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Disappointments are unavoidable in life. Better to prepare for it.
The first step of the professional disappointment ladder is classic, impersonal: like a negative response to a grant application.
The second disappointment degree is more intense as you suspect (rightly or wrongly) dishonesty or malice under the final choice.
The third degree is when your proposal is refused by people or artists you know and respect, and who also know you. That hurts!
The fourth level is when you learn through the media that the super-high-profile project organized by colleagues who never returned your calls /emails, will go forward … without you. Here, the long silence prepares the final shock.
The 4th degree, as described, has happened early in my budding career. Its impact was devastating. Doubt entered my life as an artist. I never found the same confidence in my art, my abilities since then. I became invisible in my peers’ eye.
It took decades and a new generation of artists/creators to get rid of my impostor syndrome. Drawing this comic, baring my soul was most difficult.
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My suggestions to manage your professional disappointment:
DO NOT respond or react before 24 hours have passed.
DO NOT name the organisation or express anger in public, nor share your bad experience and victim status on socia media. Accusing the agency of discrimination adds new problems: those feelling targeted will deny it anyway (not to mention the high trollin potential as soon as you mention the thing). And if the choice has been fair and perfectly innocent, you harm the organisation.
DO: all romping in private that feels good. Physical exercise, running, gardening, climbing up the curtains … help to evacuate the excess of energy. Afterwards, relax, read a good novel, savor chocolate or ice cream.
AND : work on the next project!
I found a constructive way to manage my disappointment this week: scripting this comic. The next day, instead of moping, I wrote two new complete science fiction short-stories (quite short). One was written in 20 minutes, edited, then sent as a submission in the next half hour.
Opening myself for a potential disappointment…
Posted in Art, Comics, Event, humor, Society
Tagged art, artist, Comics, disappointment, discrimination, project selection, Webcomic
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My pile is always growing. Here is a snapshot of the current pile. The yellow
paper-riddled book (under the Revue Planches) is The Algal Bowl, Overfertilisation of the World’s Freswaters and Estuaries, which I consult often. Plus a number of unopened magazines I suscribe to…
It’s a sad realisation that I will never have the time to read all the *good* books from my writers friends… So I must proceed to a triage. If the story can’t retain my attention in the first 20 pages, I stop. If I don’t like the direction of a 800-page book, I quit.
It’s always difficult to tell a writer friend I won’t read her-his book. Most of them understand. I taste a lot of different novels, even the 1100-page Donna Tartt bestseller received as a gift…
Posted in Art, BD, Comics, humor, Society
Tagged art, Comics, creationism, humor, Mental cage, prejudice, stories, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Webcomic
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The relation between our recent cold weather spells and global warming involves complex phenomena, the Gulf Stream current among them. For the more eager :
To better understand our irrealists expectations regarding science, conditioned by our “I-want-it-now!” culture: The Problem with Science: from Action Movies to the Real World!
For a innovative use of our fossil resources to mitigate the climate change, see une solution au casse-tête arctique.
To read about the projected effects of a Shutdown of thermohaline circulation, and here is a map of the thermohaline circulation.
For a more higher level paper, about the Gulf Stream, see this abstract of a paper published in 2015 by Jaime B. Palter, from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of McGill University: The Role of the Gulf Stream in European Climate (Annual Review of Marine Science Vol. 7: 113-137)
The real demonstration will be given by the planet, as soon as the last ice and land glaciers will have melted.
Posted in Comics, Event, Science-fiction, sciences, Society
Tagged Arctic ice, climate, Climate change, Comics, Environment, global warming, Gulf Stream, humor, sciences, Shutdown of thermohaline circulation
In mathematics, an hyperbole is a curve obtained by cutting a plan trhough a double cone. In day-to-day life, an hyperbole is a wildly exaggerated statement.
And yes, this majestic wave stems from an ancient (around 1830) japanese woodblock print !
But you’ll get so much exposure! Why should we pay you for the favor?
Should you work for free? This chart by Jessica Hische might help you!
Posted in Art, Comics, humor, Society
Tagged art, artist, exploitation, Exposure, wealth creator, work-for-free
The joy of gardening, when spring comes so late!
This comic was “drawn in the dark“.
Imagined, scenarised, pencilled and inked on my Intuos wacom tablet between 8 am and 14h30 today. English translation thirty minutes later.
Echoes of a Sunday artist 