Today's Guest Post is by Alex Neill, thanks so much to Alex for writing the first in a series of blogs by a number of wonderful guests.
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Recently I’ve been reading the comics of Lucy Knisley
because I luv her and she is great. Yesterday I finished ‘Radiator Days’, a
self-published collection of miscellaneous comics that she wrote over a two
year period while at grad school.
When I went to rate it on Goodreads (four stars, would
recommend) I discovered that several people had given it no stars. Or rather,
to quote, “I am giving this book one star because according to Goodreads that
means I didn’t like it. And I did not like it”. Wow lady, that’s an articulate
and well-thought out review you got there. A number of other reviews agree with
this lady’s assertion that this book is whiney and self-indulgent. Apparently
it’s all first-world-problems and “waaah why can’t I have a moped”.
Well guess what? I relate to that shit. And if worrying
about the instability of a career in the arts is self-indulgent, then that’s
what I am. (Also Lucy Knisley does not just want
a moped, she actually buys a moped online but
does not receive a working moped. Thus she has both no money AND no moped.
That is tragic you guys.)
Over on my blog this week, I wrote about memory and Doctor
Who. While writing that piece it occurred to me that a lot of the emotions I
was talking about were
self-indulgent. So I was slightly miserable while having Christmas in England a
couple of years ago? Boohoo. I also got to make snowmen in a blizzard. I had no
real reason to be sad and, looking back, I realise that a lot of that sadness
was pretty misguided. It’s easy to look at those emotions and think: “What are
you complaining about? That problem is tiny. Suck it up.”
But I think sometimes it’s important to remember that there
was a time when those feelings did
matter. I don’t regret missing my school formal because I was in Italy, of
course I don’t. But at the time I was a sad not to be there and I missed my
friends on the other side of the world. Boxing Day that year I wallowed in
homesickness and actual sickness while eating leftover turkey and watching Top Gear. I remember lying on the couch
thinking over and over and over again that I did not want to fly to Spain. I
didn’t want to get up at some ridiculous time the following morning and catch
yet another plane. I didn’t want to go to another country, I wanted to go home.
That is quite obviously, a stupid thing to think. I ended up
loving Spain, completely. The homesickness evaporated in light of their food
and their maritime museums. I had the most amazing time. But I didn’t know any
of that on that day in snowy Winchester.
Homesickness is an irrational emotion. And I think that a
lot of the emotions that seem really dumb in retrospect fall into that
category. They’re not the emotions we can rationalise or explain, we just feel them. And sometimes we feel them an
awful lot.
Right now I spend an awful lot of my time worrying about the
future. I’m about the finish university and next year I’m moving to Melbourne
and (hopefully) getting a job. I worry about moving and packing and finding a
place to live. I worry about making new friends and losing old ones. But most
of all I worry about finding a job doing what I love. Maybe in twenty years
I’ll look back and wonder why these thoughts occupied such a huge portion of my
time. I hope so. That’ll mean the worries were ultimately unfounded.
And maybe Lucy Knisley’s work will be different when I
re-read it ten or twenty years from now. Maybe I’ll be able to see a little of
what those one-star reviewers are talking about. But I like to think I’ll be
able to read them and remember what it feels like now, remember why these
feelings mattered. Because, even all the way in the future, it will still
matter a little bit if only because it matters now.
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Alex Neill blogs at Adventures in TV-Land and tweets @paper_bag_girl. She doesn't like carrots or writing bios.
