Acceptance

The Show That Prepared Me For Life

~ shawnaborman ~ Leave a comment

Hello, hello!  I’ve been binge watching Sailor Moon Crystal the past couple of days and it got me thinking about how I would cope with life today if I hadn’t watched the original Sailor Moon growing up.  It’s one of those shows that prepared me for everything going on in the world today.  We all have a show like that.  Whether it was Ms. Frizzle and the Magic School Bus or X-Men or Batman or whatever you watched as a kid, we all have a show that has stuck with us and been a major influence on who we are today.  For me, that was Sailor Moon.  How could a magical girl anime prepare me for the turbulence of today, you ask?  Stick with me for a minute and I shall do my best to explain.

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One of my favorite pictures of all the Senshi.

Aside from a bunch of women kicking ass and taking names with the occasional backup from Tuxedo Kamen, this show was amazing for many other reasons.  Yeah, there was the obvious message that love and friendship can help you conquer any evil, including the evil that lurks within each of us (after all, if Small Lady can become Black Lady and Saturn can become Mistress 9, none of us can claim to be 100% good).  It reminds us that, ultimately, hatred and superiority complexes will fail.  It might take longer than we want, but as long as people don’t give up, good will eventually win.  We just have to believe in each other.

There are also more subtle messages that apply today more than ever.  There was the whole Uranus/Neptune relationship that the U.S. dub tried to pass off as them being cousins (everyone I knew saw through that charade and, honestly, the whole cousin storyline just made a beautiful relationship kind of creepy).  Not to mention Zoisite’s obsession with Kunzite in the original anime (again, no one I knew believed Zoisite was a woman in the dub).  Then came the Sailor Starlights arc where men transformed into women and back again (pretty sure they just cross-dressed in the manga, but I’m talking about the anime where they were biologically males until they transformed).  Early exposure to this kind of stuff wasn’t traumatizing.  If anything, it helped give me an open mind.

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The Starlights.  I wanted those boots, though.  That’s all I cared about as a kid.

The story arc that hit closest to home for me and, in all honesty, is probably the reason Sailor Moon stuck with me so much, was Sailor Saturn’s story.  She was a sickly kid and an outcast, but she had the power to destroy worlds.  It was the first time I remember seeing someone who had physical difficulties (granted, they were nothing like my own) who could be the hero (or the villain if she had chosen that path).  She proved that you didn’t have to be athletic or even normal to be powerful or even accepted by people.  For a kid like me, that was the best message I could have received.  If she could help destroy evil, I could put up with whatever life threw my way.

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The whole purple outfit didn’t hurt my love of Saturn either.

So yeah, Sailor Moon definitely helped shape who I was back then and who I am now.  It taught me about the power of women, the power of friendship, how to recognize evil, how to accept others for who they are, and how to accept myself.  What show helped turn you into who you are?

Words For A Young Me

~ shawnaborman ~ 2 Comments

Hello, hello!  I didn’t really know what to write for today, so I asked around, and a friend suggested that I share some advice that I would give to a younger version of myself.  I think she meant like one of those open letter posts.  This isn’t really going to be that.  I don’t even know if this is technically advice, but I thought I would share some words.  I can guarantee that young me wouldn’t have listened to any of it, though.

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Okay, super young me might’ve listened, but not teen me.

I suppose the first thing I would say is that you’ll be okay.  Life is fluid.  It’s always changing and it will shape you, eroding certain things away while building up others.  You will grow to be cynical and dark and quiet before you figure out that the world is generally good.  You will learn early on that life isn’t fair.  People will tell you that you can do anything.  A staircase to a second floor with no elevator will prove them wrong.  Most of the time, you’ll find a way around the obstacles presented to you or you’ll move on to something else.  You’ll take these experiences and find your reality within them.  You’ll find yourself.

A lot of the time, you won’t like who or what you are.  You won’t be able to change the things you want to, so you’ll accept them.  A morbid sense of humor will help with that.  At some point, you’ll even realize that a lot of the things you don’t like about yourself aren’t as bad as certain people make them out to be.  You do have feelings.  Your capacity for love and caring is greater than most people will ever know.  They will tell you differently.  You’ll even believe their words for a while.  But that will pass.  You’ll never be the kind of affectionate and sentimental person they wanted you to be, but that’s okay.  That’s not you.

