reflection #5 - not giving up, i promise
october's here, time is passing. send help.
I’m not very good at this whole Substack thing, am I?
What was originally meant to be a weekly practice has now been put off several times - I’ve missed at least two weeks (off the top of my head), and it’s now October. Oh well.
I feel like lately I’ve been too swept up in life to slow down and enjoy quiet moments and reflect like I would like to do. Every day, I have to get ready, get the bus to college, and work while trying to fight the imposter syndrome voice in my head that keeps telling me I should give up on art altogether.
I find myself getting distracted, or maybe more actively distracting myself, with dreams and ambitions of other things I could be doing instead of art. I’ve always had a sort of “monkey see, monkey do” brain when it comes to creativity - everything from writing to art to music started entirely because I saw people I could relate to doing that craft and I decided, hey, if they can, why can’t I? The issue with this mode of thinking is that the minute I get to a stage where I’m decent - not good, but better than a beginner - my creative eye develops far faster than my actual skill, and I get stuck. I get afraid. I start avoiding the very thing I once thought so easy, so possible. I find a new, exciting thing to do, and the cycle starts anew.
Lately, it’s been web design. I find myself eyeing the ilovecreatives Squarespace web design course, daydreaming about doing it despite my current financial struggles. Something about building a beautiful website just seems so appealing to me, like a little home on the internet, away from social media algorithms and constant noise. I already have a website, though - one that I feel slightly guilty about as I feel I haven’t shown it as much love as it deserves (there’s that voice again, that I’m never doing enough!). Part of me wants to redesign it from the ground up as I initially relied on templates for my coding, and I’m now a confident enough (ish) coder that I think I can put something together myself. But I have so much to do all of the time, and I don’t know if I have the energy after school to try code my way to a better site, or what a better side would even look like.
I have also received my first order for my Neocities coding gig on Fiverr! Yes, I know it’s ridiculous - why am I offering a service I admit I’m only slightly confident in? And charging for it? The truth is, honestly, desperation. I am broke! Broke-ty broke broke. Unfortunately. I understand Fiverr isn’t the best place for freelancers; there’s a trend on there of undervaluing people’s time and skills, after all - but it’s a place that has served me well in the past.
In 2020, in the midst of lockdown and my own personal mental health crisis, I started doing Animal Crossing: New Horizons map design commissions on Fiverr. The gig was simple, honestly maybe too simple; someone would describe their dream virtual island to me, and I would spend my days making them a custom map full of everything they requested. I still think it’s slightly ridiculous that I was able to charge for this, and it’s especially ridiculous that I earned almost two thousand euro from it! But I did, somehow - I think it was the lipstick effect in action (or maybe we’re calling it the labubu effect now?), and fantastic timing on my part. As well I think I was the only one doing it.
Currently I’m the only one - as far as I’m aware - offering Neocities website commissions now too. All other website developers on Fiverr seem very focused on sales and marketing and capital B Business, and seemingly I’m the only one offering fun little personal sites. Which I think more of us should have, honestly. I love a fun little personal site.
So what else have I been doing? Not reading as much as I’d like to, that’s one thing. Last Friday there was a power outage due to the storm so I read Andrea Long Chu’s “Females” on my Kobo Libra in the dark of night. An odd little book, I have to say. ALC is slightly obsessed with Valerie Solanas, the famous (or infamous) writer probably best known for shooting Andy Warhol and writing the SCUM Manifesto. It was hard for me as an autistic person to tell what portions of the book were ALC’s genuine views, what portions were her imitating Solanos (certainly the “we are all female and we all hate it” statement was), and what portions were made up or greatly exaggerated with the purpose of shocking and offending TERFs (that entire “porn made me trans” part, definitely!). I enjoyed the book but felt the discussion of racial fetishisation would’ve been better left to an actual Black writer to dissect. Reading the book kind of reminded me of a more approachable version of when I read Grace Lavery’s “Please Miss” - and that’s not me generalising because both authors are trans, moreso I’m generalising because both authors are far more intellectual than I’ll ever be, ha!
Which brings me to another point, unfortunately - the fact that hatred and distrust and general dehumanisation of trans people has gotten to a ridiculous point seemingly all over the world. I borrowed a “Journal of Gender Studies” from the NCAD library (which I’m realising now I forgot to return and should definitely do that ASAP!) and it was themed around the rise of “anti gender ideology” - essentially this weird hybrid phobia of not only feminism and women’s rights but also the rights of LGBT people (with a lot of conservative views around heterosexual sex thrown in for good measure). The journal had essays covering pretty much every continent on the planet, which was… more than a little depressing. There’s something the YouTuber Tom Scott referred to jokingly as the “Williams Scale of Social Justice” (or something along those lines), referencing Robbie Williams’ song “Tripping”: First, they ignore you / Then laugh at you and hate you / Then they fight you, then you win.
Also I’m now learning that line is often misattributed to Gandhi!
Anyway. Point is, we are very much at the hate you/fight you stage when it comes to trans people. And I can only hope it gets better because the alternative of it getting worse is far more depressing. Is it really so hard to treat people like people? No matter what “take” you have on being trans or whether you “disagree” with the entire concept of people being trans (which feels a bit like disagreeing with people being gay - really, why do you care?), surely you can treat people with a little bit of basic human decency? I’ve seen people go so far as to celebrate suicide rates. It’s bleak out there.
On a much lighter note, I’ve been getting into zines lately! Thanks to this fantastic software called the Electric Zine Maker. I’ve now made two experimental mini zines, although I haven’t had the chance to print them out yet (will definitely be using the school printers as soon as I can!), with one being general messing around with the software and the other being a collection of inspiring images I found on Pinterest that I feel speak to my October 2025 art direction - feminine and otherworldly in a strange but calming way.
I also want to become a graphic designer, but that’s a whole other Thing.
Obligatory cat pic to end the reflection:
