Rejection!

Let's take a moment to talk about rejection. 

It sounds like a dirty, horrible, hurtful thing, but it's really just a very formal way of saying "no."

Sometimes, these rejections are done in weird ways. 

For example, I was once broken up with by a man I was not dating.

I had been effectively stalking his housemate and sort of using him to do it.
 

WOW that sounded really bad, all typed out.

Well, it's not really incorrect, so we'll keep it.

I did legitimately want to start a friendship with this guy anyway.

Then I learned why I shouldn't. 

With no advances, with no mention of feelings, with complete and total base-line friendship, he still got concerned that he was leading me on.

Leading me on to what?  
Do so many people really assume attraction when someone is just being friendly?  

Yep.

He took me aside in a convenience store to politely tell me, "Look, I like you a lot, and I do find you attractive, but you just aren't my type, you know?  I'm really sorry.  This isn't going to work out."

He waited for my response, which was just kind of a face of blank confusion. 

I think I maybe was supposed to cry or something? 
I was so confused that I just kind of blinked at him until my eyebrow slowly went up.
"Maybe he's practicing for someone else and I just missed that part of the conversation" I thought to myself.

Eventually, I just said, "okay" and that was that. 

We didn't hang out after that day. 
I'm sure he thinks it was because I was heartbroken, but really, I just didn't want to accidentally "lead him on" by… 
Standing there. 
I don't know.

Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of real rejections in my life, but I hardly ever openly tried enough to require one. 

I've even been stood up. 

More than once. 

The thing is, with relationships, I had a tendency to wait around for Mr. or Ms. Perfect and when neither showed up, I'd just go to a person who was nice enough, even if I wasn't attracted to him. 
This is a terrible plan and it never ended well.
Often, the guys turned out to be not-so-nice either. 

Eventually, I stopped that, (after everything went to Hell a few years ago) and I grabbed the butt of my Knight in an effort to not be shy about it. 

(He was wearing pants.  I'm not sure why I didn't illustrate it that way.)
Okay, so I went from one side of the spectrum to the other, but it worked, so shut up.

When I was a kid, I didn't take rejection well, but I was also TERRIBLE at talking to people, which makes me wonder if half the people who rejected me even had any idea that they had done so.

Getting called a "failed experiment" by a girl is an interesting thing, but somehow didn't make me cry as much as all the "I'll totally dance with you" and then NEVER coming up to me at all. 
Did I ever go up to them after the initial asking?

Nope.

Goes both ways.

Sometimes "rejection" is what we make up in our own heads. 
Even in my happy relationship now, he and I were both so messed up from previous endeavors that we spent the first half a year (or more) worried that the other was just leading us on.  

We referred to this as "Carrie-ing," and I can pretty much describe the fear I've had for most of my life this way. 

Seriously, our own minds can be horrible friends to us.  

Sometimes though, rejection comes in the form of little pieces of paper. 

I am proud to say that out of high school, I applied to seven art schools and got into eight (not that you can tell by this blog).
However, that number evened out when I went for an interview AFTER getting an initial acceptance letter for a school that was specifically for cartoonists. 

They liked me a lot, which is why they sent that letter before the actual in-face interview.

Then, they asked if I only wanted to be a cartoonist, and the answer is really no. 
I want to draw, but I also write, sculpt, and all kinds of things. 

It was suggested that I'd probably be happier getting a more rounded art degree, but that I could always go there again if I changed my mind. 

THEN they sent a rejection letter. 
 

Seriously.  
I have one of each from this school.  
Kay.

More recently, I was up for an interview for an internship.  
I was really excited/terrified.
 

She emailed me exactly twenty four hours before the interview to apologize a thousand times and explain that they found someone.
 
Weird excuses were made, which made me think none of it was her choice. 

In such an email, is it really so hard to just say, "The position has been filled" and leave it at that?
I get that she apparently wanted to keep that interview, and I'm bummed that I have to keep looking, but for reals. 
 
Partly because of how it was written, it felt a little like I was the nerdy kid at school who had landed a date to prom with the head cheerleader, only for her to last-minute tell me she's going with my friend instead. 
 

"Like, OMG!  I am so, so sorry, but Billy has a reaaalllly nice car, so…"
Poop. 

So. 
Fine.

