Too many things I can't deal with, don't get to, or don't know how to
Been having a bad time lately. Trying to deal with it, but I started running away this week and that's disappointing. We've been dealing with horrible people at work, which mostly sucks because I'm watching my father deal with horrible people, trying hard to do what they want and being treated like shit for it. He hasn't taken a paycheck at work for a long time and has had to get loans to keep the doors open and pay for Robert and I, so I feel guilty but don't know at all how to help other than being ready to work hard if a job actually goes. There's an impotent rage built up from sitting and listening while assholes treat my father badly but me not being able to tell them off for it. Seeing him blow up when the new software glitches on him, cursing at the technology because he can't at the rep or producers is hard and I don't know any way to help.
This week we were just getting a series of disappointments. First we have one client who will start a job with us actively avoiding starting it, so we've basically worked on his project for free for over a month on characters and board revisions and he just won't pull the trigger and let us legitimately start the fucking job! Second, a douchebag producer from our past came to us for a project with very little money or time and far too many demands until we finally had to tell him that he had to compromise somewhere or it would be impossible: either we need more money and time to do everything he and the agency art directors want as they want it while working in the style of the illustrator they got (whose samples for this included patchwork textures and character shadows as well as toned line-work and some water-color), a little less money and less time than that with some simplifications in style, but still more than what they've told us we have, or we can work to that time and budget by simplifying the style to something animatable in the time given and working just to an approved storyboard without him and his art directors getting constant approvals which would have still meant us putting in long days and probably some weekend work. He told us that he respected us and our work, but that none of those options would work for him, and then we later heard how he'd talked to our rep and said that he's got access to great 2D animators with much more contemporary pipelines, but thought he'd give us a shot with this, but we couldn't do it. Fucking huge asshole! Basically he went to other places, they told him the time it would take and what it would cost, and he figured that maybe he could get us to do it quick and for less if he talked fast and made it seem urgent. Third, we got what sounded like a sure thing for a technology sollutions spot that was supposed to be funny and informative for their clients, but the writer they hired wrote what was supposed to be a two-minute spot into a 12-page script that read like an episodic web series where his dialogue was passable at best and utter shit at worst, and the important aspects where the technology should be described, he didn't script anything, but wrote things like "and then the character explains the major points of the ____," so none of those 12 pages actually adresses the things the client needs shown. We were ready to start, and then our rep read the script and had to explain how useless it was and try to get these jackasses to work on something actually producable. In the meantime we worked on character designs, since the characters from the company's previous campaign, we were told, they didn't own the rights to any more and couldn't use. We turned in some brilliant designs, the art director told us they were good, but not quite what he had in mind WHILE GIVING NO DIRECTION WHATSOEVER, and then we find out that the company DOES have the rights to the previous campaign's characters and wants to use them, but the art director wants new characters for this anyway so it looks like even if we do come up with designs he likes, the company will go "what? We wanted the characters we already own!" and all of that time will have been wasted. Basically, we've been doing a lot of work and anxious waiting for nothing and Dad's been sacrificing for it.
I couldn't take just sitting there with this all going on around me, so I called in sick and stayed home for the last three days. Feel like I just ran away from dealing with it, and I'm not proud of that, but I didn't know what to do when I was over there. Went back in today and found out that it was our little company's 9th aniversary. None of us felt in much of a celebration mood, and then news came in that one of Dad and Robert's colleagues, who had done music for past spots with them, died last night... and then they heard that the official word is that it was likely a suicide.
That's been hard, but it's also just felt lonely lately. I haven't seen Pam since August and we barely ever talk online. I don't know what to do about that. We care about each other, and there's a good feeling the rare times we do talk, but it's like she doesn't trust that this should work and won't let me come visit her and with her car dead and gone she can't visit me. We planned a great-sounding meet-up, and then she cancelled it. I feel like I'm just waiting for something that isn't going to happen again, but don't know how to stop. I've had a lot of days when I realy would have liked to have somebody to just hold on to, and it's been especially hard to think that's there but I can't have it. I'm in a place where I need something or nothing at all, because waiting like this hurts too much when everything else bad in my life is tied to waiting. It was also hard thinking all of this while going to the Texas Festival with Cat and Kim who were going on the 13-hour drive out of a desire to be with men they felt passionately about while I'm somehow not allowed to go the 20 minutes to be with the woman I want to be with. Well, writing about that brought up a few tears and I didn't even do the situation justice.
