- holiday cheers & events during the New Year - visiting with peeps in the mountains
- finishing a painting that was actively commissioned (which I was paid for - yay!)
- becoming involved in a different funding appeal involving non profit work
- putting up a photo show in Brevard, NC
- learning how to edit audio and thus cut my first-ever CD of poetry reading + music (inquire for further details)
- seeking other opps for income/creativity/etc
It seems interesting to me that I would rather
- spend 40 hours + learning some new iteration of Final Cut software and audio editing, foraging through endless audio files and cutting a CD - for no reasonable monetary expectation
- framing and mounting 30 photographs and schlepping them to a cafe in Brevard - for only the flimsiest hopes of sales
- Interact with folks in a Psychic Network so as to be a reader for them for 41 cents an hour (a throwback to a previous lifetime for me as an itinerant Tarot reader in the streets of Los Andes)
- Follow through on another specious lead re. Spanish English interpreting work in local hospitals
- read, write, and otherwise interact with different blogs, podcasts, etc on subject matters as diverse as New Atheism and Time Management
- have my own homegrown version of a designer sweatshop through producing flyers on fiverr.com for the princely sum of $5
- play Solitaire
- vacuum the living room, rearrange the kitchen cupboards, and back up my harddrive
than work on promoting a Kickstarter campaign.
To be honest, though I'd be more than thrilled to have this campaign succeed, I don't see how it's going to happen. Mainly because I just don't have enough of what one might call 'friends', I suppose - both in the airy-fairy Web 2.0 sense and in the 'let's meet up at the pub and hash it out' sense. But probably more due to the extreme detestation I have for anything that demands this 'PR bullshit mode' from me.
My strong suit in life has always been to CREATE, not to PROMOTE - and due to a naturally self-reliant, skeptical, introverted sort of identity, social integration is and has always been a real handicap for me. In fact, I have always felt this unbridgeable dichotomy in my life between PRODUCTIVITY/SELF FULFILLMENT and SOCIAL LIFE - where the few times I've been actively engaged in what I might call a social life it's been through an experience of pointless, trivial dissipation - idle chatter and booze. I find it all very entertaining for its own sake, but it is a place where productivity and creativity cannot happen.
Now, though i DO have encountered the sorts of silly butterflies (IE in art school, jobs, elsewhere) who were so successful in their little social lives due to compromising the solo time and discipline needed to really hone a craft - and who thus had an opposite life experience to mine , I also understand that many people (and 90% of the successful ones, really, in any ambit) are the ones who have created a nice balance between CREATION and PROMOTION -
Where PROMOTING, of course, involves participating, thriving and really contributing to the sorts of social lubrication which fall under the umbrella of a SOCIAL LIFE - something which, to me, takes my time away from things i personally find more interesting and fulfilling.
I'm not really sure why I thought that Kickstarter (which fundamentally REQUIRES fundees have a huge, lively, and enrolled social network) would actually WORK for me due to this - it almost seems like I was indulging in magical thinking.
Nevertheless, I DO believe in my artistic process and product, which was the fundamental reason I set out to do this. I have in addition received enough positive feedback re. my output to fuel my desire to do this thing. But what's really lacking is an entryway into a larger audience, the kind who would also enroll enough in this project to fund this thing. And... that's something I'm just not good at.
And it's not like I'm this big misanthropist luddite hermit taking some principled stand against all of society - far from it. I am happy to interact with others at any level. For the sake of the 2.8 people who will actually READ this ever, and who may not know me, I can be OK and fun to be around. I'm willing to learn, and be taught, how better to participate in society and life. I enjoy the few friends and networks I participate in. It's just that I don't often care to interact more - and this NOT CARING usually comes at the intersection of a social moment where I'm confronted with others' indifference, open enmity, or the necessity to compete or prove myself in some way - IE all those trolls at the gate that would allow for ENTRY into some social realm or other - and my response tends to be, I DON"T CARE. From the 2nd grade on I have honed a strong response of SCREW YOU - you won't play with me - I actually have bettter things to do. And I usually do - and have. Ever since. And though some could say 'it's a long road from the 2nd grade to 33' I remain unconvinced. Experiences in Kickstarter and everything else (even simple job application) demonstrates to me that all learning, all knowledge, creativity, fire dies at the gates of social isolation. But I DO understand that at some pt a sentient being needs to relearn coping mechanisms - that 6-year-old social techniques don't serve one in later life.
So, in the end, I see only 3 real solutions to this conundrum:
1. either I will be born into a new, more social, winning modality at some point or for whatever reason,
2. one unexpected day my work will speak for itself
3. I will learn to hunker down in whatever minute corner of reality i can occupy, barely making it but basically content, until I meet a bleak, unsung, impoverished end.
sounds pretty bleak, but hell, that's life! I'm still better off than most, and probably have more fun - albeit in my weird -o, socially irrelevant, loner, creative way - than many.
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