Unpleasantness in Pleasantville

Anyone have those moments where, while listening to music, your iPod seems to have some kind of mind-reading ability and plays what you need to hear? Like the songs that keep playing one after another have some relevancy to what you're thinking or feeling? It's crazy, right? Or honestly, perhaps, just a very rare moment of coincidence.

I had been having a rough week, a very rough week. I struggle almost every day, to be honest, with where I'm at and the speed of progress. I should have achieved the perfect standard of my life at this point. Too often have I reflected (and had been reminded) that at this point in my life I should be married, have a good job, a lasting career, a place of my own, and be so happy with everything that rainbows are shooting out of my ears. Instead, I'm back to living at home with my parents and younger sister, I work a crap part-time job, I'm working for free to establish a comic company, and the thought of having a family of my own is nonexistent. In comparison to my four other siblings in their twenties, I'm on the lowest rung of the ladder when it comes to achievements. I have always wanted the ideal life, the "American Dream" of lives, but I have no idea why I haven't gotten it yet.

A place where there are freak rain storms, tree fires, and people making out in the street!

So the one day that I decide to actually sit down and watch TV, what's on? One of my favorite movies, Pleasantville. I remember watching it in my high school sociology class and being instructed to seek out the social injustice themes throughout the film. It is riddled with those kinds of themes, from racism and segregation to women's rights. However, what stood out to me the most was that the characters were struggling with something more than turning technicolor: they were realizing a different part of their selves. Their changes brought out the most unpredictable in them, and it showed through the vibrancy of color. They were so used to having lived strictly scripted lives that any change shook the very core of their existence. I never understood the ending or what it meant (three of the adult characters asking each other what happens next) until I had watched the film this time around. It felt like a big sigh of relief, how they were so unsure about the future yet they were comfortable with the unpredictability of it all. They had survived the worst of the ordeal of change, and now their futures were their own to write.

Pinnacle moment where change is just simply misunderstood.

I didn't really empathize with the film's characters up until this watch-through. They seemed to be all the more real to me because of how there was the pressure of living life in a formulaic manner; that was my life in Florida, where my days melted into one another because it was just work, eat, sleep, and nothing more. Just as they had realized their identities apart from the structure, so have I. The struggle of uprooting from what is familiar and instituted is always a daunting, difficult journey. Pleasantville reassured me that whatever changes come around in my life, there is always an unscripted future to look forward to. I've gone through the arduous task of discovering what kind of person I am so far, and there's now only moving forward to achieve my ideal future.

I'm one to believe in coincidences, and having my TV play Relevancy Roulette with me the other day made me believe in them even more. The universe is strange and vast, yet it somehow sends out little but impacting signals to guide us to our destiny.

Pretty Good Year

So this week marks a significant event of my life: I made a bold decision and moved back to my home to New Jersey after spending a few years living in Florida. Certain circumstances had prompted the hasty move down in the first place, but after a few years there I felt as if I was wasting away. I had a good full-time job, yes, but it took more time out of my days than anything else I have ever done before. The kind of work I engaged in was mostly customer service, and a knowledge of machinery (or just knowing when to push in a green button). All pretty basic and skill-less.

Therein lied the motivation of my move; I felt as if I was the tiniest cog in the machine. Most certainly, there were very limited opportunities for me to actually use my personal talents, which is art design. Not having studied graphic design in college did not help either; I don't have the proof that I have been professionally trained in the skill, so I have not been considered at all after applying for numerous art design positions. The only thing I could do in an immediate sense was become a trainer, coordinator, maybe a manager...but my true passion has always been art, not managing people.

In short, I moved away from that life with hardly a plan at all. Not a great move, but for a while I felt liberated, that I was able to do whatever I wanted to. Months later, I fell into a deep depression. I could not find a job that I felt was worth having, nor was qualified for, and job searching was becoming another self-worth reducing task. Also, breaking out of a routine like the one I had with my previous full-time job threw a curveball; there was no schedule, no order in my life, nothing to follow. (It's insane thinking about how our culture is basically conditioned to follow a strictly scheduled lifestyle, from the moment we set foot in school to the day we leave high school or college.) I basically had to learn how to pick all the pieces up again, find what I felt comfortable working with, and figure where I wanted to go with my life.

There were times where I slipped too far and almost lost myself - quite a few, actually. However, with support from friends and family -- and a lot of tough talk -- I managed to get my footing back on track. Those few friends helped me realize my potential, and eventually pushed me to dig myself out of the hole I had made. As a result, I helped form The Demon Hotel, a comic company that aims to be a little different than the rest. Heck, our opening statement on our website is "We all wear masks". It's sort of like how everyone has their demons, their fears, and our aim is to tell those stories to create a safe space for readers.

Our start was impressive; we created a massive universe with characters who are so real to us that we have a hard time thinking they're anything but. We created our website, Facebook page, promotional material, and first webcomic in about a month, right in time for New York Comic Con. Being the penciler and inker for the title comic series had put some pressure on me, a kind I've never experienced before. When I fell, everyone else on the team fell, and it took a toll on my self-worth. I lamented over my efforts, absorbed my failures, essentially withered down and had considered giving up more often than I'd like to admit. I thought too often that working on a comic full-time with no immediate rewards was not the life I wanted, and that I should consider going back to what had been familiar to me for the past three years.

Up until recently, I had been struggling like this. Coming up on the one-year anniversary of my big move made me realize all the progress I've covered so far with this team, and how successful I have been since then. I had survived the struggle of redefining myself and had created something I had wanted to do for so long. I was using my skills every day, and what's more is that they continued to grow. I learned how to manage my time between projects; I learned how to work closely with my team and how to be efficiently communicative; and I learned how to balance my personal and work lives.

There are still so many things that I'm learning how to improve, and I'm all the happier about it, because you know what? Life is about learning. It's about learning how to take risks and how to handle the consequences. It's about making results instead of giving up on them. The Demon Hotel has in a way become my new home, and it has eradicated the fears that have been holding me down ever since moving home. It has instilled hope in me, and it has shown many what I am capable of as an artist.

So in the past year, what have I done? I have found my purpose in life.

Visit thedemonhotel.com to view our comics "Kid Riot" and "Kid Riot and the Evolution" for free!