jkatkina

If there are ~two wolves inside everybody~ mine are thus:

Sleep, rest, denning up. Learning to be okay with less. Doing less, having less. Contentment with self, with presence, with just who I am and where I am. The surrender of earthly goals in service of allowing the soft animal of my body to simply exist in warmth.

and

Teeth sinking into the world, a joyous, fierce grab, hunger, HUNGER, HUNGER, connection, expansion. The collection of experiences, people, joys, pains, fears, successes. The uncompromising drink, swallow after messy swallow, from the cup of life. The desire to see how far, how fast, how bright.

I mean, I like em both, the tension only comes in the conflict between them

but also shit like this happens, where having spent three months post-surgery necessarily living in the space of Wolf #1, the hot second I'm feeling human again and an opportunity comes down the pipes to test my limits Wolf #2 allows no quarter and goes YEP WE'RE DOING THIS

"Hey, you want to try your hand at supervising? I think you'd be good at it!"

"Sure, sounds like a fun challenge!"

*facepalm*

I'm feeling more myself today, the last day of my three-week unpaid holiday (lol), which I'm going to stubbornly take as a good omen. I am afraid of the change going back to working full time will wreak, but I am firmly putting that fear aside for now. I'm sitting on a sunny hillside listening to some plinky guitar music and all is well in the soft animal of my body.

Dreamwidth in particular is where I've been coming to get away from the rest of social media and let my sphere shrink for a bit when I need that. It's impossible to not want to be involved in trying to right the racist wrongs currently happening -- to somehow be supporting, rallying, mourning, donating, amplifying voices of colour. I do my best. I've been trying to engage with my more racist relatives on Facebook when they post bullshit "Jesus sacrificed himself because ALL lives matter!!!" memes. I haven't been out to a physical protest here in Vancouver and am beginning to realize that may not be a way I can contribute, at least not regularly, which means trying to triage what kind of online "help" actually helps and what's just privileged noise, and then executing on what I can. It's a lot. It needs doing.

But I may not post a lot about it here. At least the outward work. I'm trying to dig inwards, too, which does fit into the wheelhouse of this blog being unrepentant navel-gazey.

Anyways, we had DnD yesterday, and everyone in our group seemed to need it. Marla is coming over again today since the seal has been broken, and I'm glad of it. She's gone near full nocturnal and apparently stopped eating for three days last week, and I will not stand for this. She will get fed, she will get a bit of social contact, and if she feels like it she will get some things off of her chest. Honestly I wish we could have her just come stay here for a bit so we could keep an eye on her and help out, but I'm not sure where we'd stash her if she's sleeping in the day and I need to use my office for work.

The "this feels like a holiday" portion of the ride seems to be over. I'm so tense I'm making myself a bit dizzy.

( To get it off my chest )
In summation, economic insecurity is a fucking bitch and now is a very bad time to have a contract coming to the end.

We as a society are seeing now just how shitty our social safety nets are.

There's a spiral of pork belly and herbs behind the sneeze guard of my favourite cafe. I'm staring right at it, and it looks delicious, but I've never asked for it, or even what it is. Because who asks those questions? Who can concieve of asking these questions?

I came out of work today mortified. I tried to make a connection with someone important, and it flubbed. I embarrassed myself -- or maybe I didn't? -- I felt embarrassed. I have no read on what the other person felt about the situation, because panic overrode my ability to read people. Which, when I'm calm, is pretty good. When I'm panicky, I'm realizing, it's terribly, terribly bad. So if I think I read disappointment, confusion and dislike off of this person, I can't trust that.

I can't. I keep telling myself that.

So much of my life is paralysis. My studio recently made a big four-year deal with Netflix, which means we're going to have steady work for a while. Well, "we" as in the studio, not "we" as in the employees. Contract work is a bitch. But in any case, it's a good time to make a pitch. Any pitch that gets made will make it in front of Netflix execs, and if they don't take it, someone else might.

I have a good idea for a pitch. I think it's a very good idea. Compelling, complex, visually striking.

Apparently people who announce their New Years resolutions are less likely to fulfill them. I don't know if that's causation or simply correlation, but it does not surprise me. You feel the pressure. You feel the scrutiny. It's paralyzing.

I'm tired of not achieving my goals. I have to trick myself into doing anything. It's tiring.

I won't make the pitch, but I will dream of it. I know myself too well to get excited by this.

So, with reason, I've been feeling pretty good lately.

