Happy Monday everyone.
Since a heatwave was upon us, I did the next best thing. Stayed home, sat in front of my AC, and finally worked on my website.
*Sigh* Long story about this website. I had an ex who promised me the world and then some. I already had html knowledge under my belt, but he insisted he would produce a much better page for me. Look, he claimed – I even got webspace for you. So I waited.
Of course, his promises went up in a cloud of pot smoke. As it turned out, the webspace he claimed he got for me turned out to be under his brother’s account. An account that someone trying to establish some kind of presence with cartoons and illustration should probably have some control in regards to content, etc. On top of that, he would get annoyed whenever I would remind him of his promises. Finally he relented and designed some kind of website – using Adobe Photoshop as a platform.
Adobe Photoshop as a way to design a website? As you can guess, it didn’t come out that good. The product wasn’t even finished. As it turned out, he jumped ship to design another website for someone else – with much better results. What a slap in the face…or at least a blackeye.
In my frustration, I went ahead, called the hosting company that his brother’s account was under. Had all my files switched over to a brand new account, this time under my name. I did this all on the phone to customer service. Meanwhile, as I was on the phone, my ex cruelty taunted me, laughing at my frustration. Due to this, I lost my temper while speaking to customer service. Score one for him. Then because of life, and the confusion of the mess the website had become, the pages sat there unfinished for years.
In the middle of all this unnecessary rubble, my original .com was brought out by another company. I was in between residences. Quite frankly, I was homeless during this point because me and ex had reached a boiling point. This is a completely different story but one day I will blog about these wretched experiences. Anyway, for the spring and summer of 2007, I was homeless for a while. Crashed on my parents’ couch a bit, but mostly while I had to take care of some issues, was couch surfing between two states. Not a good time, but the experience has made me a much stronger person. In the middle of all these ‘chaos’ my .com was brought out by a porn company. I found out about this incident just weeks before I was about to show my work at a NYC indie comic con. (A table I had reserved months before all this hit the fan.) The website I had listed was about to be printed in either a program listing, or some magazine. I had to call the person doing the listing and nipped it in the bud, just in the nick of time. Luckily the person doing the listing was completely understanding.
I guess one can chuckle about it now. At the time though, it was a time when nothing seemed to be going right for me. I was extremely vulnerable, and surrounded by vultures who I thought were my friends. Parasites who claimed to wanna help me, and in fairness, some did – with a price. (Yet I did meet some genuine people during this time, and those are the ones I kept in touch with after my crisis was subsiding.) In all though, what most of these people did was take advantage of me, and the situation I was in at the time. Vulnerability is a dangerous thing indeed.
Back to the website. I’ve had people look into the site for me. A few of these peeps commented something about how messy the site was. Yeah yeah, I know I would nod back. However, I had also become hesitate to let anyone touch it. Part of my reasoning was that if anything went wrong, I didn’t want to burn bridges or lose friendships. Another was my gut instinct was telling me otherwise. Always go with your instincts. They never fail – unless you go against those same instincts. Which is what I did when I hooked up with the ex. Had I followed my gut instinct, I would’ve never hooked up with him. Thus would’ve saved me three years of trauma. Two years being with him, and another for getting my life back together. Oh, and the expensive fallout afterwards.
Let’s put it this way: as soon as I was back in NYC, and my temp holiday gig was over…I was exhausted.
So let’s hit the fast forward button to June 29th, 2012. I had an odd dream. May sound kooky to some who’s reading this entry, that is, if you even made it this far. Not getting into details, but it was enough to light a fire under my ass. I sat down in front of my lovely air conditioner, praised the Goddess of The Air Conditioner, and banged out this site.
Finally I felt a sort of victory, taming this monster of a website. It’s not as professional as I would have liked it to be, but it’s still better than staring at a black page. Doing this website was also another nail in the coffin which contains my calamitous past. In a way, it was another subconsciousness step of taking my power back.
Hopefully by reading this blog post, the reader will get some sort of idea of where I’m coming from, and why I’ve developed into the person I’m currently am. A form of catharsis.
Perhaps this quote by writer James Baldwin could explain it better: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: she has become a threat.”
Here’s a link to my new ‘official’ website, as of July 2012. You can finally order copies of my self published comic through PayPal, and contact me for commissions. : www.witchesbrewpress.com. It also mirrors to www.witchesbrewpress.net.
My new ‘official’ website as of July 2012. WitchesBrewPress.com. Photo by Michele Witchipoo.
