Life Lessons Advice Time!

Here’s a life lesson I’ve been learning over the course of the last year or so, perhaps culminating in cutting off all of my hair today. We often hear advice that we should do what feels right and don’t let others try to change us; be ourselves, etc. That’s nice and all, but I think the important and all-too-forgetten addendum to that is, don’t let *actually being socially accepted* stop you from being yourself if the way you want to live happens to be acceptable.

It’s warped, but it can easily happen if you’re taught all your life that being yourself is good and being contrary is okay, and especially if you live most of your life that way. Here’s a portrait of me coming out of high school: long hair, always wearing pajamas and t-shirts, looking like a scraggly mess all the time, and a just a little bit chubby, with no muscle mass to speak of. 

I did not dislike living this way. It just happened that a time came when I wanted to change those things, and the hardest part of doing so was, strangely, feeling like I was “playing into the hands” of those who’d wanted me to change all along.

How dangerous is that? It’s like saying, “here’s how I can be myself, but I’m going to not be myself because I was always supposed to be myself despite what others thought??” This is a confusing mental loop, but I still find it hard to get over. It’s just the result of having a rebellious nature burned into my learning from the core, having been the child of a pair of rebels, at least one of which has never stopped being a rebel against everything without a real cause.

I haven’t thought of myself as a rebel since like the 11th grade, but it’s a slow road to embracing social acceptability. It was easy to not be a rebel about ideas—politics, religion, etc—but not being a rebel about appearance has been the hard part.

I dread the “I told you so”s and “I knew it would happen”s. The “about time”s and “I bet you wish you’d done that a lot sooner”s. The “I never approved of your way of life until now” messages.

Because I don’t resent my old ways. I didn’t hate them at the time. When I was in high school, all of those things about the way I looked made sense to me. I liked wearing pajama pants because they were comfortable. Now, they’re less practical to me, in a time where I do things like carry shit in my pockets and spend some time outside. It’s a natural progression, not just something where I was trying to be contrary and now have “grown up” and stopped.

I haven’t gotten around to really replacing my wardrobe or anything, and the fact that I’m lazy as hell and have *way* too much clothes means I pretty much still wear everything I have, but I’ve moved into wearing shorts and pants and I’ve also found that I like button-up shirts a lot. Depending on the season, I tend to shave varying amounts of my face depending on how warm I want to be.

None of this goes without comment—scrutiny. “You finally shaved.” “Whoa, you’re wearing regular pants.” Or worse, “so, you’ve finally gotten sick of pajamas?” None of this should bother me at all. It just does. But I’m overcoming it.

People have been telling me to cut my hair for *my entire life*. The last time I had short hair, I was in the 5th grade, and I’d cut it short specifically so that I could spike it when I went to my first concert. Since then, I’ve had minor cuts, but no scissors had touched my hair for five years leading up to today.

Having long hair was a fun thing to me. I thought it would be interesting to see how long I could possibly get it. I always felt that there was no point in having long hair if you weren’t going to go all out with it, which is why I was so adamant about not cutting or trimming it at all. My hair reached halfway down my calves when I got it cut: I had the longest hair in this entire god damn city. 

I went all the way, and my reasons for cutting it were, again, a natural progression. Having hair that long was utterly impractical. I’d gotten used to most aspects of having long hair: incessant management, constant moving and tucking, the necessity of awareness, and of course, getting stuck on things. That last one, however, reached an event horizon. My hair started getting caught on *motherfucking everything*. At a recent concert that I went to, it kept getting caught on people’s belts, causing me to get dragged along with it. That’s when I made up my mind that this shit needed to go.

Again, the whole fun of having long hair wasn’t the idea of “having long hair,” but of “taking it as far as I could go.” There would be no meaning to cutting my hair and still having it long. If I was going to cut it off, the plan was to cut it all off. To cut off every disadvantage of long hair (and boy, today have I learned the insane amount of those that there were!).

Did I need to reach this level of hair troubles before I cut it off? I probably didn’t. It made sense to cut my hair as early as last May when I was preparing for my trip to the Philippines, and maybe even before that. I knew that I was going to cut it eventually, because I knew that I didn’t want to manage it forever.

I don’t think I was scared of losing my hair nearly as much as I didn’t want to have to listen to the praise of those who wanted me to do this all along. Needless to say, this is stupid as hell. It’s the same kind of giving in and letting others control you, just in a strange reversal, like “reverse psychology.”

