The collection of thoughts I currently post on my BearBlog. Everything I wanted to say on regular social media, but kept to myself because I didn't want to deal with commentary from randos!
Let's Talk About It!
Looks like I have a blog now. Cool and good. I've been thinking about running a blog for a long time because I have a lot to say about my variety of interests. I wanna write reviews of my favorite movies, albums, and books. Not many people have written about the media I cherish, so let's change that! I have a yearning to view extreme cinema and gross art through an intellectual, humanist lens. Not enough people are doing that. I have my work cut out for me.
I grew up being told not to talk about difficult, weird, or upsetting topics because they'll rock the boat and make people uncomfortable, even if it's a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Nobody wants to talk about it, and it's driving me crazy. So let's talk about it! Get it all out in the open so we can get a good, long look at this abomination that's been bothering everyone. The more you know about the problem, the easier it is to deal with it. Sometimes that problem is the complete lack of people having smart things to say about "Severed Survival" by Autopsy. You know, the death metal album that sounds like it was recorded in a torture chamber in the bottom of a sewer.
Anyway, expect me to be sharing my thoughts on morbid, obscure topics in the coming days. I am planning on having a grand old time.
Hair
Earlier today, my supervisor in the bakery at work told me with amusement that someone left a negative review of the store because they didn't like somebody's hair color. They wrote "[store name] should not be hiring people with purple hair. It makes them look unprofessional." He thought it was funny that someone got so worked up over something so stupid.
Wow, I wonder who they could be talking about?? Who's the only person working in the entire store with a well-maintained purple dye job? ME!!!!!!!!!!!! You wanna call me a slur while you're at it? Say the line about pronouns! I know you want to! 🤪
If some rando has such a problem with joy and whimsy that they wanna go on a review site and whine about it, they can go ahead and do it. The company I work for will continue to let me labor over pastries full time as long as I can tolerate it. I'm not going away. You will say thank you to the purple haired dyke wearing a Guy Fieri-style flame shirt as they hand you your son's Pokemon birthday cake.
Being alternative is no longer enough to stop managers from hiring people. The winds of change are a-blowing. First the crotchety old people said "no one will hire you if you have dyed hair and tattoos" and then they said "people with dyed hair and tattoos should not be allowed to work." Those goalposts sure do get moved a lot.
My purple hair is so important to my personal identity that I keep it meticulously maintained. I keep it extremely short and I get it trimmed every three weeks. I use color depositing shampoo to keep the purple from fading between bleach and dye jobs, which I do myself every four months or so. I will never go back to being blond.
My hair gives me intense gender euphoria because it makes me look the way I feel on the inside. I remember when the concept of expressing my individuality by altering my physical appearance was so distant as to be unattainable; something that I'd never be allowed to achieve. Every once in awhile I have dreams where I look at myself in the mirror and watch in horror as my hair grows back into the He-Man bob cut I was forced to wear until I moved out of my childhood home.
Why I haven't been using social media or art communities
It's been awhile since I stopped being as active on social media and comic art communities. It's not because I've been struggling with my mental health—quite the opposite! I haven't felt the need to seek validation from the internet the way I used to because I've been chilling with my real homies lately. We're goofing off, having fun, sharing our projects and stories with each other, and being honest about what we're feeling. In contrast, being active on forums, social media, and chatrooms felt like talking to the air with the hope that someone would witness it and give me some of that precious Validation.
Posting on social media felt a lot like gambling, and it was addictive in the same way because I never knew what I was gonna get. Sometimes I'd get rave reviews of my thoughts and art, other times I'd get lukewarm responses, and occasionally I'd get negative feedback. A lot of the time, it was silence. I kept posting and posting to get that rush of positive attention, that rave review. I was chasing the dragon. It was hard to stop because I was desperate to connect with people, even if that connection was not genuine or meaningful. Now that I have true friendship, I don't feel like I have to farm positive affirmations from people I don't know or trust. Funny how that works.
