I’m angry right now. So angry. And since this is most likely going to be a bitch-fest I’m going to list it as a musing moment because I don’t want to tarnish my daily post with this rant.

 

I just had my meeting. Half of the people who were supposed to be there weren’t. So it was already off to a great start. I had spent a fair amount of time last night curled up next to Zane on the couch while he ate his tuna burrito, because that’s a thing, trying to talk through my anxiety and how I felt l was going to be closed-minded in the meeting. How I was focusing on what we can’t do, what won’t work, that I wasn’t actually looking for solutions. I was just set on sulking because my event couldn’t be done my way anymore. “Woe is me and all of my hard work,” sort of mentality.

 

I spent an hour at work this morning scrolling through Facebook, trying not be to be physically sick because of the emotions whirling around inside me that wouldn’t settle down.

 

I kept thinking about all of the work I normally have to put into this event because no one else steps up to help me actually run it. How I would have to do all of this in three weeks when normally it takes months to get anything done because of all of the red tape I have to wade through. I kept thinking how I had to buy the pizza last time because it was removed from the budget that I had checkoffed on to be sent for “official” approval. I kept thinking about how the only reason this event was really even being considered was because it would make our department “look good” and like we actually do stuff for the students and that it would be mostly me getting screwed over for the “benefit” of others.

 

I kept thinking how I do all of this stuff and that none of the people who were supposed to be at that meeting had donated to my Warrior Dash fund. How I have done things over and over again for them and the school and yet when I asked for help on something personal, something non-work related that would make me feel better about myself and make me want to keep doing things for others it was too much for them.

 

I kept thinking shadow trait thoughts. Not nice, normal, non-angry Jen thoughts.

 

I kept thinking about how all of those thoughts are selfish of me. How I have no right to feel wronged, and that life changes, and not everything can stay the same, and that I shouldn’t be looking for retribution. How none of the things I have done in the past were done so something would happen in the future. How none of my actions were tit-for-tat.

 

All of this confliction, and not enough time to write about it before hand, not that I think it would have done anything to help. And so I sat, and tried to breath and let it all dissolve, the anger, hurt, and yeah, betrayal. I’m pretty sure that’s the forerunner right now.

 

I feel wronged and I’m not ok with it, and that’s where a lot of this is stemming from.

 

So I get into the meeting, find out that most everyone isn’t going to be there, go through the dance of “How are you? How was your winter break?” When really I just want to get it over with. I want to have a solution. A solution I like. A solution I can’t find on my own. Or at least one I can’t seem to find on my own. I don’t care about your Christmas break. I care about my event.

 

It ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s not going to happen. We weren’t able to find a way to get it to work. After a few phone calls we realized the event wasn’t what we wanted to do to begin with. Instead of being a self-validating experience this event would be an actual challenge where the students’ work would be set before a group and rated.

 

They’re students. Some of them only in their first month of school. How is it fair to rate them against a person about to graduate? It’s not. That doesn’t build them up. That makes them feel like a failure, like they’re not good enough, like they’re never going to be good enough. They’re already struggling with those emotions. As artists we all, always, struggle with self-worth.

 

Is my art good enough? Will people like it? What will people think? Will they understand my message?

 

There is one equation that all artists understand.

 

1000 good comments + 1 bad comment = 1 bad comment

 

End of story.

 

There is a difference between constructive criticism, “Oh, you really aught to work on proportions a bit more. The spacing between the eyes and the mouth is why the facial structure looks so squashed,” and straight up negativity, “You’re not as good as this person.”

 

No shit. They haven’t been doing it as long, and while for some people, yeah, they’re prodigies, and that’s great, for a lot of us it’s years and years worth of trying, and not getting it right, and trying again, and time and effort, and sheer determination mustered up by some inner strength that we happen to stumble upon. They don’t need outside forces beating them down. We’re fantastic at beating ourselves up.

 

Arg.

 

My event is dead is basically what I got from this meeting. There isn’t a way with the changes to the curriculum to keep it in its original form.

 

 

I was asked if I wanted to run a purely modeling focused challenge. No. I don’t. As a technical artist you’re excluding not only me and my interests, my field which is a vital necessity to the pipeline since I’ve never seen a character in a game or movie float around in a t-pose, but all of the other areas involved in Computer Animation. Shading and Lighting, compositing, animation, visual FX. You’re catering to a small group of students and I don’t like that because I’m one of the people who would have felt excluded, and that sucks.

 

As a student, I wouldn’t have appreciated it and I would have felt sort of backhanded. “Hey I know you like this one particular thing, but tough luck, we’re not going to let you participate because it’s not good enough, important enough, to be part of this event.”

 

I wouldn’t have liked it then, so I’m not going to allow that to happen now, as an instructor. I’m not going to support something that I feel is wrong.

 

So that’s where we’re at. The meeting is over. The event isn’t going to happen. I don’t have the stress of worrying about how to figure out how to make it happen in 3 weeks. I don’t have to make the flyers or website. I don’t have all of this added weight of having to “do” stuff.

 

Instead I have the weight of having to accept the fact, the truth, that 3D Blitz is gone. For real. For good. I may make a different event, something similar, something along the same lines as… but it will NOT be 3D Blitz. It will be something by another name. It will be something unique and wholly its own entity. And that makes me sad.

 

I don’t agree with the changes that were made. No one on the staff has. But when you’re voluntold what to do there’s not much that can be done. The changes had to be made. There wasn’t a choice. There wasn’t an open discussion. And this is one of the results of those changes.

 

My event, a cause I fully believed in, is just one of the many casualties caught in the cross fire. And so for right now I’m going to let myself mourn because it’s finally real. I knew, deep down, when I first heard of the changes to the 3DF class that this was going to be the end result. I knew it, but I never really acknowledged it. I kept going. Pushing off the questions of, “When is the next Blitz?” saying I was busy with my classes, or the stress of Zane being unemployed made it too much to think about.

 

But really all of that was avoidance.

 

I don’t want to become resentful over this. I don’t want this anger to poison my thoughts and make me think negatively of people, but right now it is so hard.

 

How? How could you ruin something that was so positive? Something that had so much student support? How could you take that away from me and then expect me to want to create something that goes completely against what my event stood for?

 

Instead of open and accepting lets make something judging and selective.

 

No.

 

No. I won’t. And out of all of the negative thoughts I have in my head I can take a moment to say I appreciated that one of the last statements in the meeting was Head Honcho saying that I had the right to say no. It made me feel understood and so I actually think my anger is less than what it could be at the moment. But that doesn’t make it go away. That doesn’t make me feel less wronged. It just makes me feel like I’m not the only one who isn’t happy. At least I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who wanted this to work and is disappointed that it can’t.

 

 

Right now I’m trying to be understanding with myself. I’m trying to give these emotions their time instead of trying to stuff them down or ignoring them. No. They’re there, and they will most likely be there for a little while. At the same time I don’t have to stew in them all day.

 

 

I have an abstract piece that I need to make for my History of Visual Communications class. Maybe I can funnel all of this discord into that. Lots of reds and oranges. Lots of fire and chaos as the emotions swirl around, agitated by their own heat, looping back on themselves as my mind trips over the same words again and again.

 

My event is dead.