Now, a surefire way for me to want to reject someone else is the misspelling of my name. 
This is a digital age where everyone is emailing all the time.
 

There is ZERO reason to misspell a name when it was just right in front of you a moment ago. 

Hell, copy/paste if you have to.  
I'll never know.

On social media, saying my name in a formal way is just creepy, because if I already know a person in real life, and that person is messaging me on a private only-me thing…

You really don't have to make it a formal letter to explain that you are writing to only me. 
If you're someone I don't actually know in real life, that's fine.  
Otherwise, stop that.  

If someone does do that, I wish this could also be the kind of person who looks at the message to see how my name is spelled, or remembers me enough from previous encounters to spell it correctly.

I imagine the person typing along, thinking, "Oh, jeez…  Um…  Screw it, I'll just make it up.  I can't be assed to read the message she just sent!"

And you know?  
Sometimes, a little wrong is fine. 
Seriously. 
So long as it's basically the same name, awesome. 
There are lots of spellings to everything.  

But, see...
Then there are cases like this one time...

Okay, my email is after my comic, Deddrie.com. 

My EMAIL is not my name. 
I signed an email -RG recently. 
'Cause, you know, these are my initials. 
The response I got?
"Hello, Debbie"  …
The fuck is the Debbie?  I mean, I know it's a name, but it isn't mine. 

This means she not only ignored the signature, but then ALSO misread my email address, and then CONTINUED doing it, no matter how I signed emails after that, and how many emails she sent to me.

After this incident, with a completely different person in a completely different situation, I not only stated my full name in the body of the email, but I signed it with my full first name. 

I got this strange butchered thing that has never been a name ever. 
The first couple of letters were okay…

And then it just became strange and phonetically completely different. 

Why? 

WHY???

REJECTED.

100th Post! ...And Still About Moving.

We are finally out of "Le Shithole" and into a much better place.  The journey here was quite exciting.  For one thing, our old lease isn't really up for a couple more weeks, but I'll get to that.  


First, I'll start this one off letting you know about the wounds I received before we even really started moving.  

See, I was putting laundry away, like an adult, when I realized that there was 
A. a little dent in the floor where a slightly pushed in foot of a dresser could catch and 
B. a reason why the paperwork for the dresser said to NEVER have more than one drawer open at a time, which had never been an issue before that moment.  

Cue the dresser slowly tipping... Okay, maybe it was fast, but it felt like slow motion.  It also seemed that I suddenly had no legs: 

Instead of, you know, MOVING OUT OF THE WAY, I decided I was Wonder Woman and that I was going to save the dresser.

Fun fact: I am not Wonder Woman. 

That being said, I did manage to not only "save the dresser" which wouldn't have died or something anyway, but I also saved the pig.  

Yes.  Yes, I saved the giant, shiny, metallic purple piggy bank, which was filled with coins, as it HURLED AT MY FACE.  

This is not the last image anyone wants to see before they die: 

The goggles make him go faster.  

Totally a sign to move, we sent our old landlord a notice and when she didn't respond, we called to make sure she got it.  

She got it. 

She just didn't seem to particularly care. 

Okay then.  

So, she scheduled a time for showing the place, (even though she hadn't looked at it to clear us first but whatever) and we were all fine with that. 

We were frantically packing and cleaning to get it all ready, so imagine our surprise when she showed up a day early to show the apartment. 

When we called her, she complained about the state of the apartment.  

...The apartment we still lived in.

The apartment we still had our crap in.

...

The apartment she basically broke into, assuming no one was home, to show to a stranger when we still have stuff there. 

What followed was a crazed mess of WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW.

In being so frantic, my well meaning, wonderful, perfect boyfriend managed to drop a shelf on my leg.  

Yes, THAT leg.

Here is the map of pain that was my leg: 

To clarify, the dropping of the dresser before hadn't just bashed me in the knee, but also did some interesting things to my shoulder and arm, due to Wonder Womaning it.  

So, my right arm kinda matched my left leg: 

I, of course, then hurt my other leg multiple times on my corner desk. 

Still, the frantic packing had to continue.  

This meant that clearly labeled, well packed masterpieces quickly gave way to these: 

My handwriting often mirrors my attitude and lifestyle of "GARBLEIFJLKEFJIECFALFUCKNUTS"

My legs were still hurting a couple of days later, and steadily getting worse with each movement.  

