Raking Over The Past

Hello there

(Still not passed it.  Pain attacks have returned with a vengeance though.  Let’s not talk about it.)

So, I don’t know how often you sort out your hard drive, or pictures, or files or whatever, but I always leave it a long time to get them organised.  I save everything like.  I’m quite good at regularly dragging and dropping to hard drives and what have you, but it’s sometimes years before I get my photos into folders and stuff like that. In fact, some have just never been done.

What I do find though, is when I do spend some time doing it (and it’s always an intense and draining long time), I go into a very odd headspace.  These glimpses of history, that start infiltrating your head as you scroll through image after image, become quite disorientating.  Many is a time I have been sorting through files for hours, and then looked up from the screen and sort of forgotten it is the future.  Does that sound weird, or do you know what I mean?  The power of stuff from your personal history being so evocative, means you get immersed in the past and it starts feeling like the present again.  All the feelings you had at the time feel very much now after a while.  It may genuinely just be me.

The reason I mention this, is I’ve spent the last couple of days going through all my patreon posts.  Well, all of them up to the start of 2019 so far.  Which probably doesn’t sound like much, but I assure you it is. One by one this is. A couple of years ago I decided I wanted hard copies of everything on here, and started cut and pasting the posts into one big document.  I didn’t get very far with that as it started being an issue that there were so many pictures, and then there was the issue of some of the posts being video and podcasts and the like, and it just got a bit much.  I think I was gonna print them out, but that all got kiboshed.

Then, more recently, I started to feel very aware of what it must be like to just join this patreon now.  I'm right in the middle of it, so hadn't given it much thought, but for somebody just through the door, is it accessible? There’s not really anyway of seeing everything in one place.  For all its plus points, the Patreon site is notoriously clunky to navigate around.  For a creator, you’re stuck with just the one way of presenting your work.  You upload it, add tags, and it just all turns into a big pile that’s kind of difficult to navigate back through.  I’ve no idea what the answer to that would be.  No idea how you’d make it better.  It’s not like building a website really, because you are constantly adding to the pile. When you’re adding as often as I (normally) do, that pile gets overwhelming very quick.

So I thought I would go back through my posts, and make a list of them in chronological order, with a brief one line description of what the post was, and a link to it.  Get that all in one place. Essentially make a table of contents, that I can pin to the top of my page as a pinned post, and then new folk (and old), can scroll through that post all in one go, with a link to anything that takes their fancy.  I started collating that a day ago.

It’s a big job.  Bigger than I’d imagined.  As I say, so far I am up to 2019, and have already scheduled that post for tomorrow.  Once it goes live, I’ll pin it, and then just keep adding to it, but it’s already 20 pages of a word document.  I’m slightly worried that Patreon may cap the size of posts, but I’ll cross that annoying bridge if I come to it. I'll maybe have to link to further volumes of contents.  Fingers crossed not. I’m just really hoping it will be a helpful contribution/resource to folk on here. I think it will be.

Emotionally though, it’s been intense.  I don’t really know how to word it without sounding boastful, because that’s not my mood with it, it’s more astonishment.  There's so much.  Really good stuff too. That’s just from about a quarter of what I’ve managed to work through, but I really can’t believe I did all that.  Whilst making a film as well (obv, the film helped me have stuff to talk about). I’ve found it a bit emotional.  Like, I know there’s the thing of “so much content” but it’s like the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  And I don’t know how I’m managed to keep varying it, and doing different things. Honestly, I’m not boasting.  I don’t know how I’ve done it. When you see it all together like that.  It’s perhaps a good thing I’ve not printed it out because I think I’d burst into tears.

When you go through something so intensely, that actually spans a large amount of time, you also start to really notice the contributions of others too.  Specifically with the film, I obviously am well aware (and have well documented) how much lifting Simon has done under my commands, but I particularly noticed in the posts quite how much Danny (the sound dept) did too.  A lot of them were relatively small things when they were isolated, but the volume of them was huge. Besides myself and Barry, Danny is actually the only crew member who was there on the first and last day of the film too.  Others came and went, or were unavailable or whatever, but we are the three constants.  Obviously, myself and Barry had no choice in the matter, but Danny could have cried off whenever he wanted.  How lucky was this film to have someone like him.