I don't have a project to channel my energy into right now, either. I don't feel like I have a reason to go anywhere or do anything, so I'm in the appartment more and feeling like I'm getting in the way, so I'm retreating to my room a lot to do nothing. Had that karaoke experience where I didn't know any of the other people there, sat at a table alone, and then sang a song that got no reaction and felt overwhelmingly lonely and had to leave. I don't have much escape from my thoughts, and at a certain point I start replaying times when I've felt awkward and out of place, times when I've disappointed myself, or I go down philosophical trains of thought that end up making me confront horrifying thoughts I shouldn't have to have. At that point, I guess it's important to reiterate that I'm not suicidal, I'm just having a bad time right now.
This week we were just getting a series of disappointments. First we have one client who will start a job with us actively avoiding starting it, so we've basically worked on his project for free for over a month on characters and board revisions and he just won't pull the trigger and let us legitimately start the fucking job! Second, a douchebag producer from our past came to us for a project with very little money or time and far too many demands until we finally had to tell him that he had to compromise somewhere or it would be impossible: either we need more money and time to do everything he and the agency art directors want as they want it while working in the style of the illustrator they got (whose samples for this included patchwork textures and character shadows as well as toned line-work and some water-color), a little less money and less time than that with some simplifications in style, but still more than what they've told us we have, or we can work to that time and budget by simplifying the style to something animatable in the time given and working just to an approved storyboard without him and his art directors getting constant approvals which would have still meant us putting in long days and probably some weekend work. He told us that he respected us and our work, but that none of those options would work for him, and then we later heard how he'd talked to our rep and said that he's got access to great 2D animators with much more contemporary pipelines, but thought he'd give us a shot with this, but we couldn't do it. Fucking huge asshole! Basically he went to other places, they told him the time it would take and what it would cost, and he figured that maybe he could get us to do it quick and for less if he talked fast and made it seem urgent. Third, we got what sounded like a sure thing for a technology sollutions spot that was supposed to be funny and informative for their clients, but the writer they hired wrote what was supposed to be a two-minute spot into a 12-page script that read like an episodic web series where his dialogue was passable at best and utter shit at worst, and the important aspects where the technology should be described, he didn't script anything, but wrote things like "and then the character explains the major points of the ____," so none of those 12 pages actually adresses the things the client needs shown. We were ready to start, and then our rep read the script and had to explain how useless it was and try to get these jackasses to work on something actually producable. In the meantime we worked on character designs, since the characters from the company's previous campaign, we were told, they didn't own the rights to any more and couldn't use. We turned in some brilliant designs, the art director told us they were good, but not quite what he had in mind WHILE GIVING NO DIRECTION WHATSOEVER, and then we find out that the company DOES have the rights to the previous campaign's characters and wants to use them, but the art director wants new characters for this anyway so it looks like even if we do come up with designs he likes, the company will go "what? We wanted the characters we already own!" and all of that time will have been wasted. Basically, we've been doing a lot of work and anxious waiting for nothing and Dad's been sacrificing for it.
I couldn't take just sitting there with this all going on around me, so I called in sick and stayed home for the last three days. Feel like I just ran away from dealing with it, and I'm not proud of that, but I didn't know what to do when I was over there. Went back in today and found out that it was our little company's 9th aniversary. None of us felt in much of a celebration mood, and then news came in that one of Dad and Robert's colleagues, who had done music for past spots with them, died last night... and then they heard that the official word is that it was likely a suicide.
That's been hard, but it's also just felt lonely lately. I haven't seen Pam since August and we barely ever talk online. I don't know what to do about that. We care about each other, and there's a good feeling the rare times we do talk, but it's like she doesn't trust that this should work and won't let me come visit her and with her car dead and gone she can't visit me. We planned a great-sounding meet-up, and then she cancelled it. I feel like I'm just waiting for something that isn't going to happen again, but don't know how to stop. I've had a lot of days when I realy would have liked to have somebody to just hold on to, and it's been especially hard to think that's there but I can't have it. I'm in a place where I need something or nothing at all, because waiting like this hurts too much when everything else bad in my life is tied to waiting. It was also hard thinking all of this while going to the Texas Festival with Cat and Kim who were going on the 13-hour drive out of a desire to be with men they felt passionately about while I'm somehow not allowed to go the 20 minutes to be with the woman I want to be with. Well, writing about that brought up a few tears and I didn't even do the situation justice.
I don't have a project to channel my energy into right now, either. I don't feel like I have a reason to go anywhere or do anything, so I'm in the appartment more and feeling like I'm getting in the way, so I'm retreating to my room a lot to do nothing. Had that karaoke experience where I didn't know any of the other people there, sat at a table alone, and then sang a song that got no reaction and felt overwhelmingly lonely and had to leave. I don't have much escape from my thoughts, and at a certain point I start replaying times when I've felt awkward and out of place, times when I've disappointed myself, or I go down philosophical trains of thought that end up making me confront horrifying thoughts I shouldn't have to have. At that point, I guess it's important to reiterate that I'm not suicidal, I'm just having a bad time right now.