, but I kept on extending the deadline. I don’t want to publish a book myself, because then it will have no endorsement. This kind of turned out to be a blessing, too, because recent analysis of my content tells me some MAJOR changes need to be made. I am glad I didn’t publish this story, because then the improvements to the series would be inconsistent with the available canon. My series is a work in progress, and I think I may have nearly sent it out too soon. For once, being exceedingly nervous and distracted has paid off.
So, what am I going to do with this manuscript? I’m thinking I might sit on it for now. After all, I only wrote it to be a promotional tool to support my cartoon. The cartoon is what needs my focus. I’ll make what changes I can to my series and promote it as I was doing before (as a cartoon show). I have a lot of strong concepts, a lot of weak concepts that I now know how to improve, and a lot of connections. Seeing as this topic is flowing into the next (YES!), I’ll switch headers now.
The TV Show:
Oh, look, cohesion between goals! As I was saying, the past year wasn’t lost. I made some connections and hopefully some of them remember me. My networking finally paid off as I lucked into a meeting with someone who sees the potential in my idea. She gave me some advice on how to improve it, and after a lot of thinking, I see how I can apply the advice. At first, I brushed this off as “just luck” rather than something I earned, but it’s really 50/50. Yes, I was exceedingly fortunate to finally meet someone who wants to help me after two and a half years of dead-end networking, but if I hadn’t spent two and a half years networking, I would have missed this opportunity. So, there ya go. If nothing else, I can go into the New Year with renewed hope and a new path on which to take my series.
The Company:
Do I need a company? I want to have a career, and I started a company because it was awfully hard to get/keep a job at someone else’s company. Why an animation company? Because that’s what I want to do with my life. I want to write cartoons. However, if I can make this cartoon show a success on its own, then I get to – OMG – have a career as a cartoon writer. The company isn’t really something I need anymore. It served its purpose, giving us credibility and a mental concept in which to store all our efforts (if that makes sense), but once the cartoon series is reinvented, we won’t need it.
That’s it, then. I didn’t actually reach any of my goals, but in attempting to do so, I figured out what it is that I have to do and how to do it. There are a number of things I started (the YA project, which has evolved into a writers’ circle, plus the computer game and also a comic strip I never mentioned here), and I will continue with them in a backburner kind of way. They are good practice, and when they’re not driving me crazy, they’re a lot of fun. My career goals and hobbies are lining up, not just growing out of one another, but also supporting one another. I believe this is what we mean by Geek 2.0. Until now, I never fully experienced it, because my paid jobs tended to involve mopping floors and stuffing envelopes rather than managing projects and leading people. I never had the opportunity to “officially” do creative progeeky things, and I realize now there’s nothing weird about me not having been given such an opportunity. Those opportunities are not given. They are made. I always felt like I was handling my future in kind of an “outlaw” way when I tried to do something independently. Perhaps my brain was overly trained by the school system which treats kids like, well, children. Obedience is only good for teaching yourself discipline. By all means, study and practice, but remember that’s all worthless unless you can turn it into something real. Making something real is allowed, but no one ever tells you that. It’s kind of like in Portal, how you start out stuck in that one tiny room and all you have is the portal gun to get you out. You have to look at all you have and figure out how it works, and then DO IT. That’s how I’m going to be an adult. That’s how I’m going to get past this preposterous metaphorical loading screen. I’m going to DO something. What’s more, I’m not going to feel like I’m breaking the rules. I’m not a guilty kid who was caught playing instead of doing homework. This is my life, and I’m taking charge, and I realize that playing is going to create a heck of a lot more useful things than doing homework such as folding sweaters. There is more to me than that. There is more to everyone than that.
So, what’s changed since last year? Looking at the headers, I take it as a good sign that I broke the pattern of titles I’d had at the beginning of the year. Instead of breaking up my efforts into categories, I’d ended up re-scrambling them, which means I’d changed the way I’m looking at things. It’s clearer now. I encourage you to do the same thing – write down all your goals and mix them up. Whatever remains consistent is your …-ness. It’s your thing. You probably already knew that all along, but if you’re the sort of person who needs to see confirmation or to give yourself permission, that’s where you’ll find it.
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The takeaways for the year, then, are as follows:
1. Focus. You can strive for multiple goals at once, but only if they all support one another. Trying to take divergent paths means you’ll stay stuck at the fork in the road.
2. Don’t be afraid of challenging yourself. This means questioning your ideas about yourself in addition to taking on task-related challenges.
3. You can only see what matters to you (and what doesn’t) if you’re willing to be objective and completely honest. You’re allowed to drop things that are holding you back. It doesn’t change who you are if it was never part of you in the first place.
4. You’re allowed to outgrow things. Let them go gracefully when you feel it’s time.
5. Even if a goal is consistent, the strategy you’re using to attain it may need to change. That is perfectly alright.
6. You NEVER need someone else’s permission to be yourself or live the life you want.
I’m ready for 2012 now, and I hope that my documentation of my experimental efforts this past year has helped someone else become ready for it as well. Live long and prosper.
-Tamara Hecht