On the counter side, when going over long periods of documentation, you see clearly where you lost people.  Not patrons, but folk involved in the work. Where folk became disengaged, or high maintenance/entitled/demanding, or just wandered away.  That’s quite a draining thing to look back on when you know how it turned out.  It’s also quite emboldening though.  When you can have a sense of “Well, say what you like about me, but I kept on sailing and saw it through”.  Often despite the behaviours of others. Maybe that’s where I’d allow myself a bit of pride.

But it’s not been just about the movie on here. Watching the development of my art, for example, from when I started tentatively doing stuff, to the stage I am presently at (there’s further to go, I don’t consider myself the finished article by a long shot), was also rather inspiring. I anticipate having the same feeling when I get to the animation stuff.  It really reaffirmed the natural instinct I’ve always had to “just start”.  I actually have no issue with abandoning stuff, if it’s not working or not satisfying, but it’s never any use to just have the idea.  I guess really that’s the whole underlying mood to the film too.  I always do my ideas, they never remain just that.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they misfire, but there’s something to be said for the proactivity. The negative is, I have too many ideas.  That's also been very apparent.  You can't maintain all of them, and that's a bit frustrating.  Focussed projects are so important, but they don't always feed easily into Patreon content too. 

Then there was the seeing comments over the years.  That was an odd thing.  Where you see somebody leaving a comment every day for months at a time and then somewhere they just stopped.  There were some odd reminders of strangers who had intensely strayed into my periphery and then strayed out again without announcement.  You never know what you’ve done to prompt that (if indeed I was the prompt), but it seems apt because I think in my real life I have traits of that too.  Like, I eventually just wander off.  I’ve no idea what that’s about, and am fearful to find out.  It was interesting to see it in others though.

The other interesting/difficult thing was seeing posts when I could remember what was going on in my real life.  Things I just hadn’t mentioned as they were too personal.  Family things and relationship things, that sort of business. Then seeing how I maintained my work, and kept up appearances (I am well aware I usually just say what’s going on with personal stuff about me, but when it involves others it’s more difficult).  So there were times I could see where I was getting emotionally battered and mistreated in the real world, but would come here and just do my work.  I remember how difficult it was, and that all came flooding back to me, but – again – when I look at it now I am impressed with myself that I did it. 

Honestly, I really wasn’t expecting the impact it’s had on me, from just writing the contents.  It’s not damaged me or owt, but it has been justifiably overwhelming. Just hammering home the idea that the only guaranteed constant any of us have is ourselves.

It’s probably quite an unusual capability to be able to go through your past life day by day, years later.  I guess for folk who write diaries that can be a thing, but I don’t know how common that is nowadays.  I once did a diary in 1989, and I wouldn’t dare even look at it now for fear of being mortified.  I also spent a while doing a blog that started as a Chortle fringe blog in 2006 or 2007, and I just carried on for a year or so after it.  I’ve got that all printed out, but again I’m not sure I’d want to look back over it. Patreon obviously isn’t a blog as such, because work is incorporated into it, which I think was the final piece of the jigsaw for me.  The film aside, to be able to do work that is just for here, rather than something you want to get picked up elsewhere, is an oddly satisfying method of creation. Quite an ace and fortunate position that I’ve wedged myself into really. So I don't want it to be accidentally disposable because it's so tucked away in the pile. Hence the "contents" idea.  You just watch, they'll all be doing it now.  Always the pioneer me.

But anyway, before I go stupidly into this stream of consciousness stuff (a lot of the emotive reaction may well be because I’m still fragile from health rubbish), the point is that the contents page will come as a post – with little by way of intro – tomorrow.  I just wanted to explain it so it didn’t confuse you.  I’m gonna keep adding to it until it’s all up to date, and then I’ll just add to it with each new post.  I really do hope it’ll be of use.

Hope all is going well and happy for you over there

Much love from here

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