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Most of my high school years were spent looking like a boy.

People will come and go as well.  The toxic people who drag you into the darkness won’t always be there.  Sometimes life will take them away and sometimes you’ll decide you’ve had enough.  Yes, you’ll be strong enough to tell people to go.  Even people you love will leave.  It’ll hurt, but you’ll be okay.

You will eventually surround yourself with people who have wildly different world views than you do.  You will care about them even when you disagree with them.  And most of the time, you’ll keep your opinions and beliefs to yourself so you can keep the calm.  Occasionally, you’ll pose a question to stir up debates among your friends when you’re bored.  Then, you’ll sit back and watch the chaos until you get bored again.  Mostly, though, you’ll try to keep things peaceful.

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Twenty-one was a lot longer ago than I realized.

Like I said, you’ll be okay.  You’ll be dark and cynical and quiet and loving and sarcastic and weird and so much more.  But most of all, you’ll like who you are.  You’ll still struggle with what you are on occasion, but everyone does.  You’re not alone.  Life, like the world, is generally pretty good.  So, even when it seems like you’ll never be happy again, remember that the good will always come back around eventually.

Rejected and Discouraged and That’s Okay

~ shawnaborman ~ 2 Comments

Hello there!  It’s almost the new year, so I should probably be writing about resolutions and all of that good stuff, but no.  I don’t do the whole “New Year’s Resolution!” thing.  Honestly, all they are 99.9% of the time are promises that aren’t followed through on.  Yeah… I’ll pass.  Instead, I’m going to be a bit of a downer and ramble for a while about how rejection and self-doubt are pretty much the norm for a writer.  But that’s okay.  It’s not the end of the world.

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Oh, Calvin.  Never change.

 

So, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I haven’t written anything aside from blog posts and a measly 200 words this month.  And no, I have no plans to remedy that in the next few days.  Why?  Because, I reached a point where I was feeling utterly discouraged and hit that “what’s the point?” wall.  For everyone who’s wondering if maybe I’m depressed, no.  It’s completely different.  It’s that angry “want to punch someone (except it’s not really anyone’s fault, so I have no one to direct said anger at) in the reproductive organs” type of feeling.  For me, at least.  Super annoying, right?

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Face works, too.  Not going to lie, this is oddly cathartic to watch.

 

 Nothing big happened to make me feel this way, it was just an accumulation of all the little things.  I suppose the most obvious thing would be the rejection slips that keep coming in from the places I submit short stories to.  I know they’re the hardest part of this whole writing gig for a lot of people, and yeah, I admit that sometimes they hurt, but I was ready for that going in.  It wasn’t until I got one last month (when I was already starting to feel the rage build) that it really got to me.  I had to stop and remind myself that rejection doesn’t equal failure.  My manuscript probably wasn’t even read!  Not that that makes any of this better, but it most likely sat in a slush pile for six months (and that’s a quick response time) only to have someone glance at the first sentence (if that much) and hit the reject button.  Call me cynical, but that’s how I picture it.

Speaking of six months in a slush pile, that’s what gets to me the most: the waiting.  Whether you’re sending it to a magazine or an agent or just your best writer pal for feedback, writing is mostly a waiting game.  Contrary to my behavior, I’m actually an exceedingly impatient person.  I was raised to get things done in a timely manner, to always meet deadlines, yadda yadda.  You know that whole “if you’re only five minutes early, you’re late” thing?  That.  So, the waiting gets to me.  I start thinking things must really suck (which is fine, just tell me that so I can fix it or move on).  But people in the writing field, like many creative folks, seem to have no concept of the movement of time outside of their stories.  I’m going to have to get used to that.  But, for now, I’m wallowing in the self-doubt it causes.

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Yes!

 

But you know what?  It’s okay to wallow sometimes.  Taking a long break can be helpful.  Recharging is needed.  In the past month, I’ve tweaked the plot on my novel-in-progress, come up with two ideas for other novels (possibly screenplays, I haven’t decided), and finally took the time to look at my screenplay-in-progress (which I’m thinking about getting back to in January).  I think I just needed some time to refuel.  In other words, know when to push through the pity party and when to embrace it.

I’ll see you next year!