Shameless Self-Promotion

I'll admit that I'm not a fan of pimping myself, but to make it in this industry it's something I have to get used to doing. And right now, pimping myself is exactly what I need to do.

I'm not going to lie; I'm looking at some hard times here. I'm about to lose my job and though I'm searching for freelance work, it's not something I can rely on, at least not yet. My savings won't save me, and there's only so long I can keep the student loans folks away. And so, I come asking for help.

However! I'm not looking to get something for nothing. Life doesn't work that way and I don't expect it to. Now in my former life I wasn't a writer, but an artist! Well, I still am an artist though my focus has shifted. So, in return for your kind help, I'll draw you a picture of anything you want. Seriously. Anything. Ink on Bristol plate, 9"x12" (or 12"x9" if you prefer)... that's starting to sound pretty nice, isn't it? Of course it is! And we're talking full colour illustrations here, HD even.

I also have seven gorgeous pairs of earrings for sale. Each pair is unique, hand-crafted from sterling silver and coloured glass beads. Look at them and tell me you don't want some for yourself. Or if not for yourself, than for that stylish someone you know who will really love them.

Do you see something else on the site that you absolutely must have? Shoot me an e-mail and we'll talk: eric.satchwill@gmail.com .

Please, check it out. Treat yourself to something shiny and tell all your friends where you got it, and you'll make me a very happy man.

Getting Comfortable With Being In Transition

And I don't just mean the big obvious one, though that's something I've had to get comfortable with too.  I mean the whole big transition that is life, that thing we all do every day or else we become some stagnant, stale shell of a human being.

When I was a kid, I thought that all I had to do was figure out who I was, and that's who I'd be.  Forever.  Nothing else, and nothing less.  I'd grow up, find a few words to describe myself, and that would be that.  One thing I've had to come to terms with is the fact that that is never going to happen.  Who I am today?  Really not who I was yesterday.  Tomorrow?  Well, I'll be someone else again, won't I?

I don't mean every transition I go through is as big and life-changing as the one from trying to be female to finally being male.  Sometimes it's as simple as reading an insightful blog post, or engaging with new people on Twitter.  Or in real life even.  That happens too, on occasion.  If who I am is the sum of my experiences, then with every moment I'm in transition from being someone who hasn't experienced something to someone who has.

This also means that I have to update who I think I am at almost every turn.  I thought I was someone who was only romantically interested in people of a specific gender or type until I realized it wasn't that simple, not for me anyway.  I thought of myself as someone who hated kids and would never have any or want to until I met my niece.  And the big one?  Perhaps bigger than all the rest, even THE big one?

I thought I was always and forever an Artist before anything else.  That was the pinnacle of my identity, the one thing that I had always been and would always be no matter what else changed, I was an Artist and I would paint/draw/make jewellery until the day I died of some bizarre cancer or heavy metal poisoning from my work.  I believed this until I looked up one day and realized I was becoming a Writer.

I looked at what I had drawn or made in the past week, the past month.  Nothing.  I mean literally.  I hadn't made a damn thing the whole time, not so much as a doodle.  I looked at what I had been doing instead.  When I wasn't writing, I was reading about writing.  I was talking about writing, and I was on my way to someplace where I would be writing.  (Or I was at my day job, but even there I was thinking about writing.)  That's when I realized that I was watching my own transition from Artist with a little writing on the side, to Writer with a little art on the side.

I can't say that I was entirely happy about this.  I mean, I'd put how many years into that identity?  I now owe how much in student loans because of it?  And what will my Grandma think?  I was always the Artist in the family, one of her kind.  I felt like I was betraying a core part of me.  But that didn't stop the transition.  Because even though I was mourning the Artist, I was celebrating the Writer.  You see, the big difference between the two has been commitment.  I have actually been able to commit to one writing project, my novel, far longer and more consistently than any body of art I've undertaken.  And I've realized, that I'd much rather be productive and prolific at something that I love than be sporadic and occasionally brilliant at something that I love.

In The Beginning...

Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

              ~Faber, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

     When I decided that I wanted to write a blog, I knew that I wanted it to be a place where I could examine
my views and ideas, a place where I could define and refine them.  I spent a while mulling this over, and the above quote kept coming back to me.  It absolutely describes what it is I intend to do here.  Right now, I am a young man.  I have thus far been doing myself a disservice by keeping myself on the sidelines of discussion, and never showing my ignorance.  How am I to learn if I don't know what it is that I don't know?  Also, by the magic of the internet, I can promote discussions to expand the minds of others in the same way. 

    In particular, I want to take an uncommon stand on today's issues, particularly those which impact myself and my community.  I want to examine the concept of privilege, rights and community activism. I want to understand what people are doing in these areas, why they are doing it, and if in the end it's doing any good. I also want to understand and solidify my own views on these issues, how it effects both myself and my interactions, as well as what I need to work on in order to become a better person, and what will lead to actual positive effects. I want to see where sensitivity to a cause becomes over-sensitivity and reactionary behaviour.

    I want to try to take an outside perspective on a community that I am a part of.  This means equally the queer community, the trans community, and to a certain extent the art community, because art is one of the many ways we influence opinion.  I also want to look at community efforts on a larger scale and look at the fine line between a need for better protection and the sense of entitlement rampant in contemporary society.

    This is an open invitation to participate!  Learn, discuss, tell me where I'm wrong and why.  Hopefully, we will both learn from this experience.