Never Enough Attention Department

"Attention, attention must be paid." -- Linda Loman, Death Of A Salesman

As an artist, my biggest fear is in being ignored. Hel, it's my biggest fear, period.

It's easy to think I seek attention as a substitute for love. I never felt like I got enough attention from my mother as a child. But I suspect it's a bit deeper than that.

See, for most of my life, I've been haunted by a feeling of destiny, that my life would at least have something relatively big in it. Sure, from a cosmic perspective, nothing we humans--normal or mutant--do is that big. But that doesn't prevent the creepy feeling that, someway, somehow, I'll wind up doing at least one thing that will really catch attention and at least result in a mention in somebody's history book.

I don't know why I feel this sense of destiny. I don't know if it's misleading, or maybe just a ways off from being fulfulled. All I know is that this feeling drives me nuts, and makes my previous efforts seem futile. If I got more feedback on my art and writing, maybe I'd at least feel like I'm making progress towards that destiny. But this is all speculation.

I'm sure that the Internet doesn't help either. It's such an anonymous medium that, for instance, in the case of this weblog, the best I can do to assure myself anyone reads this is to look at the server log files and see for myself that this page gets visits from others aside from Cynthia (my most loyal fan as well as my wife) and myself. And frankly, I haven't worked up the nerve to do that yet.

If only I had an agent, so I didn't have to worry about the nerve-wrecking aspects of promotion. But at least I do have a few friends who, no matter what, dig my work. And for them, I am ever grateful.