I sit here, typing, mostly musing over the fun sound of hearing my fingers tap down on the keyboard. The fun thing about typing is that it has this therapeutic element to it, this constant goal of producing ideas faster, better. Writing is a fun past time because there is a near infinite number of ways that I can approach various canvases whether they are ‘thank you’ letters to kind instructors and mentors, or garbage blogs that nobody likes.
I have to be honest and say that I hate this site to some extent. I like the idea of sharing my broken art to others but the constant expectation that I see on my front page, the view counts and the number of followers. They piss me off, not necessarily the people but the system in place. The website expects that every person on here wishes to be prolific to some extent and through the production and attention given to these elements, these things, it makes for an unhealthy perspective on the value of my art. I love my blog but I also hate it. What I hate even more is the idea that I SHOULD be prolific, these expectations constantly turn up in my blog posts because it is an element that I think about, sorry if it is redundant.
Yesterday, I doubled the output of effort put into my story, pumping out 10 pages of overly detailed imagery and boring dialogue instead of 5. I have to say that I was impressed with this productivity. I managed to make much more of something that I like, that I respect. Still, I find that not blogging also tends to create a dissonance where I still feel like I am unproductive. I’m trapped in my crazy dance. I can’t stop, and it’s driving me slowly insane.
My TTGL inspired meme that I last produced was an expressionist dream that I pulled out of my ass. The fun in creating this shit is how I can self analyze what made me produce it. It gives me a way to look at my subconscious and further engage in introspective studies of my psychological profile. It’s so meta that it hurts. To be blunt, I found the story to be fun to create and read, it spoke to my own feelings towards this blog and towards my life as a whole. The necessity of being prolific wasn’t something that I desired, but similar to Joe Blow, a simple desire to do something simple led to me wanting to do something massive. Not necessarily doing kegels and destroying the universe with laser beams but making more stuff.
I’m sure you’ve noticed dear reader, this channel is called ‘Generic Personal Diary’. It is a declaration of my willingness to create low effort garbage. Depending on your subjective opinion that is exactly what this shitfest is but I promise you, time goes into these blogs. Way more time than I should be willing to give. I live my life in a stream of conscious hell where I sit in my introverted corner constantly thinking about shit, constantly juggling ideas in my head about anime, science, myself, whatever funnels in and out of my dysfunctional neural tunnels. These ideas are contradictory, self congratulatory bullshit more often than not. As a critic, I can find these elements to be self indulgent and forgettable which is good. But the addiction of validation is a nuisance that makes me hate myself more and more everyday. The fact is, I look at blogs similarly to anime. It has a utilitarian element to it, I like to consume content that enriches or improves my life in some respect. My blog is effective because it helps me learn to improve the speed of synthesizing ideas and arguments. Other people’s blogs (aniblogs primarily) either work in self validation through reviews or pure appreciation of how well written they are.
One of, if not my favorite content creator is Endless Jess. Say what you want about his self congratulatory, audience hating mannerisms. The man is someone who approaches his art to the point of pure hedonistic satisfaction. The man didn’t create the Horseshoe Finale with other people in mind, he made it as a documentation of his artistic growth first and foremost, a eulogy to his separation from producing content that he doesn’t appreciate or respect. Proving that he can do something that he finds better than everyone else and then moving on to do something that he actually likes. It is the ultimate tribute to the artist’s dilemma. Boogie, or pop? Esoteric or easily digestible? Mainstream or niche?
My failure as an artist is that I would like to curate a stronger, enduring system through which I can comfortably create more dumb bullshit. I would like to challenge myself more, test my imagination, produce more Joe Blows and further peer into the abstractions in my mind. The journey through hell has brought me immense enjoyment, and I’ve only just gotten started, but I would like to find more intriguing topics through which to synthesize information from. Being able to relate Carrion Comfort to Oyasumi PunPun to the Alchemist was one of the happiest moments I’ve had as a content creator on this site, but we can go deeper. A new season of anime is approaching and I’m trying to focus on furthering my physical narrative of health and fitness. There is always more things to discuss, always new ideas, always new struggles.
To that end, I am grateful for the experience of curating and creating this blog, it has been a fun journey into my creative process and how I tend to organize my thoughts. I appreciate being an artfag and making content for other people. I enjoy doing something with my time. This activity is good. I’m sure I will find more dumbshit to pontificate on as the new college semester comes around, but I’m sure the new anime season’s wealth of trash will be effective for some meaty blogs.
I want to read more content, more scholarly biochemistry articles, more science daily news, more written essays, more books. I want reading to replace the current obsession I have with social media and twitch.tv. Podcasts are pretty cool though. The idea is that I would like to compartmentalize these things and throw them away. Youtube makes up an unhealthy amount of my consumption and I hate it. I want to be as academically, intellectually healthy as possible so that I can achieve my goals of finishing up my book and pursuing my PhD. The fun thing about working on this is that it involves remodeling myself, trimming down the fat and building myself back up on a solid, healthy foundation. Cracking down on my consumption of media can work to make me more efficient in being able to create better stuff for this garbage site as well as helping me with developing even more healthy habits for the future.
Effervescent Ruminations 