Eventually, it felt like my legs were somehow too long, trying to get up to that old, shitty, third floor apartment.

After a few walks back and forth, I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be mostly useless carrying things, so I stuck to packing and organizing where I could. 

Pretty soon, I could barely even feel the pain, because I could barely even feel my legs at all. 

I'm amazed the men-folk didn't die.  
My knight didn't want to stop, which led to us kind of sitting him down to tell him he had a problem.  
Who knew moving might need an intervention?  

We were so thankful that a few of our best buddies came to help out too!  Poor bastards stayed with us until it was downright unreasonable for them to bother.  

There was, of course, a causality.  There is always one.  

Thankfully, this will be an easy fix, as it was only the glass part that cracked.  

I was unreasonably sad about it, but not because of what it was, so much as general stress, pain, and remembering that I've had the damn thing for a decade in storage and can only NOW comfortably set it up where I live.    

Once it's fixed again, it shall resemble Lydia's vanity from the Beetlejuice cartoon.  

The new place is amazing, by the way.  We effectively moved from the city to the country and it's not even that far away.  

We even got some new furniture for the occasion.  I got rid of my corner desk, which had served me well for a good seven or so months, and got a real writing/computer desk.  

 Is now: 

And!

ALSO!

The kitchen is huge. 

Oh, and

We even get a new bed on Tuesday!! 

...We also have spiders.

BUT it's a giant step up from cockroaches and mice, so awesome.  

We quickly realized that we each have three keys.  Two are for the front door, and one is for our apartment.  This is awesomely secure, but none of them are labeled yet sooo...

Extra fun in the dark! 

I made the decision to get key caps for them, because I'm a cool kid.  I got too many so that others can use them too, if so desired.  

The ones I actually ordered are a pack of kitten heads, multi-colored skulls, and ones to make the key look like a guitar.  ... "Keytar"

I only didn't get Oswald the Lucky Rabbit because I figured his ears would come off right quick and I'd be sad.  

Once we were done the initial moving in, of course we had somewhere else to go.  My Knight in Pinstripes had already promised a friend that he would see her on her birthday, and he wanted me to meet her.  

We also dragged our housemate, who deals with all of our shit rather amazingly well.  

It wasn't as busy as we thought it would be.  Plus, we got to hear a woman who sounds like a less strung out Janice Joplin sing Lady Gaga, so that was cool. 

Rob's friend (who apparently knows a bunch of my good friends?  *sings*  It's a Small World After All) recognized his need for a hair cut and may still wind up taking care of that for him

From Bruce Campbell look-a-like to Mullet Man. 

We are still working on unpacking.  Every now and then, I get frustrated and give up for a little while.  

For example, I couldn't find the two Batman pieces, one Wonder Woman piece, or one Superman piece, so I just-

You go, Super Wonder Woman Man! 

With all of this going on, I've felt a little burnt out because I also have other stuff I should be doing.  

I have a million projects, papers, and presentations I should be working on for school.  

I haven't had time to draw beyond sketches, this blog, and doodles in my notes, so I feel weird spiritually. 

I've been so burnt out... All I want to do is sit and play games. 

BUT I'm getting back in the swing of things.  I present something I don't even remember what next week, and I'm feeling pretty confident that it'll go smoothly.  

Getting this post up feels good too, so there's some emotional balance there.  

I've got the weekend to catch up.  

I've even been driving and eating alone more often, so those are good signs for my mental health.  

I think we'll be very happy here.  

Instinct Vs. Logic: A Never Ending Battle

Before moving across the country, I couldn't handle cold very well.  I was more than pleased to be boiling hot instead.  Since getting back, any temperature extreme seems to suck.  

Our apartment is wired like a monkey just shat out the plans for the building and then left someone else to figure it out.  

In fact, that is probably what happened.

One outlet in the kitchen, one in the office, and one in the livingroom each have their own circuit breakers.  EVERYTHING ELSE shares ONE.  

This means that we can't have the air conditioning on  in more than two rooms at once, nor can we have any of them on while using the microwave or running the dishwasher, or else the electricity will go out.  

As a result, I am typically either melting:

or freezing: 

 

This has led me to feeling sort of panicky for no reason or just ill.  This is unfortunate because... Well...  
You know those lizards that shoot blood out of their eyes when threatened?  (Yeah, it's a thing.  Look it up.)

