A Letter from the Past to Future

Here is an excerpt from a letter that I received from my grade school teacher,

"Sorry to hear you are out of work.... We are reading an interesting book here... about looking in the mirror and confronting the ugly side of us... I can take care of ugly or try to run away from it. Sometimes I do a little of both."

I am not out of work. That makes it sound as if I sitting on my couch eating Doritos and moaning about how there's nothing to do. I work over 40 a week writing, drawing and soliciting publications. I was fired from my last job for being severely depressed about the waste of time that I was allowing my life to be. It was a struggle just to maintain a mask of normalcy. I tried to explain the situation to both of my bosses but each conversation ended with them being offended because I felt their job had no meaning for me. I tried to explain in further conversations that while what they do has an obvious bearing on their lives, since they've made it their careers, I was only there to do whatever they asked and collect a paycheck.

I'm not a jerk; I lack tact. It's both my greatest skill and my biggest weakness. I call things like I see them and find it impossible to hide how I feel. I have worked very hard for that ability, open expression is the greatest gift of the artist. When I was growing up my parents didn't allow us the freedom to think and feel for ourselves. But it's necessary for me. When I stop listening to my inner driving forces is when my personality truncates and I am left wooden, two-dimensional. I did nothing in particular that upset my coworkers and I was selling a shit ton of merchandise because people liked my open honesty. But my coworkers were taking it personally that I was unable to interact with them in a superficial way.

Where I work in the creative world, confidence in one's choices and the ability to express oneself is the most vital skill one can have. My boss said to me right before she fired me, "Caleb, I need you to pretend like this job means something. It's an acting gig." God, pretend. I pretend for the purpose of entertainment and here she was asking me to fake my way through reality. I can't, I won't. In fact, I hate people that behave that way. Moments after I start a conversation with these people it begins to get stale. People that only live their lives on the surface lose their personality to a mask, they lose their ability to feel and stop pursuing their desires. So I've cast my lot in with the freaks and outsiders, the ones that say what they're thinking and don't worry about how it is going to be received. I prefer it because at least I know what's going on with them and I can respect their opinion even if I disagree with it wholeheartedly.

I'm not hiding, I'm not running. I recognize myself and am taking appropriate action toward goals that satisfy me as a sentient being. There is no such thing as an "ugly side" to humanity au natural. We create it when we try to mask our differences in order to fit into polite society. It is the putting on the mask that creates all sorts of deviants. "This is okay, this is not okay" is bullshit because this is how I feel. We can not evolve socially if we are trying to shield ourselves from the naked truth of what is. Our heroes are the ones that are not afraid to show us everything that they are. It's all the others that end up going to their graves like cattle.

Too much? Then forget everything I just said and insert the words, "Yes, ma'am. You are absolutely right." The only way we can deal with our "ugliness" is by existing in it and being okay with the fact that we are who we are. It is this path that will bring fulfillment and prosperity to my life.

Pleez, help. {chomp} {/chomp}

Please, help. I have seen our future and it's bright.

Please, help me get Cap'd.

Those Caps sure are handy. I have a couple different ones that I wear depending on my mood. The one I'm wearing now is called Fog Machine.

The Cheat is not dead.

Citizens, lend me your ears. I just finished illustrating The Inventor for Adam Higgins. I am very excited about this because I've been working on it constantly for the last three months and it looks really, really good. I'll keep you all posted about when and where it's getting published. This post is more for a point of reference in case anyone is ever wondering when that book was actually done for the first time. Greetings Citizens of the Future!

Please, help. My appetite sometimes overwhelms my brain.

Please, help. I think I have lost my perspective.

My mom tells this story about how when she was a little kid she used to go to her grandparents and play billiards on their pool table. She had the most and when it came time for them to move years later they asked if she wanted any of their stuff that they didn't need any more. My mom wanted the pool table but when she went to collect it she realized that it was a long time ago and the table was only big enough for her to play with if she was a little girl. This story is to illustrate that sometimes mothers do and think stupid things.

The future: The internets.

Amy Taylor, 28, filed for divorce after she caught her husband cheating in Second Life, an online community where players create avatars and transport themselves into virtual worlds. "I caught him cuddling a woman on the sofa in the game," Taylor told England's South West News Service. Taylor married Dave Pollard, 40, after the pair met in an online chat room in 2003. She said the first sign that their marriage was in trouble occurred in 2007, when she caught her husband's avatar having cyber-sex with a virtual prostitute.

People become emotionally invested in their virtual identities, according to Ellen Helsper, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, who has studied the impact of the internet on relationships. "For a while, there was this impression that as long as it's online, it doesn't matter," she told the Associated Press. "But research has shown it's not a separate world." She added that infidelity was "just as painful, whether it's electronic or physical."