Whatever. I got over all of that. Rationality and self-fulfillment are way too important to me to be fretting over bullshit like that. I’m probably going to get all kinds of praise if I shed ten pounds, or start dressing sensibly, and will continue to get praise for my cut hair. Maybe I’ll be approached by people who would’ve found me unapproachable before. Holding it against them is just silly. 

Let’s Organize and Understand Some Thoughts

The only way I know how: tumblr a post.

What’s this about? It’s about what I’m doing. I’m a NEET, which is a Japanese term for someone who is Not Employed, Educated, or in Training. I’ve been a NEET since last summer, so we’ll say six months.

What brought this post about is that my dad has warned me that I’ll need to start job hunting soon, like as soon as my mom gets the “all-clear” that her cancer is “over.”

My completely honest reaction to this: I have no bloody idea why. My parents are determined that I need to get a job so that I’ll be ready if they die or something, or when they retire, which is at least a solid decade from now. 

It’s funny that this came up today because I’d been talking about the very proposition with my friend last night in the midst of a three-hour speech about why he shouldn’t join the military. My speech was mostly about looking at how many options and alternatives there are in life, and always weighing what you want against the consequences of having it. Here’s an example:

The friend in question is currently working at Krispy Kreme to help support his family. The situation: he has his mom, dad, a sixteen year-old sister in high school, and a toddler sister. His mom is working as a house cleaner, and also has to keep watch of the kids. His dad is a useless fatass. His family has a lot of money saved up, which in combination with what they’re making is keeping them afloat.

Brando (friend) was considering joining the military to have more money to send home. However, I know Brando, that he has a problem with authority, a problem with the military, and no desire to be taken away for four years. So I tried to help him lay out his situation as a series of possibilities. 

One possibility is that his dad will finally stop being a noncontributing cunt and get a job to support his family. That or he or his mom get better jobs (he already got a pay raise recently which he’d considered incentive to stay at his job), or even his sixteen year-old sister can start helping out. 

More importantly than anything, his family isn’t *desperate* yet. Brando doesn’t like his job, but no one does, and it’s certainly better than the military. In a worst case scenario, his family bottoms out into hard enough times that he ends up *needing* better work, but until that time comes, he shouldn’t go rushing into things head-first.

So what about when his family is stabilized? His mom wants him to go to college and is trying to “force” him, but as I explained, she simply can’t. He just has to weigh his desire to not go to college (at which he is guaranteed to fail, because he’s like me and can’t make himself give a shit) against his desire not to piss off his mom. But as I explained to him, the worst case scenario there is that his mom kicks him out of the house for not doing as she says. In that case, we will take him in until he can get on his feet. There’s no question that we’d help him out, considering we help plenty of family and friends that we don’t care about nearly as much as we do him. He would be welcome for as long as he needed to be, and I think his mom would eventually be able to come to terms with his decision and let him become his own man. 

Brando wants to practice martial arts. That is his passion. He works out and practices every single day, and once his financial responsibilities aren’t all directed towards his family, he wants to get training in various martial arts and potentially become a fighter. This is all he wants out of life… and something that he won’t be doing if he joins the military.

That huge anecdote out of way, here’s the conclusion I came to last night about the absolute worst case scenario of my life:

-Both of my parents suddenly die, leaving me in charge of my brothers.
-My 19 year-old brother drops out of college, I cut my hair, the two of us get jobs to take care of the youngest. We sell the house and everything in it to have a cash buffer, and move into a much smaller place.
-I end up getting a job at the car dealership where my dad used to work, and climb the ladder for fourteen years, never managing to get around to my creative works.
-I become my dad.

Yes, even if your dad is a super-awesome badass like mine, the worst case scenario in life is always, without question, becoming your dad. That is a natural law.

“But Conrad, how can you be so sure that things will go that smoothly?”

Are you kidding? First of all, of course they’re going to hire the son of their deceased best employee ever. Second, I have already been told once in the past that I was hire-able at one of the dealerships even without a sob story, and even without cutting my hair! Third, I’m a wizard of sales. Two parents who spent the better part of their lives managing retail stores, and you better believe I learned how to do that shit. There’s no reason to believe that, being motivated by having to support my family, I couldn’t be the “second coming” of my dad. 

I’ve thought about all this shit. I’ve given monumental amounts of thought to all these theoretical situations and possibilities, and really none of them even matter, because no matter what happens, I’m prepared to deal with it. I’ve lived under so many different conditions and known so many people who were in so many different situations that I know how to work things out. I’m very confident about this. And what’s the worst that could ever happen? I become homeless and jobless? Cool, I’ll become a vagrant and walk across the country. I die? Sure as hell won’t care about that after it’s happened!

