The day I became a hikikomori

XI

Everything's a cycle, you know?

The first weeks that after they basically fired me from the hotel, I started to look for a new job. Again. I sent my resume to whatever job opportunity I could find. Again. I felt extremely stressed and anxious every time a company showed me they were interested in me, but I still manage somehow to get job interviews. Again.

But, when I had a job interview scheduled, I started to think for excuses that would make me believe having that job was a bad idea. Things like: "they'd pay you too little," "your workplace would be really far away, and I don't like this neighborhood. I don't want to leave my car here, unprotected, all day long," "your workplace would be one of the most depressing ones I've ever seen," "you don't really know or care about this place," "really? Sales? You, the most introverted person you know, think you'd be good at sales?"

And so on.

Also, I feel sometimes, during the job interviews, I was too honest, and sometimes too dishonest.

And sometimes I just simply forgot about the interview. Well, one time I remembered it... 5 minutes before. And when that happened I wasn't shocked or sad or had a mini heart attack, I was just like "well, it seems I'm not getting that job. Anyway..."

So, yeah...

But then, after I saw some starting publisher was looking for comics and manga artists, I decided to distract myself from my constant failures learning a new useless ability. Again. So I bought some how-to-draw-manga books, some mechanical pencils, a sketchbook and a couple specialized pens for the inking and started to watch some how-to-draw tutorials.

As the time passed by I began to understand how precise drawing is—a line half a millimeter to the left or right, or a slightly sharper curve could make the different of a really neat drawing or a piece of garbage—and how complex is the world we live in: reality could broke down in infinite shapes that are combined in infinite ways—and it's really important to understand them well to get the light and shadows right—how incredibly complex is the human body, and how incredibly well artist understand it; how artist must understand extremely well what they're drawing, and how you need to practice anything you're drawing—not only any object but parts of the human body, like hands (they're so free and active and important there's an infinite amount of ways to draw them, and an infinite amount of ways to get them wrong, but I like to draw them, though,) legs (they're a little complex because the shape of both the thighs and the calves are a little asymmetrical and change depending on the perspective, and the knees are slightly tilted and pointing outwards,) body proportions (it's just hell to get everything right,) hair (there are an infinite amount of hair types and styles, and you need to make hair strands a little bit varied to make them look natural but I always end up making them exactly the same or extremely similar, so they end up looking weird,) eyes (there are a lot of shapes and sizes, so I always end up drawing the same ones, and I'm really avoiding drawing pupils because they end up looking like serial killers,) eyelashes (believe it or not, I have some problems when it comes to make them look right and not like ugly thorns coming out of someone's eyes,) arms (because they're not just cylinders, they change slightly in size and shape especially in the elbow area,) feet (I have problems to draw them in some specific angles and viewpoints;) and different other things relating to a character, like expressions (there are so many of them, and a lot are so similar it's really easy to draw the wrong one, and at the moment you're about to draw them, you realize you only have a vague idea of how they are, so you start making those expressions while looking at the mirror, or the front screen of your phone,) body language (same thing as the previous one,) and clothing (there are so many different types and styles, and I have a really hard time drawing folds that look natural and express how tight or loose the clothing is.)