 I've always kind of been like one of those.  If I'm too stressed mentally or physically, I will get my period even if I just had it.  

Now, before this past year of fear and flipping out over foods and such, I never really noticed any extreme hormonal changes during my period.  This may have been because I had trained myself to care WAY too much about the welfare of others: 

While pretty much ignoring my own needs, no matter how uncomfortable I could get.  

 

Of course, something should be said for the fact that I often couldn't tell if I was really sick or just, you know, how I normally felt all the time anyway.  

 

This led to some problems in cases like The Birthday Bashing.  So, after I came home and started feeling everything, this meant that I was hyper aware of my hormonal state too.   

Rob figured the best way to see if I was legitimately upset or just hormonal was to have me look at cute things. 

Loaf animals are the best for this.  A loaf animal is when a rabbit or a cat winds up looking more like a guinea pig:  

 I actually have another story involving guinea pigs and meatloaf, but that can be for another post. 

 Cartoons also helped my hormonal state, as well as when I've been freaking out and going into existential panics over my career choice, what I'm going to school for, and what I really would rather be doing but don't think I could make a living doing. 

Enter our apartment-mate and My Little Ponies: 

 Sometimes he dresses like Deadpool. 


Rob does his best to fix ALL PROBLEMS EVER even before they are fully explained.  This is appreciated to a point.  The only issue here is that he is significantly more lovey dovey and romantic than I'm good at used to.  

 This hypersensitivity and panic has left me irritable and I worry about putting too much pressure on him.  He is possibly in denial, lying to make me feel better, or he honestly just doesn't see me as the flailing weirdo I've become over the past two years.  Either way, I need work and he seems to be more than happy to just stand there being overly peppy by my side.  

The over sensitive thing goes way beyond just emotional and sometimes physical into simple daily things.  My sleep has always been strange due to nightmares, but now the sun is a problem.

One option is to let the black out curtain drop enough that the sunbeam doesn't blind me in the morning: 

But, of course, there is always a catch.  Putting it down at night in order for it to be there in the morning means that I'm in pitch black darkness.  If I go to the bathroom in this, my brain assumes monsters will come climbing out of the mirrors to eat my feet.  

 Do other adults have cripplingly overactive imaginations or is this some other part of a larger disorder? 

*sigh*



Last on this list explains why there have been so many posts about sewing and dresses lately.  I've gotten excited because during my latest existential crisis, I remembered that I can sew.  Designing costumes came in handy in high school and has helped me in character design.  Sculpting with fabric to make stuffed creations has also been a treat.  Putting the two together to make wearable things that aren't just altered from previous articles of clothing is terrifying and exciting for me. 

Am I going to magically get a job as a fashion designer or seamstress?  Could that then launch my painting and cartooning career?

No.

Probably not.

However, I have a bazillion projects I'm working on, both personal and not, and some are drawing based while others involve sewing.

I'm keeping myself busy this Summer before school starts again in September much like some adults start obsessing over sports and fancy cars to avoid thinking about their soul sucking jobs.

For the record, what I'm going to school for will not be boring.  It is something I am genuinely interested in, even when I feel like an idiot.  I learn things every day and that is thrilling.  I have a chance to help others, and that is wonderful.

Unfortunately, my last year of classes before internship comes at a time when I am finally willing to think about myself and be selfish.  This is something other people get to do when they are younger, and I was always too afraid to go after what I really wanted.  Now I want to... And I feel like it's too late.  I'm already on another just as good path and I don't want to start all over again.

...I already have a BA in Art, so it wouldn't really be starting all over...
I worry more about time.

I worry about putting too much time and effort and energy into one side of this coin and having the odds always be on that side.  I worry that I'll lose the other or just stretch myself too thin.

Both take effort and energy and I'm not a terribly energetic person.

If I could only choose one, I'd choose Art...

...But that isn't logical.  It'll be harder to break into that.  Logically, I should do what I am doing and continue Art on the side, hoping that something will magically fall into my lap. 
...But that feels like I'm betraying someone important.

And that someone might actually be myself.

So, for now, it's cartoons, loaf animals, sewing like crazy, and trying to figure out what brought me here to begin with.