Weaning Your Babies, or How to Handle Crits

"Don't take it personally." Have you ever heard this about crits? I say bullshit! I don't believe it! And I don't believe anyone who claim they don't take crits personally.

Crits are personal.

When you're in the business of selling good taste, it's personal. Whether you're a designer trying to convince a client to see your point of view, or an artist trying to persuade people to appreciate your work, in some level you are going out on a limb and exposing the soft underbelly of your true heart. And the truth is that there's always a chance it will get stabbed viciously by insensitive bastards. On the other hand if you're not open to criticisms, you're practicing inbreeding of ideas, and: not benefitting from possible feedback that could improve your project. Where's the line?

Instead of the word "crit" which has a painful and negative connotations of anguish and rejection, I prefer to think of the process as discernment. To discern means to filter. A crit is a process of filtering appropriate ideas versus inappropriate ideas with regards to the specific project you're working on. With the exception of stupid ones, ideas are not inherently good or bad. This is good to know because sometimes an idea that doesn't work with one project might work very well on another. With the metaphor of filtering, the process becomes less about taste or a personal need for approval, and more about what's best for the project.

I firmly believe there are different kinds of crits that are appropriate at different stages of the creative process. It's important to respect that, lest you kill the creative spirit. At the beginning of the process it's crucial to be VERY very gentle with yourself and your project. I can't stress this enough. Creativity foster and grow in safe environments, and it's difficult to be free when you're afraid of "bad ideas", so you must only show your work to the most supportive of family and friends. You must protect your work from blocked artists and critical people.

If your work is like your babies, a critical weaning period is necessary. This could mean that you wait to reveal your project to the discerning public until you've grown somewhat separate from it. For me, I wait until I'm in the final finishing stages, or often I let my projects sit for days or months after it's done before reading feedbacks.

Lastly, after the project is out in the world--it no longer really belongs to you. People will appreciate it, some will not understand it, while others might be stubbornly resistant--but either way, it's no longer your business because you're on to your next opus! ^___^

Feral Children

I've been reading about feral children lately. It seems a sad and bleak subject to be interested in I know, but it really says a lot about the human race. Or to be fair: about some human beings, specifically some parents. Feral children, or Wild Childs are rare cases of children who've been lost or (more often than not) purposefully neglected so that they grew up in isolation from human society. In some cases the children are raised by stray dogs. In all cases they did not fully regain their mental stability, and in the most severe cases never learned to speak.

When I first found out about Feral Children I was horrified and shocked. The first case I read about was a girl nicknamed Genie. In this case she wasn't lost in the wild, but was found in Arcadia, a suburb of Los Angeles. Her abusive parents had locked her in a room for more than ten years and she was thirteen!!!!!! No one talked to her, she wasn't given any books or toys, she was intellectually and sensorially deprived all her life. When she was found she was small for her age, and didn't know how to speak or interact normally.

Another case I read and watched a documentary about was Oxana Malaya. As a toddler one night her drunken parents forgot about her and she crawled out into the backyard. She was found six years later living in a kennel with dogs. She couldn't speak, was unaffected by extreme temperatures, and had picked up canine behaviors. In the documentary (which I have to warn it's dramaticized and borders on being exploitative) she is 22 years old. She's partially habilitated. She is able to speak, and is capable of leading a somewhat normal life though it is clear she's still in pain and not all there.

The most heart wrenching part of the documentary is when a doctor holds up brain scans of feral children next to scans of normal children. There were dark (empty) areas in various parts of their brains. This was the saddest part for me--realizing that these children lost parts of their brains (their lives, and their souls) because they have terrible, horrible monstrous parents. YES, I blame their parents. Why didn't Oxana's parents look for her? Or why did they give up? It wasn't as though Oxana Malaya was found far from her home. And Genie's parents were simply INSANE.

IT MAKES ME SOOOO ANGRY!#$%?!!!!!! If dogs are better at parenting than some people, those people ought to be neutered.

...

errr--that's my anger talking--RARRRR!!!! it makes me SO MAD!!!! I know that parents are human too, and perhaps they were in terrible pain to be so neglectful and abusive--still how could we as a society, let this happen? It certainly questions the boundaries between human and animals. Maybe animals are better--you don't see an animal killing off a member of their own species do you? Or (unless it was part of their development) purposefully leaving their cub to die in the wilderness?

Learning about feral children, I learned how fragile human development is and how incredible the human spirit persist for survival. Also it dawns on me that a person can be in so much pain that they are oblivious to everything else--and that it makes them capable of evil.

The Necessity of Self-Contradiction for Self Change

"The other terror that scares us from our self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; when then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory , but to bring the past for judgement into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Backslid last week: it's difficult to contradict people you love, people who've grown up with you and want you to stay the same (even if you didn't like who you were).

Moldy Thoughts

Today I cleaned out some moldy food from my fridge! Can you believe how much courage it takes just to face the stinky filled tupperware boxes? ^__^ I realize the same can be said of the human mind. Where thoughts and beliefs are outdated, it becomes necessary to clear the clutter. Facing the truth is scary. More scary than some unidentified greenish-white black furry things growing at the bottom of a half eaten bowl of fried rice.

