Can you see the real me: considering the personal duality of inner conflict

The Gillie Car out and about:
NTA Comics' mobile studio.

Last night I stood in line to get a little snack and some tea at the Barnes and Noble café. After what has become the routine of endless days of high levels of stress with work days of ten or more hours each I was ready to drop the laptop down and make some comics magic.

Now, I’ll freely admit that things have changed for me in the past nine months, or so. Coupled with my current living situation the new job has, for lack of a better phrase, corrupted me. I am, and can be completely honest on it, testier, less artistic, and now actively engaged in a battle with a depression that has all but robbed me of my creativity. I can no longer be actively social due to the strains of my job, commute, and other complications of my accommodations. And I have perceived, as of late, an active momentum from the core of The Rogues Gallery to not be around me and not have me around.

I guess you could say these are dark times for our intrepid little would-be cartoonist and his little world of hopes and dreams.

Not a bad external office studio, if I do say so.

All things as they are, though, I have to stay true to form; to act authentically, as an

Existentialist might say. And, to that end, I have decided that with all the negativity, cynicism, and other more questionable traits that flow freely throughout the blogosphere and in life, I won’t bring the troubles of my life out into others; a real tale of woe they may, or may not, be.

Such is the case that, after leaving the office biting back on a furious hate, I strolled into Barnes and Noble and proceeded to order in the usual way that I order.

For those of you who have never experienced this, it’s a kin to a very short, directed, and generally upbeat stand-up routine; because, I suppose, you can leave the stage, but the stage never leaves you. There was chuckling abound from the odd handful of folks in line and waiting for their order. It’s therapeutic, really; I get to do a fast attitude and personality tune-up, and everyone gets a much needed laugh. And within a couple minutes – and one or two ill thought puns – all the bombs that dropped out of my mouth, and the hate that had stained my mind are all but gone; like after thoughts of a bad dream already fading away with the morning sun.

I took my change and started to step aside when, suddenly, the lady in front of me – who had her lovely little daughter with her, her sparkly hair band antenna wobbling about (We said “hellos” and exchanged hat compliments) – turned to me and said; “excuse me; I just wanted to say that the world really needs more people like you in it.” And then she took her treat and led her kid away.

Since then this has sort of plagued my thought process some; almost to a distracting level. I mean, if she had only heard me in private not more than thirty minutes previous she may not have had the same feeling. And no one knows better than I just how much a convoluted walking pile of human emotional trash I actually am. And yet this is also not the first time I’ve crawled out of a dark pit to turn around and be told how bright I am. But then I have to turn that around and really start to puzzle on how many other people I have admired or thought good on who themselves have been working over an internal struggle like a baker turns dough.

The hands and the doing...

For my part I have a richer understanding about the concept of the outer face versus the inner

turmoil in the consideration of last night’s exchange. Not that I want to make more out of my mental trippings than they are.  Nor am I trying to sell anyone on how amazing I am, because – let’s be honest on it – I ain’t. At all. I mean, I do alright, but no monuments will ever bare my name to them.

I also don’t have answers to the questions this raises. Not that I am looking for answers, I suppose; or if there’s even a need for an answer as much that the questions is, at least, being asked. But it is humbling to be regarded suchly, even if it’s not really earned. And as I mull over what the next switch track will bring on the journey of my life it frames fairly well a portrait of what I had, lost, and now have a growing determination to replenish in my life.

But more so than any of that, it lays to mind a questions of curiosity; is there such value in having the outer and the inner aligned in unison? And what does it say to the old adage; the brighter the picture, the darker the negative? I mean, we live in a world of duality, already, but is there a truthness to the idea that there really can be no light without dark? Is a good person more authentic because they have darkness about them? Is someone better for returning a lost wallet with all its contents intact despite the temptation to take the money than someone else who does the same but feels no compulsion to steel? (Depending on your philosophical school of thought there can be a lot of answers to that very loaded question.)

In fiction we often create these rich and elaborate set ups to our characters to fill them with turmoil and conflict, notching up the drama and – supposedly – making them more relatable and more engaging. Often this is done overly dramatic to highlight tensions and enrich narratives. Now I have to step back some and ponder if we're not actually underselling this. And I have to wonder if I’ve put enough investment into this aspect of my characters. But more so than that, it gives me another question to ask myself…

Do we as people put enough investment into this aspect of each other, or ourselves?