Weekend was crazy. Three solid days of people, which pushes my limits for sure. Community Day and DnD on Saturday, and Thanksgiving on both Sunday and Monday, with my family and E&R and their kids respectively. I'm shocked I'm not sick — for those counting, that's three toddlers and one baby and all had snotty noses. Good job, immune system.

This is also my last week working on a project that I find technically enjoyable (I love me some rendering-heavy paint, especially of organic scenery, and boy howdy am I RENDERING SOME PLANTS m'boys) but sort of soulless. On next to a big franchise that helped shape my childhood and I'm excited to put my hand in.

More than that, though — well. A few things. The others I'll talk about later, but, oh man.

I think I'm in the right job, finally, after years of stress and confusion about it. At least for the time being, it's proving challenging and rewarding, and after a long, long time of not, I'm rebuilding my sense of self. I keep rising to the challenges at this work. I keep doing better. The hunger in my soul has a direction and though it still flares up from time to time, it's been helping me really sink my teeth into chasing projects and making impressions.

We had folio reviews yesterday, with the art director of the entire company. He'd done some several months ago and was back for the rest of us, to get to know all of us folks up in Vancouver (Titmouse is mainly based out of the US). It was serendipitous, honestly — in those several months I've been on three different shows, with three very very different styles, and honestly, I've killed it at all three. I've worked hard to.

He had noticed. I never expect that. In the ten or so minutes I got to chat with him, I learned that 1. He already knew who I was; 2. He had already taken note of my skill and versatility, and 3. he's got an eye on me for the future. We had a chat about the kind of folio improvements I'd have to put together to nail a position on his A-list, and organized to have coffee next time he's up.

This is big. It was a good conversation and the most validating thing that has happened to me in a very, very long time. It's one thing to know you're good at something, but — I'm so used to just simply not being seen at all, when I'm working in a group environment. It's powerful to be seen.

Fun thing this week: amongst the bajillion layers and folders of layers, each of which must be labelled appropriately in regards to their content, I found a folder labeled 'feeeeeeeeets'. This was, in fact, appropriately labelled as it contained the feet of a statue, but it also did give me a giggle.

Today I did some sleuthing up the pipeline to see who in Layout did that BG before passing it on to Paint, and called out the fella on the work network.

He replied with "sometimes after labelling 200 layers, you go a little crazy", and told a story of the time he had to draw a bunch of incidental crowd members and started giving them biographical layer names like "single mom who is excited to pay off her final car loan" and "Aspiring youtuber who can't break 1k followers". I FEEL YOU, BRO.

(It's also his last day at the studio, which is DUMPS. But I'm sure in this industry I'll see him again.)

Okay, so — you know how TL and I ran into a group of people who know someone we used to live with?

I’m waiting for the third in this series, because everything happens in threes.

The second requires a bit of explanation.

I work at an animation studio. It is, perhaps literally, a dream job of mine. This is a studio a friend of mine used to work at before they had two kids in quick succession and had to take on full-time childcare duties. I got to know how cool this studio was through them, mostly; they invited TL and I to the 5 Second Day shorts screening. It blew me the hell away. (Seriously check out that link.)

Fast forward four years and I’ve managed to get a job at this studio, and my first 5-second day rolls around. Now, this is a big studio, near 300 people split between a couple of locations, so six months in I’ve only really met a fraction of the people. The animation community in Vancouver is also deeply incestuous — people cycle between the several animation studios here constantly, based on what projects they fit with and which studios they love best. So I definitely know people who know people who work here, but I hadn’t really come across any yet.

So I figure, my first 5-second day, I’m a painter and not an animator, I’ll take it easy and help with someone else’s project. A rando puts up a cool DnD-based project up on the company facebook, and I ping them, asking if they need another painter. They say yes, and I go to pick up whatever needs painting.

This Sunday, we had the first meeting of our DnD group in about a month and a half, and we get to talking. Now, an FX animator friend of ours from school is part of this group, and we get to talking. I mention 5-second day; she asks what I’m doing.

I say I’m working with a team, she asks who. I stumble over the slightly unfamiliar name of the project lead, and she grimaces and says his name.

This person is her ex. That she had talked to us extensively about when they broke up and she was trying to deal with the fallout. Who did her pretty dirty, and basically just sounded like a really shitty person. And I’ve found myself working on his project.

>8U gdi

Hey, universe. Can the next one of these be someone who won’t make me feel vaguely dirty by association, please?