Fear and Loathing in San Diego Comic Con pt.2
Finding purpose in the work, not the reward.
(If you have not read part-one, you can find it [here].)
It was Sunday, the third morning of my Comic Con weekend. I had barely slept a wink—perhaps two or three hours (not enough REM sleep to constitute actual rest). I was kept awake by a mixture of excitement and fear which, in combination, can create a stronger amphetamine than a truck-stop pep pill.
I was freaking out over the hit my ego was going to take when nobody was going to show up to our book signing, and worse, that Sam, our colleague Danna, and I, would be presenting our workshop to an empty room. The night before, we had a nice time with some old (and some new) friends, people who have been-there and done dozens of these kind of events before. If their words didn’t reassure me, at least having some time with good company was enough of a distraction.
Thank you always to Kathryn for being the person to capture all these personal moments. <3
This past week, I had just finished reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, a self-help book about managing your creative blocks and identifying areas of resistance that feed into self-doubt and procrastination. The irony is not lost on me, that if I had not procrastinated, I would have finished the book before Comic-Con, and maybe this newsletter would have been about something other than my constant battle with myself.
In it’s second part of the book, Pressfield references a concept from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture dating back to the first-century BCE, stating, “[…] we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor.” In other words the scripture explains that we are only guaranteed the work we can put out into the world, yet we are not entitled to its success or how it is received.
It’s like the monkey on my back I have trouble shaking—It constantly screeches to me that the things I make need to be validated by an exterior force. Between picking the bugs out of my hair, the monkey likes to mutters over and over, “Will they like? Will they like it??”. We enjoy being accepted by the tribe, we feel safe knowing that we belong and that people like us. Wanting to be liked is a primal survival instinct that’s still heavily ingrained in our psyche today. It’s why the fear of rejection can almost feel like having a dagger to your throat.
I have to confess, that even in writing this newsletter or making a post, I am still thinking about click-rates and likes as measures that I am doing something right. It’s not uncommon to feel like a reward must come after completion of our tasks, especially in the age of social-media where we have a Pavlovian expectation after posting anything online—dessert must come after dinner, monkey is good, monkey gets treat.
But this is where we return to the issue at hand (remember when this newsletter was about Comic-Con?). My fears about the book signing, my fears about the workshop, all stem from the expectation that I deserved some kind of external validation for the years I put into my books. I wasn’t giving myself credit for the labor, I wasn’t focusing on what really mattered. “The professional self-validates”, another gem from Pressfield’s book.
When I was done nervously pacing from booth to booth on the convention floor, I settled in with Mike behind the Silver Sprocket booth for the signing. There wasn’t a line or anything, and not too dissimilar to the industry pro’s I’d seen the day before, with their empty tables. Yet, despite nobody knowing who I was or what I did, people still picked up the book and bought it. Folks who were pleasantly surprised that the two people behind the table were not the cashiers, but instead the laborers of the work they were holding. We happily signed their books.
As for a panel, we couldn’t have imagined a bigger turnout. With a line already forming outside our room, I was feeling my pre-show jitters. 300 sets of eyes stared back at us as we filled the room to capacity with more still waiting to be let in. It probably didn’t help that San Diego Comic-Con’s logo added another hundred eyes into the mix.
Regardless of the crowds, we had a job to do, and when you really care about your work (regardless of self-help books you wished you had read beforehand), you naturally learn to leave it all on the field. Sam put together an incredibly fun and engaging workshop, paired with Danna’s expertise in the field of marine biology and my own experience with cartooning, we engaged the audience we never expected to have.
We will have the full workshop up once we have the rest of the footage from SDCC. We'll make sure to share it here and on our socials. If you haven't already, please make sure to check out Sam and Danna's work on their websites:
SS Julian www.octopoliscomic.com
Danna Staaf www.dannastaaf.com
Myself, Sam, and Danna, doing an octo-peace sign.
Our names printed on a SDCC name card to mark our success, although John Cena also got one this year, so the card isn’t really a measure for one’s talent or experience.
Thank you again for reading. Next week, I’ll go into more of what I am working on, and the plans I have for the coming year.
Your personal back-monkey,
Josue Cruz
[[TRANSMISSION END]]
🎹 SONG OF THE WEEK
⚠️ CONTENT ZONE ⚠️
This is the part I try to sell you on something.
Check out the teaser from our San Diego Comic-Con panel!
I am currently selling E-Book versions of Hi8tus Zine which includes addition 22 pages of process and commentary. Physical + E-Book bundles are also for sale!