Is it callous to call myself an artist? I have no great works to my name, no formal training in the field and a fairly limited skillset. Maybe someday I'll stop my useless dreaming, recognizing my mediocrity as I discover I'm long past the point where I could've made my mark on the world. A stout balding middle-aged man with a nice television and a decent job selling computer software or whatever career my decades of meaningless work experience have contributed themselves to. And if I'm lucky maybe I can take my son along with me on my business, just like my dad used to do, lamenting all the opportunities I passed up on and the women who'd broken my heart. Regaling him with the same tales of how bright the world looked when I was young.

I've long held the theory that middle school is the point in time at which your life is most embarrassing. There are no memories of middle school that I recall with any degree of fondness, every scene left in my mind a cringing mess of misplaced confidence resulting in overwhelming failure. Whether it was my pasty overweight self wearing a headband the first day of school in an effort to kickstart my image, or entering my awful drawing of an anime angel warrior into the school's yearbook cover contest - every decision I made sticks out to me as completely illogical. I will say that middle school was the first time in my life I ever made any friends, something I honestly attribute to having developed limited social interaction skills simply by hanging out on Pokemon message boards for an entire summer. The point is, I was an awful fucking person - we all were, and yet somehow middle school puts the idea in you head that you've arrived. That you are a living breathing competent human being, that your opinion is relevant, that your useless dreams of rock and roll superstardom are easily achieved if you keep strumming away at that Wal-Mart electric guitar everyday after school.

(My only relic of middle school is an obviously anime-inspired story I wrote called Kaze's Revenge or something. It's cringe inducing beyond belief)

I think if anything I learned more from middle school than most people, simply to never take any thought or feeling you might have seriously. As most any artist knows (or at least, should know, many seem blind to it) - it's impossible to judge your own works correctly without distancing yourself from them for at least a small period. Many times I've opened old sketchbooks to find figures I had once considered the pinnacle of my own talent, only to become disgusted with the awkward proportions and squashed faces. Sometimes it takes only a week, or maybe a few hours before I can return to something no longer running off my creator's high, and revalue it objectively.


The problem then is that I realize I'm still stuck in middle school, and may remain there for my entire life. Despite my recognition of how pitifully juvenile it is, I still find myself lying in bed listening to the same Radiohead song over and over. I still find myself strangely clinging to the unrealistic ideal of myself as some sort of tragic figure, ignoring the fact that my youth has all but faded. 22 years old and I still want to do it all over again. I want the high school romance I never had, I want to take that quiet shy girl to the prom before taking her back to my house and fucking her properly.

I just finished reading a Japanese comic called Onani Master Kurosawa (Masturbation Master Kurosawa). It's an impossibly endearing story about a confused middle school kid who masturbates in the girl's bathroom at school, his rape fantasies about classmates his only revenge against the world he feels no place in. This somehow spins from a quick gag to a legitimate coming-of-age tale, and I found myself wondering what middle school would've been like if like him I'd tried to change.

Instead, I find myself still lamenting my dead loves. Still obsessing over the things I could've been. Still printing out porn and satisfying myself in the men's bathroom.


I'm trying to change.

It might even work this time.