I also realized the stink came from the decomposition process. My first instinct was disgust, but then it struck me that disintegration in this world is necessary. Perhaps that's where the capitalist system/culture has gone wrong. It is linear. Death and decomposition is unacceptable, and we'd like to think we'll live forever.

I've been hanging onto the past for too long. My collection of mementos, old ticket stubs, notes, and favorite old coats is getting ridiculous. And it's time to toss them out as it's the natural course of life. I haven't gone grocery shopping for a week and half on account of my fridge being full of stale leftovers, and just the same how will I find a new life if I'm still hanging on to the old? So it's spring cleaning in September...

As for getting used to my mortality--I still can't believe that one day I will (not might) die. The thought of life as a circular world is comforting. It means that I don't have to take death personally. That it's a naturally occurring process, and it may not necessarily be bad just because human beings don't understand it.

Some Conflicting Emotions

... I have conflicting emotions about the Sept. 11th anniversary... On one hand I feel I should be feeling somber and grave about today being the fifth year anniversary of the terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001...but on the other hand I feel emotionally exhausted from all the anniversaries and doomsday atmosphere of the world. On another side of my emotional compass I feel angry because there are worst tragedies around the world and throughout history that are more tragic in both human casualty and circumstances that are not acknowledged (i.e. Native-American genocide, Guatemalan Civil War, MODERN DAY SLAVERY--sadly the list goes on)--so I am confused and frustrated...

I realize the fallacy in comparing one kind of human suffering with another... Yet the media does it all the time by choosing what to cover or ignore. But the human truth is that every kind of human suffering hurts the individual all the same whether you're Jewish or Lebanese.

...

In the meantime I've decided to express protest by attending Intersection of the Arts' opening of Terror? A show inspired by political and ethical issues in our Post-9/11 world.

A good night

I had dinner over at my friend E.'s :) Sometimes when the going gets rough, all I need is a good friend :) The few hours that we spent laughing over old exes, ridiculous student loan balances, school, and work warmed my soul... I'm not very good at being vulnerable. Usually when the sky is falling I take to being a hermit, but I want to get better at trusting that my true friends won't run away even on days when I'm not necessarily chirpy.

I'm pretty sure my sister said something like that to me a long while ago, but it has just sunk in ^__^

BTW tomorrow is Sept.11th--My friend A. is in an art show in response to the anniversary. I hope to blog more about my thoughts later.

After hours of anxiety about the future:

I admit I am not in control of everything. I accept that my future is uncertain. And that's a good thing, not a bad thing because it means the trajectory of the past may not necessarily be an indication of the future (as a fact) but that trajectory is merely a direction. If a direction can be altered or redirected, trajectories can be re-adjusted and shifted so that the future is a bright one.

Assessing Success

A brief descent through a trough early this week...The webpage building is going well. Better than well, but somehow as a designer it's difficult to stay satisfied for more than fifteen minutes. Or well, I'm sure that was just me. Anyway, I got discouraged so I did a bit of archeology in my bookshelves and read some old journal. I found a note to myself dated back to 2004.06.25:

Assessing Success:

• Am I less afraid?
• Am I more questioning and less conforming?
• Do I have a broader, more accurate view of the world?
• Am I more compassionate? Kinder? Gentler? More forgiving? (of myself and others?)
• Do I have a close circle of friends I can count on?
• Am I closer to my family, parents, sibling, extended family than before?
• Do I see other people more as themselves and less of my projections?
• Am I less prejudice and more open minded? Do I seek out and challenge my preconceived notions?
• Am I more adventurous? Am I taking more risks while being less risky?
• Am I more decisive than before?
• Am I more committed to the decisions I made?
• Do I take responsibility for me, my life, actions and decisions?
• Am I more independent? Emotionally? Financially?
  
• Am I interdependent?
• Am I more optimistic in action?

Truthfully, brutally, honestly: though I spent some time to ask myself these questions, I didn't spend nearly enough time answering them back in 2004--which is why I'm still as lost as I was back then. In 2004, I didn't decide what I wanted to do with my life--but I realize that at the very least it had only been two years. The point is: I can turn this around right now by telling the truth and answering tough questions. Or even more simply: calling my friends back, writing my grandma a letter, and start running in the morning again. The work of happiness is the small stuff. (I don't want to be 60 and still feel this same empty feeling of disconnection and unfulfilled dreams.)

Notes inspired by readings on Buddhism

*Buddhism is a religion about freedom. Specifically freeing one from oneself.

*Love is a softly flowing river
it glows
and feels like the softest fur made of air caressing your skin...

*I am part of that river
Even my body-cell-"boundary" between myself and the air around me are microscopically navigable and without rigid borders. Real life flow of all objects (including human beings) are more like a river.
There is no true solid state.
All mater is like water (or gas?)

*Vector based curves where mathematics recalculate a true boundary infinitely is the only existing true boundary, but it is theoretical in nature, and not reality.

*A true boundary is a border that infinitely separate one thing from another. It does not have pores.

*So far from what I've read, Buddhism seems to have a healthier philosophy on life and death.