The Year-End Retrospective you Didn’t Ask for!
- So, I turn 22 at… I think 10:56? Mountain time? I forgot which exact hour/minute it was.
- I’m not sure how to feel about the last year, as a whole. 2010 was just a completely unending hole of self-imposed misery, but I grew in 2011, I matured in a lot of ways and came to big realizations about myself that made my life a lot easier (and harder, but the truth sets you free etc etc)
- This was a year where I had this weird kind of… I don’t know, maybe affinity with nature or some shit, where I started going to the beach at the Salt Lake every Sunday and listened to a lot of folksy stuff like Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Fleet Foxes and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I really gained this bizarre appreciation for the American West that I never realized I had. I have no idea what prompted it. Maybe I’m just finally enjoying where I am and pacing myself.
- I can’t seriously list things I liked that came out this year. I did a terrible job of actually keeping up with current releases of any kind, as usual. My favorite album of the year was Take Me To Your Leader and that came out ten years ago. Whoops! Rise of the Planet of the Apes was pretty great, though
- Sort-of-aside-but-not-really: I think one of my biggest regrets, looking back on my life in the last ten years or so, is that I didn’t get into hip-hop earlier than I did. 2011 was the first year that I started exploring it really earnestly, and I hadn’t been a “you can’t spell crap without rap!” moron since middle school, but looking back I wish I had heard all of Deltron 3030 before I graduated high school.
- I think the peak of the year might have been this weird revelatory experience on a vacation I had at Bear Lake, UT/ID where I stood in this field in the middle of the night, wearing my big headphones and listening to Brian Eno and the Cosmos theme, feeling my place in the universe. Like, physically. No, drugs weren’t involved. I started bawling when I got to Always Returning.
- There was a big family issue that occurred that really rocked me to my core this year that set me on this weird road of retreating into my own brain toward the end there. I moved out about a week after I got the news, so for the past couple months or so I’ve felt more alienated from people than I have in a long old time, and lots of things were in total disarray. It doesn’t help that all my closest friends are an hour away. I spent New Year’s Eve in my bed, unable to move. I need to change all that.
- This whole year feels like the year I turned into Travis Bickle. Minus mohawk and delusions of grandeur. And New York.
- I do enjoy living Downtown, though, modest as Salt Lake City is as a metropolis. Living in the suburbs you can’t expect to get anywhere on foot so it’s fun seeing everything within a mile of your own house. It’s a beautiful city and if any of you ever find yourself there let me know because it’s not all Mormons and Mountains.
- In… May, I think? I started Arrastao, which I used to deposit all these images I like. I was a little surprised how much I dedicated to it - I started out with 20 pictures a day! Maybe realizing I was that invested in some silly compilation blog messed with my head a little. I still enjoy putting stuff up there, though. I’d like to think it’s unique and somehow a nice little collage of all my interests. But it’s just a scrapbook; I don’t feel any kind of accomplishment over it, and yet it’s one thing I’ve sunk the most time into overall this past year. I don’t know how to feel about that.
- On that note I have a really uncomfortable confession that kind of cuts to the core of my character and is kind of difficult to really let out, but I think 2011 is the year I kind of realized maybe comics isn’t what I want to do with my life. The drawing/writing life is something i forced myself down the path of for so long that when I started realizing I don’t get as much joy out of it as I thought I did I had a bit of an existential crisis. I’ve had a lot of people contact me to do comics things with them and I have a hard time saying “no”, and I made a lot of promises I couldn’t keep. I’ve been really unreliable to a lot of people and it hurts every time I remember some project I’ve totally put out of my mind. Not to mention, the comics industry is so dysfunctional on such a basic level - how many cases do you know about in entertainment where a medium itself is considered a niche interest - it’s depressing, really. Maybe I’m being harsh on myself. I probably need a break from the whole thing. I’m planning on expanding my horizons this year, doing some comedy or maybe films, I don’t know. Chances are I won’t get into or be able to afford any non-community college in my life so I might have to do a lot of self-educating. Maybe I’ll figure something out through all of this. Still gonna draw and write, though. I’m not abandoning two of the only things on earth I’m good at.
- Lastly, though, I just want to give a big honest thank you to everybody who reads this blog, or has reblogged something I wrote or drew because one or more of you like it enough to share it with everyone else. I’m (rightly) not exactly a shining star in whatever you define as this “community” we’re in but I don’t mind. I’m okay with having a good number of pals around I can talk about things with, in real life and online. You guys have helped me through more than you’ll ever know. I wasn’t able to make any conventions last year and 2012 doesn’t look much better, but know I can’t wait for some day in the future where we can all get together and just talk about stuff.
- But hey, here’s to a new year to do it all wrong again. Hopefully we’ll get something right along the way.
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