Been thinking about respect today.

Respect has never been one of the variables I have pursued. I have always concentrated on being liked and people thinking I am brilliant. Obviously, respect is connected to both of them, especially the brilliance, but perhaps because of my deeply empathic nature, I have always wanted warmth over all, and the easiest form of warmth for me to get has been affection.

Not the physical kind, more’s the pity. But the kind I get through being charming and entertaining and funny and so forth. Few things make me happier than to see my own light reflected in others. And that seems to be the only way for me to feel the warmth from my own light as well.

As if the only way I can feel the warmth I crave is through empathy. Sheesh, no wonder I’m so desperate for attention!

Respect, to me, has always seem like a cold thing, suitable for people who take themselves far too seriously and a poor substitute for actually being interesting. I suppose I had it confused with “respectability”, a concept that has always seemed toxic to me. So stultifyingly bourgeoisie!

XTC has it right :

It’s like dullness codified into a system of ethics. Hordes of middle class families competing to be “more normal than thou”, a gobsmackingly ridiculous thought on the face of it. Petty status squabbles, people trying to one-up one another via mindless consumerism, venomous jealousy aimed at people whose only crime is having a slightly nicer patio set than yours… and all under a veneer of “normal life”.

I am so glad my family never gave a shit about that stuff. Then again…. we were one of the more prosperous families in the neighborhood…. hmmmm….

You know, it’s just possible other people were trying to keep up with us. God, I hope not. We were never that impressive!

But respect and respectability (sounds like an Emily Bronte novel^[1]) are not the same thing. You can be respected without being boring. Respect is more about being esteemed, and that’s something I desire quite strongly. I want to be valued. I have felt worthless for a very long time, probably because I was not supporting myself and didn’t have a life outside the apartment and the Internet, and quite frankly, had pretty much nothing to offer society, or so I thought.

I have at least reached the point in my recovery when I can look back at the infinite regression of my self-esteem and shake my head, wondering what the fuck that was all about. I can see that it was not about my actual merits, it was about having very little to anchor my self-image. All it took was depression to act like gravity and pull me down, and I cratered time and time again.

And when you crash over and over for long enough, you stop trying to fly. It’s the only way to preserve what little health you have left before total oblivion.

And to be honest, that state is never very far away. There are still times when I become depressed and can’t imagine why anyone would even tolerate me, let alone respect me. Like I am nothing but a burden on the world who makes life worse for whoever knows him, and who is completely devoid of substance or worth.

That’s the depression talking, of course. If I summon the full powers of my emotion-suppressing metabrain, I can slow myself down enough to slowly enumerate the many assets I have. I have a stunningly high IQ, I have great verbal skills, I am highly creative and very funny, and on top of all that, I’m a heck of a guy.

The fact that I haven’t found a way to turn all that into a career yet doesn’t make it all worthless. The whole point of going to VFS is to do that very thing – hook me up with a career. The fact that I am doing it more than twenty years after most people do it doesn’t change a thing. It’s still the right thing to do, and when I graduate (with honors, if that’s a thing) from the place, I will be well suited to go be an amazing TV writer with twenty years of ideas stored in his capacious noggin.

I might have to lie about my age, though.

I should keep all my good points on a business card, so I can it out when I am feeling worthless and build myself back up. On the reverse side, I can print the nice things that Michael Baser, head of the Writing track, said about me when I got admitted.

Hell, I should have that shit framed on the wall.

Part of the problem is that VFS is not that big on grades. I haven’t checked my folder lately, but as of this moment I have not gotten much in the way of grades back, and I guess I can admit that grades are what keep people like me going. We need the feedback that tells us we are getting it right or we descend into self-doubt.

There’s two possible explanations for the lack of marking. One is that VFS is a groovy art school that doesn’t believe in restricting our artistic freedom by tying it to arbitrary numbers, man.

The other is that the teachers there don’t like marking and there is a culture there that tacitly allows them to put it off as long as they like – sort of a “if you call me on my bullshit, I will call you on yours” kind of thing. It could very well be that stuff I did in my first month of school still hasn’t been marked.

The third, and probably most likely, explanation is that administration at the school is a rolling clusterfuck of biblical proportions, and everything has been marked and they just never got around to, ya know, tell us.

I will ask Michael Baser next time I see him.

But I will, of course, check my folder first.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

IO