I had to cope with a lot of interpersonal drama, flame wars, and gossip when I was still active in communities and I don't have the energy to deal with it anymore. The social media rat race is overwhelming and I need to step back. I work a full time job, I'm 32 years old, and my free time becomes more precious with every day that passes. I have to ration my time by removing anything that takes me away from my hobbies and the enjoyment of my life overall. One of those things was regular social media activity. I also cut off people who only came around to complain or gossip, didn't reciprocate my energy, or were taking advantage of me. I don't regret it and I feel a lot lighter now.
My second comic is deep in production and I will begin posting it publicly in the foreseeable future. Considering how gratuitously gross and sexual it is, working on it without the public breathing down my neck has been a treat. I will unleash it upon the world when I'm good and ready.
When you're deep in a situation, especially when it's unpleasant, it tends to color your worldview and make you think that the entire planet is the same as what you're dealing with. People who are constantly interacting with social media tend to lose touch with what matters and argue over problems that have no basis in reality; this issue has been cropping up more and more lately. Life doesn't have to be like this, however. When you turn off the noise and chaos blasting from apps on your phone and computer, everything becomes peaceful. It's easier to think clearly and appreciate the small details of life, like the way your dog's scalp wrinkles between the ears, how the sunlight slants across the room from the front window, the feeling of wind in your hair. You can sit down and create projects that are true to your vision instead of making tidbits that don't fulfill you in a bid to appeal to an algorithm.
Away from the war zone of Xitter is my garden of unearthly delights. Come sit with me a spell and I'll show you my favorite things.
Social media and Doritos
I compared the use of social media to gambling in my previous blog entry, but it's also a lot like eating Doritos. They taste good and they're fun to eat, but they're designed to massage the brain's pleasure centers and will make you feel sick if you eat too many of them. Doritos are okay sometimes, as is posting updates on what you're getting up to. However, one cannot eat Doritos for every meal, and one cannot spend all their free time on a forum or app. Everything in moderation!
I just found an old photo of myself from 2019…
…and I just realized that it is a pre transition photo of myself. I went from this…to THIS! I am making a silly face, but in all fairness, I make that face all the time. Note that someone else is taking the photo.
In my early to mid twenties, I didn't want to wear baggy or hardline masculine clothing because I was afraid of being "ugly." I had little confidence and wanted to be more socially acceptable to minimize the likelihood of people being mean to me. I also associated menswear with a period where I was extremely miserable, aka high school. I convinced myself that I had wanted to look like a boy because I hated the world, and I'd been designing my appearance to be as repellent as possible so that nobody would bother me. But that wasn't true at all. It was the narrative I pushed at myself to suppress the gender dysphoria that was consuming me from the inside out, like a gastric ulcer leaking digestive juices into my abdominal cavity.
Presenting androgynously was not an act of self hatred or self sabotage. I was punished by my family and my classmates for a variety of unfair, stupid reasons, but the biggest ones were being butch and exhibiting strong autistic traits. I was ostracized, shamed, and bullied relentlessly at school and at home, yet I clung to my gender presentation like my life depended on it. It probably did. I was asserting my personhood while everything around me was trying to stomp it out.
BEHOLD: a photo of me from 2010, age 17! This child is NOT cis! You can see the torment in my eyes combined with a grave self preservation.
As I entered my twenties and distanced myself from being butch, I knew deep down that if I got a men's haircut, dyed it purple, put on some thick chains, and wore men's clothes, I would like what I saw. I would like it so much that I'd never be able to go back, and it frightened me because I knew a masculine presentation could stigmatize me further. Because I had severe untreated social anxiety back then, the last thing I wanted to do was take risks with my identity.
