Just Some Stuff
The past couple of days have been interesting, to say the least.
As always, I have to backtrack some in order to go forward.
I started a writer’s group a little more than a year ago. The basic goal of the group was to be a network of support for ourselves when we become big name creators. There are five of us in the group, and with the exception of one, we are all moving forward with publishing deals and so on.
Well, near the end of last year, there wasn’t really any consensus to do a self-audit, but reflection time always comes at that time of year, and we started saying what we were doing and where we were at. There was one who didn’t do all that much, and actually seemed to be going down a strange road.
That bothered me. I could see the rest of us leaving him behind, and with some statements he made as well, I also saw that he didn’t want it as much as the rest of us.
So, I wrote an e-mail, and sat on it for a while. It sounded like a firing, and really, how can you fire someone from a club? I wanted some outside perspective, so I sent it to a couple of people in the group, and got what I needed, changing it around to be more of a helping hand type of thing. Then I sent it to the group.
That’s when things got interesting.
Instead of self-reflection and possibly gracefully bowing out, the writer decided napalm was best.
In the best traditions of high school, or maybe a little younger, the writer says they felt I should have come to them personally about it, instead of sending it to the group, they would have taken it better from a couple of other members of the group since they are real writers, they didn’t feel another writer liked them, anyway, and that I was retarded. They said it came off more as me flexing my muscles and ego than anything else. This writer also sent this response not only to the group, but to two other people who have nothing to do with anything with our group, as well.
All I could say is wow.
Then, we get another e-mail, apologizing for sending the e-mail to the two extra people. It was deliberately rude to me, and put the other two people in an awkward position.
Now, I had had a recent semi-incident with one of the two extra people he had sent it to, and I have no real use for the other one. Yes, both of them are creators.
Now, here’s the thing. What kind of person is going to damage themselves even further by firing off an e-mail to two people who could help you get further in comics? Why show yourself to be an asshole in that manner? Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me.
I just got an e-mail from Facebook, from my wife’s sister, asking Lenora to call her immediately.
It seems her brother died last night in a car accident.
She’s going to be home for the rest of the week, more than likely. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get her to TN. It sucks.
I met the man once. He was nice enough. Didn’t seem comfortable in his own skin.
We had had a scare about him before. This was before I met him. It was thought he died in a hotel room, possibly by committing suicide. Gunshot to the head, that took most of his face off. There was trouble identifying him. He turned up a couple of days later, hale and hearty. It was a friend of his who had died.
Yeah. This wasn’t expected. Not totally UN-expected, but not expected at all. When I got the message, I was expecting it to be about her mother, who’s been frail for a while, instead of her brother.
I met her mother once, too. A flirty woman, and you can never completely tell what’s going on with her or in her head.
No, Lenora’s family isn’t that close. Has never been. I don’t see how that can be with such a small family, but there it is. She doesn’t have any cousins that I know of. Just the one brother and sister. Now, just the sister. She’s much closer to her sister than she was to her brother. He was something of an enigma.
I’m sorry she’s in pain, but hopefully, he isn’t anymore. It really depends on your own personal belief system. Mine says he’s learned what he needed to, and it was his time. There’s no denying, to me, from listening to the stories from my wife, that his existence was a painful one. Hopefully, those will be lessons he only needed to learn once, and he can move on from there.
Thanks. I’m done.
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