I want to say, “but this is all besides the point,” but it’s not. This *is* the point. The point is that I can deal with whatever happens, and that I don’t think I should be worried about this kind of shit unless it happens. I’m going to bank on the following:

-My parents live long, full lives.
-My dad works at his job until he gets my youngest brother through college, then retires and goes to school.
-Before that happens, I find a way to support myself.

That’s something like an eight year grace period I’ve put my money in. Would he be happy to know that? (Which he now does) No. But that’s okay because I don’t intend to use all eight of those years. Just the ones that I need.

I haven’t explained this stuff to my parents because I refuse to make promises to them or to myself anymore. How many times have I told them about plans that I never went through with? I was supposed to make a movie, then to write a book, then to go to college, etc, etc, and I’ve never accomplished these things. I don’t *want* to have to tell them, “well, right now I’m counting on writing a hit comic/album/story/whatever,” —I want to come to them with a finished product and say, “hey dad, I made this, I’m going to seek an editor, and a publisher, and we’re going to advertise.” I want his investment to be based on my results rather than my promises.

I stabbed myself in the foot like this, though, because in being shady and secretive about my plans, I’ve made it look like I’ve spent the past six months doing absolutely nothing. And I’m not going to pretend that I maximized all of my time and constantly worked towards a goal. I’ve spent plenty of time hanging out with friends, playing video games, watching anime, sitting around bored, etc., but this doesn’t come close to meaning that I haven’t done *anything.*

Here is a list of things which I’ve done in the past six months:

-Released well over 100 songs with my band, Trial of the Golden Witch, with each album being progressively better than the last.
Future potential: We just recorded our first “demo” album, in other words one wherein the guitarists are going to actually *learn the songs* and *record better versions* which can be actually real songs. I also have a friend whom I’ve set to the task of writing a heavy metal album, which pending his results could be awesome. 
I have a friend who is an experienced musician from whom I can learn whatever I need to know about breaking into the industry. 

-Written a plethora of short stories, concepts, poems, etc.
Future potential: I’m always getting better as a writer. I’m getting close to something that I can really be proud of. It’s something I felt I was starting to touch with my Tales From the 7-Eleven series, and I only feel even closer now. My voice as a writer has always been my biggest advantage, but now I feel my *style* as a whole is coming into being.
As soon as I actually finish a book that I feel is worthy and get it edited, I already have a friend who can publish it as an ebook on Amazon, iTunes, etc., immediately.
Additionally, I’ve just recruited an artist friend to try doing a webcomic with me that I’m feeling pretty good about right now.

-Made an assload of videos
Future potential: I keep getting better not only at video editing, but at animation. I’m currently halfway through a *massive* animation work which I think is something stylistically solid and gives me lots of ideas about future works.

 The funny thing here is that my dad is always explaining to people that he considers himself my “benefactor” and that it takes a long time to truly get good at something, yet for all that he says this, he doesn’t seem that confident that I’m succeeding here. 

But that might be my fault. I’m not making it look like I’m doing something, because I make it look like I sit around doing nothing all day and play down whatever work I’m doing. Last week, everyone knew that I was sleeping all day and staying up all night and that I spent two whole days without seeing the sun. Sounds bad. What they didn’t know was that I spent the *entire time that I was awake* on those days working on my animation project. The. Entire. Time. 

Why not say so? Because I wasn’t confident yet that it was going to turn out well, or that I’d actually go through with finishing it. The past three or four days, I haven’t been able to work on it because there’s a clip I need to film and I haven’t had the necessary people around to film it, so I simply don’t have the footage to keep making the video. Uncertainties and glitches like this are why I don’t want to say anything until it’s done.

I am a highly confident person. I’m just not that confident in any individual thing. I believe very strongly that I will, very soon, make a breakthrough in one of my mediums of interest, stand up, say “this is the one,” and start publishing whatever it is. Every day, I feel closer to the precipice of that breakthrough. 

Here are some things that I know. I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t even slightly believe that I have the skill set to succeed at school. And I don’t want to get a job, because I don’t want it to destroy my soul, or to throw me off from the amazing chain of events that’s happening right now. I love my life right now. I love the pace at which things are unfolding, and I love that I feel so close to capturing a dream. I have all of the space in the world to do this, and I don’t feel that there’s any good reason to jeopardize this. 

Drama Has to Really Fester, Ya’know?

The most mindblowing aspect of Hourou Musuko for me is its dense interpersonal drama. The individual personal dramas all feel relatable to me, but the huge web of people and their effects on one-another was something I never experienced. I know that most or at least a lot of people went through it, though. 