It took me a very long time to work up enough confidence to accept being nonbinary, come out to everyone, and live openly as a butch androgyne. It took a lot of therapy, a lot of self reflection, and a lot of medication before my brain was calm enough to embrace who I truly am, and I am one peculiar little dude. I didn't think I'd ever see the day when I'd be happy with what I saw in the mirror. I didn't realize how many changes have taken place until I compared my current self to the one from six years ago. Damn… things really do change, and life really does start after 30.
One Year On
It's been one year to the day since my best friend broke up with her emotionally abusive girlfriend, and life is good. It's nice and quiet these days. As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, this person was a massive bully to everyone around her, and her behavior escalated the closer I grew to my friend. She made repeated attempts to tear us apart and triangulate us. All of this nonsense made it impossible to focus on anything besides trying to survive the day. Now that we don't have someone nearby weaponizing therapy speech to pick apart everything we do, we've been able to get on with things we'd been wanting to accomplish for years. My friend finally got on Zoloft and it's created a night and day difference in her mental health. It's especially meaningful because this person was trying to bully her into treatment she wasn't ready for. When she started medication, it was her own choice. I went on Buspar with the same effect. When I have an OCD episode, I just pop a Buspar and it subsides pretty quickly. The monster that once loomed over my head and threatened to ruin my entire life can be defeated in 10 minutes with a tiny little pill. Crazy, huh?
We are much more happy, stable, and eager to try new things. My friend is really into archiving old print material and defunct internet pages. She also likes to code games and personal websites. It was hard for her to pursue her interests with her ex bothering her at all hours of the day and night, but she's thriving now that this person is no longer around. She's made multiple games, overhauled both her websites, written several chapters of her comic, and created a little succulent garden. She also has a raspberry pi she uses to host and run her own IRC server! She just started to learn 3D sculpting the other day to resounding success.
On my end, I've been able to let go of things from my past that no longer serve me. I deleted my Comicfury because I outgrew it; the user base is just 14 year old children and pedantic manchildren who use the forum to overshare about everything. The mods are not equipped to handle the nuances of real problems and would rather ignore them until they blow up in everyone's face. The site does not provide resources, make tutorials on how to build websites, or encourage independence, but acts like it's the last bastion of the indie webcomic community. People describe it like a "small town," but it isn't cute—everybody knows each other's business and gossip runs rampant behind the scenes. The atmosphere is incredibly paranoid. You can't get community recognition for your art unless you constantly post to the forum and pretend there's nothing wrong. Meanwhile the site code is incredibly inefficient and contains outdated features from as early as 2007. I spent 9 years in this hole, trying to make it work, but I just couldn't. I had too many bad memories associated with the platform and I had to leave for greener pastures That being said, bless you, lurkers. I know that I have a lot of people who read my work without saying anything and I greatly appreciate you.
Now I'm on the small web exclusively and I feel like I can breathe again. You can have every feature comicfury has and more, all in 100 fewer lines of code. You can include a browser version of 3D Space Cadet pinball in the background of your webcomic and it's awesome. I quit working on my old comic "Krazy Noodle Massacre" because it had too much emotional baggage attached to it, instead pursuing a series of short, self contained comics with the same characters. It's more fun for me to write a bunch of short stories and little vignettes than it is to chip away at a huge epic. I'm also enjoying new hobbies, like vegetable gardening. My banana pepper plant has 9 fruits growing on it as we speak. Corno di Toro has 6. I can't wait to try them!
It's so much easier to understand yourself and enjoy who you are without someone tearing you down all the time. All it takes is one person to make a mess of everything, but when they're gone, it becomes clear that life really is what you make of it. Meanwhile, the person we dumped has actively gotten worse. She's abandoned her website and comic projects in favor of roleplaying as fictional high school teenagers in discord servers with real teenagers as young as 16. Her OC bios have lurid descriptions of her pubescent characters' bodies. For the record, she is in her mid twenties. It makes me want to climb out of my skin.
Before you give up on the world, ask yourself if your homie is lowkey evil and has a lot of hatred in their heart. You may be surprised at how much you can accomplish once you leave them behind.
More entries coming soon…