Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

For those of you who heard my question to the novelists panel today, here's the Wikipedia page that describes Impostor Syndrome. I am having a difficult week. It's hard to tell people that you constantly feel like this, because then they give you compliments, but (a) the impostor syndrome makes you think they are only feeding you positivity to make you feel better and not because anyone actually thinks you are any good and (b) you immediately feel guilty for appearing to be asking for compliments,* thus adding a new layer of guilt which accentuates your feeling of being a big fat idiot fraud that everyone hates.** I want to say that I know these things aren't true. I want to say that my brain is at least half-functioning, that the logic sector of neuron clumps is firing properly, and that it is only a matter of self-confidence, when we get down to it. But I can't say that. I can't say that I feel like I am good at anything I am doing right now. It's true t...

I struggle with the idea of Vocation with some regularity. It's quite possibly the Catholic upbringing--the idea of being Called to Do Something. This isn't a bad idea. It's possibly not the best idea, but it's pretty good. On bad days, I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. I know I need to be Working on Big Projects with Ambitious Goals, because I am depressed and dissatisfied when I don't. But what is The Right Thing? What am I called to do? I have felt duty-bound to writing since my undergrad years, but since I discovered that making comics is very much a job, too (a discovery I made about four years ago*), I've been torn. I thought that art had to be my hobby, because I couldn't afford art school. Fortunately, I know now that I was wrong in this assumption. But am I meant to make comics more than I am meant to write prose fiction? When I was in a bad mood last week, I wrote this: Writing fiction is painful for me. I do it because...well, th...