I have younger friends who throughout middle and high school formed a web of drama around themselves so thick that the status of all relationships practically changed by the day. Everything everyone did effected everything everyone else did. I’ve never experienced enough involvement in anyone’s life that what I do effects them beyond how they decide to spend their weekend.

Obviously I never had enough friends nor was a part of enough social groups to create drama, for the reason that my family moved constantly. Most of the friends I’ve had were individual “best friends” that I had for the year I lived in whatever particular house, whom I never spoke to again after moving away. I’ve never had an “old friend” that I met on more than three or four occasions post-living near them. That remains true even though I now live in the city that I lived in for the biggest chunk of my childhood and have the means to easily re-establish contact with old friends. I just don’t care to.

Most of my old friends have nothing in common with the current me, and had little in common with me to begin with. I just befriended whatever person around me had the closest interests to my own or was a nerdy kid like me. Those people have all gone on to make real friends and probably realize as well as I do that we wouldn’t get along as well anymore.

Because I never had any lasting friendships or got involved with any groups, I never had the time to get into drama. I never cared about anyone enough that their problems became mine, and vice-versa. When I reached high school, I was associated with the overall goth/nerd populace, which was comprised of interconnected sub-groups of friends that each had their own dramas.

I never fell in with any of them. My group was made up of all the total outcasts who lacked the ability to communicate with other human beings. All they knew how to do with others was joke around and never get serious about anything. I had a lot of opportunities over my high school years to get involved in a group, and I knew that there were people who really wanted to be my friend, but I ignored them and stuck with being an eternal acquaintance and keeping to my small number of true, ultra-close friends and the mass of idiots that followed me around. By virtue of being the smartest and funniest of the group, I was its leader in my senior year, and I made it very clear to everyone that I wouldn’t talk to any of them again after high school. Except for the ones who are still friends with my little brother, I haven’t.

Everything I’ve said above is a cause and effect. I made it look like a cohesive story of my non-involvement, but it was really the first part—my being unable to get involved—and the second part—my refusing to get involved. One caused the other.

I just don’t know how to deal with social situations. I don’t understand groups of friends because I’ve never been in one. The closest thing I have is the combination of my two brothers, my cousin, my one true best friend, another close friend who has since moved away, and my brother’s close friend who hasn’t been around as often because he and my brother both found new friends that live closer by.

But what we are is more a family than a group of friends (well, it sounds more obvious when I just cut off two of the three actual non-family members). Each of my brothers has their own friends that I have no part in. My cousin has other people he spends most of his time with. My best friend, No Name, only has me, to the same degree that I only have him. We alone don’t comprise a group of friends, and our relationship is far more like a married couple (lol).

All in all, with my brothers and No Name being the only ones I spend time with anymore, you could say that at this point in time, I have no friends. None that I interact with “in the meat” anyway—most of my online friends are referred to as such, but none of them fits a conventional definition of a “friend.”

None of this is whining—I’m perfectly happy with this setup. This is an analysis and explanation of why I don’t want friends.

That reason being that I don’t have the means to deal with drama. I never had drama in my life. I never had people to create it with. Drama is this strange, alien-like concept to me that my mind can’t process well. 

When I see someone that clearly doesn’t like someone else, I wonder, why would they associate with them? Why talk to them? Why get anywhere near them? Why allow drama to happen? If there are people you aren’t really close to, why spend time with them? What’s it all worth?

Clearly I think too analytically and don’t have very much skill when it comes to enjoying things for what they are, but I make up for it by doing what I want to do in life, so even if someone tells me I should be bothered by it, I won’t be once I think it through. If I’m always happy in life, then the fact that I can’t interact socially will never matter. 

But it does effect things that I care about. It effects my ability to reason with a show like Hourou Musuko where I look at someone like Chiba and think “how do you throw yourself so deliberately at misery? why don’t you find happiness somewhere?” but then I remember that most people don’t find misery as devastating as I do and know how to deal with it as a part of life. Drama is natural to them, and I’m actually the abnormal one for putting such an effort into avoiding it altogether. 

I only wish I understood things more for the sake of myself as a writer. I’ve noticed my tendency to put my characters on islands. Most of the characters I write are either complete lone wolves or have one or two close personal friends that they’re relatively inseparable from. I hope that in the future I can learn to incorporate more normal human drama into my stories the way it’s done in Hourou Musuko, because for the most part, the feeling of high psychological realism from that story is exactly what I go for in my writing.