Month: August 2019

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Whatcha Lookin’ At?

There are years of my life where I don’t exist. At least, in terms of photographs.

I don’t think of myself as particularly photogenic, and I actually hate having my photo taken; I feel self-conscious and awkward, so I tend to avoid it — which means that there are long stretches of my life where the only photographic proof that I’m alive comes in group shots, or candids from an event I’m at, or whatever. The only photo of myself that I saw in 2018, for example, is from the weekend where I was an Eisner Awards judge, and we posed together at the end of it all.

To make matters worse, or at least more complicated, post-divorce, there are group photos or shots of myself that I either don’t have access to, or don’t even exist anymore. Entire years where there’s no me, now.

(On the plus side, I barely changed visually, so it’s not like anything special has been lost to history.)

Beyond that, though; at some point, I stopped really taking photographs. I used to, voraciously. And then, somehow, I stopped. You could read all manner of reasoning into why that happened, I certainly have, but the fact remains: I just… stopped. There comes a point where it’s as if I ceased to exist, both as object and as viewer.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, lately; you’ll have noticed I’ve been posting old photos on here more, lately. It’s made me realize that I should start taking more photographs, again. Not just of myself — God, no, not that — but of everything. Recording life as it’s happening, so that I don’t lose it years later to misremembering and outright forgetfulness. Keeping a history of my existence, both how I look(ed), which I’ve never been good at, but also what I’m looking at.

I’ll thank myself later.

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One Day, Maybe Next Week

When Entertainment Weekly went monthly — without changing its name, because of course, why would it? — I tweeted out something about how I had always wanted to write for the magazine. After more than a decade doing this professional pop culture writer thing, I still have these bucket list items, these outlets I want to pursue.

It’s not that I’ve never tried. There’s one in particular that I’ve tried many many times over the years, and been rebuffed each time in a series of increasingly amusing, awkward, form responses, each one stinging just a little more than the last. Some, I’ve circled around warily for the entire time, knowing that it’s still not the right time and waiting for an unknown, unclear final piece to be slotted in before I’m ready. Others, I just… wait for, awkwardly.

I’ve written for a lot of places over the years, some genuinely iconic. I’ve been in Time, Playboy and Wired! I’ve reached the point where I’m both confident and proud about my career, thankfully, and not just expecting to be outed as a fraud at any minute. That’s enough to make my bucket list feel possible, at least. One day or another, I’ll get in there, wherever the “there” of it happens to be.

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Where It’s At

I decided to restart this site as a going concern — not that I had ever really decided to stop it being a going concern, as such, but things happen and real life gets in the way — at the start of 2019 as a little bit of selfishness and a small amount of self discipline, mixed together. My 2018 had ended dramatically, and I was in a very different place than I had been a year earlier, both emotionally and physically. The notion of having a place where I could “be myself,” whatever that might mean, and write things for me, as opposed to work or for friends or whatever, was a very exciting one.

I started it, also, not knowing how long I’d keep it up. This wasn’t going to be the first time I’d promise myself I’d do this, after all, and previous attempts had run aground all-too-quickly, for various reasons. This time, things would be different, I half-heartedly told myself, because this time, I was different.

I set myself a schedule — three posts a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — with occasional quote-posts in between if I found anything interesting and remembered to do it. And I set off.

At some point, somewhere in the middle of February or the beginning of March, I realized that I’d actually managed to write ahead enough that I was scheduled out with posts three weeks in the future or so. It was, to some degree, thrilling, but also a relief; that way, it seemed less likely that I’d drop off altogether, because now I had a buffer. Surely, if the worst came to the worst, I’d find the chance to find time to write within that three week window and refill my schedule appropriately?

For months, I did. And then, for some reason, June just killed me. It wasn’t that my workload increased — if anything, I was maybe less productive than I had been in other months? — but my concentration was shot, somehow. Weeks went by without me writing here, or writing very little, and suddenly… I had no buffer left.

I was faced with the prospect of either taking a break from the site  or deciding to stick with it and just, well, write. I chose the latter, and I’m surprisingly glad that I did. It sounds odd, I know, but I feel like I chose something selfish in a good, positive way. Is this place self-care for me? Is that too pretentious to suggest? Or simply too honest?