On the death of dreams...
May. 1st, 2013 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolari...one of my major issues in life is how many dreams have died for me. My comic career, my writing career, my surgery, my inability to get hired at Nintendo, my inability to stay with Emily, my inability to move to Canada among many many others.
To be fair, there have been reasons for each, boiling down to personal failings. The comic and writing careers were hampered by a lack of...well...talent. Surgery: Lack of money. Nintendo: Lack of focus. Emily: My overwhelming envy. Canada: Diabetes.
But each loss hurts my soul, and continued to eat away at it to this day. Today's hurt was something I knew was coming...and the hurt is all my own fault for resurrecting a dream that had already been crushed, to be crushed again.
Not many people know, that coming out of school I pushed hard to get into writing. My major in college was English, I'd taken screenwriting workshops, was researching agencies where I could submit scripts to producers. In fact, the very first draft of Closetspace was as a 25 minute TV show in 1994 - (a later 1996 comic draft off that original can be found here: http://www.dolari.net/html/99605roo.htm )
About that time, someone who was very influential in my life and I looked up to and tried to emulate, sat me down for a very long talk. He told me that while I had the drive to make comics, and the drive to write, I simply wasn't talented enough to make it work. He felt that I was working too hard at something I'd fail at, and didn't want me to waste time on something that would never happen.
I was crushed. And it caused The Great Shutdown. I essentially shut down creatively, and walked away from anything that spurred me to be creative. I walked away from all my comics contacts, I stopped working on my scriptwriting skills, stopped drawing. And focused on just getting through the day. For years.
That was 1996 or so. It wasn't until 2001 that that changed, mostly out of boredom. I couldn't get through the day anymore - I didn't have a job, I was living at home again, I had no money...there wasn't anything I could do to get through my day...so I wrote and drew. And I've kept writing and drawing to this day.
I've had a bit of screenwriting since. I'd usually just write up something to keep my screenwriting skills up...a pilot here...a scene there. Any comic work I sent out was written in a screenwriting format.
Here's an episode of a sci-fi show I wrote for the hell of it: http://dolari.deviantart.com/art/The-Book-of-Xand-Episode-1-82095648
I did write the Closetspace draft I entered into the Trans Comedy Award about 2008 or 2009. As it happens, two friends work in television. One is a TV producer. The other runs a production company. I decided to see if anything could happen - I registered the CS script with the WGA for protection, and asked my two friends for advice. Both pointed me in the direction of Project Greenlight, and I dabbled a bit in that...then I became diabetic and my priorities shifted. IT wasn't crushing - it never went anywhere, and I didn't expect it to.
Trans Comedy Award. The BBC was having an open call for transgender themed scripts. IT was a gamble, I wasn't sure how the hell i'd get to the UK if I won. But, what the hell - the script was written, it was written just for this, and, in my opinion, it was good. I tried not to get attatched, because if it failed, it would simply be a crushed dream, ressurected to be crushed again.
And it was. I never should have gotten involved in screenwriting again...it's been a dream for almost 20 years, and all that really happened this go around was that I got tempted, and (despite all my best efforts) got my hopes up to have them crushed again. I won't be trying to get into TV anymore, even if someone just up and gave me a contract for it. It's a dead dream, and ressurecting dead dreams just makes 'em deader when they fail.
I really need to just go back to living each day for itself, and instead of trying to achieve unrealistic goals, just try to make it through the day - life is happier that way. I have my comics...and the small readership I have there is better than no readership. And the comics make me happy.
I am the living embodiment that you can do what you want, and not quit your day job.
To be fair, there have been reasons for each, boiling down to personal failings. The comic and writing careers were hampered by a lack of...well...talent. Surgery: Lack of money. Nintendo: Lack of focus. Emily: My overwhelming envy. Canada: Diabetes.
But each loss hurts my soul, and continued to eat away at it to this day. Today's hurt was something I knew was coming...and the hurt is all my own fault for resurrecting a dream that had already been crushed, to be crushed again.
Not many people know, that coming out of school I pushed hard to get into writing. My major in college was English, I'd taken screenwriting workshops, was researching agencies where I could submit scripts to producers. In fact, the very first draft of Closetspace was as a 25 minute TV show in 1994 - (a later 1996 comic draft off that original can be found here: http://www.dolari.net/html/99605roo.htm )
About that time, someone who was very influential in my life and I looked up to and tried to emulate, sat me down for a very long talk. He told me that while I had the drive to make comics, and the drive to write, I simply wasn't talented enough to make it work. He felt that I was working too hard at something I'd fail at, and didn't want me to waste time on something that would never happen.
I was crushed. And it caused The Great Shutdown. I essentially shut down creatively, and walked away from anything that spurred me to be creative. I walked away from all my comics contacts, I stopped working on my scriptwriting skills, stopped drawing. And focused on just getting through the day. For years.
That was 1996 or so. It wasn't until 2001 that that changed, mostly out of boredom. I couldn't get through the day anymore - I didn't have a job, I was living at home again, I had no money...there wasn't anything I could do to get through my day...so I wrote and drew. And I've kept writing and drawing to this day.
I've had a bit of screenwriting since. I'd usually just write up something to keep my screenwriting skills up...a pilot here...a scene there. Any comic work I sent out was written in a screenwriting format.
Here's an episode of a sci-fi show I wrote for the hell of it: http://dolari.deviantart.com/art/The-Book-of-Xand-Episode-1-82095648
I did write the Closetspace draft I entered into the Trans Comedy Award about 2008 or 2009. As it happens, two friends work in television. One is a TV producer. The other runs a production company. I decided to see if anything could happen - I registered the CS script with the WGA for protection, and asked my two friends for advice. Both pointed me in the direction of Project Greenlight, and I dabbled a bit in that...then I became diabetic and my priorities shifted. IT wasn't crushing - it never went anywhere, and I didn't expect it to.
Trans Comedy Award. The BBC was having an open call for transgender themed scripts. IT was a gamble, I wasn't sure how the hell i'd get to the UK if I won. But, what the hell - the script was written, it was written just for this, and, in my opinion, it was good. I tried not to get attatched, because if it failed, it would simply be a crushed dream, ressurected to be crushed again.
And it was. I never should have gotten involved in screenwriting again...it's been a dream for almost 20 years, and all that really happened this go around was that I got tempted, and (despite all my best efforts) got my hopes up to have them crushed again. I won't be trying to get into TV anymore, even if someone just up and gave me a contract for it. It's a dead dream, and ressurecting dead dreams just makes 'em deader when they fail.
I really need to just go back to living each day for itself, and instead of trying to achieve unrealistic goals, just try to make it through the day - life is happier that way. I have my comics...and the small readership I have there is better than no readership. And the comics make me happy.
I am the living embodiment that you can do what you want, and not quit your day job.
