I’m getting pretty damn tired of people taking my well meaning chatter as offensive while at the same time accusing me of being offended. Here’s a thought, people… shut up, get off your high horse whatever its flavor may be, and pay attention. Cuz you make me sick.
Today for the first time I removed someone from my watch and friend list over this. I thought they were a very neat person, and I liked their 3D tutorials. Yeah sure a lot of their posts were really just ads about some product they had out, but they’re trying to make a living. They had a lot of good things to say around that, and I like to give people a chance.
My response to a question was met with “wow, this is the first time I’ve met someone who is offended at my tutorials.” All because I expressed frustration at how, when you fit an object to a figure, the cloning function in DAZ takes away shoulder mobility. The shirt’s sleeves will often times meld with the arm, making it behave like a second skin. And for whatever reason, DAZ has decided all skirts and dresses are never longer than your knees. Ever. Yeah yeah sure, I had said, add bones and other things I don’t understand. My point was: what if I don’t WANT to add bones every time? What if the product doesn’t LET me add bones? (I’ve got at least two that won’t.) What if I feel like the DAZ people could remember we also have lower legs and maybe tweak things so the sleeves don’t melt like that? Yeah I know it’s hard, but just five years ago what we’re doing now was hard too.
How is that being offended at THEIR tutorials exactly? It’s not even on the topic of THEIR tutorials.
And for anyone not on a high horse they’d see that it’s not. So to hell with them. I like their stuff, they’re very creative with how to get around the problems in DAZ, but I’m getting old. And I’m crotchety. And I don’t have time for some oversensitive jerkoff treating me poorly because they don’t know how to read or pay attention. I’m outta there.
The saddest part about events like this is the idiot in question is almost always someone who wants to fight for gay rights, against slavery, or some other very important subject. They’ve led a life being put down the man or something. They’re all about how we should understaaaand. I get enough drama being treated like an object in this tiny Southern town. And I know from real experience what it is to be sexual assaulted and bigoted against. So you know. Shut up. Take your drama ass somewhere else. You just lost me as a friend, customer, pr person, insert phrase here.
For the record, Loki is just fine now. He lost all of his baby fat from being so sick and has turned into a lanky pup with long legs for his size. He’s not going to be a very big dog, being half terrier. But he’s certainly a lot happier dog now and has stopped begging to be in the bathtub.
I have a statement regarding my email address and how people tend to assume things on it based on their finite beliefs and experience. I’ve been putting up with it for years and even though this has more to do with my actual job the email address is attached to this place.
I get a lot of emails from people who want me to do their covers for them, or format their books. And for some reason my current work address has never been properly attached to my work listing with Smashwords, so these people more often than not end up emailing the death@ address. And some of these people are very rude about it.
Like today for example. “After reviewing the Smashword list I liked your descriptions best. In the future please use a different email address as I don’t allow negative things around me.”
So, they love my work. They love my professionalism. But they don’t like my email address and because my email has the word “death” in it, it must be bad and they want me to change my email address just for their convenience.
Ironically, 100% of these self-serving demands have by people who have written some spiritualist book about white-lighterhood, loving one another, world peace, women’s power, and anything else new age regarding acceptance you can think of.
My email is death@youfigureitout.com. I also have a second, personal email, which is death@figureitoutagain.com. (Ends changed to avoid spambots.) And they are both very POSITIVE things.
As many pups know, I’m “Death” because of the team of four – the Writers of the Apocalypse – that was my title. What do you think the others were called? Think about it. War, who ended up joining the army; Conquest, who still does things with me on rare occasion, Pestilence, et al. Our titles are a pun, our work was based on comedy, and we had a lot of positive energy. And a lot of fun.
“Death” stands for how I picked myself up out of a workless rut and figured my own way in the world. It is a symbol of how I formed a team of creative minds, kept things going for years until I was the last woman standing, and despite the moniker “death” my work in the comics field is still alive and kicking. They are my badge: I’m a leader. I’m a fighter: I didn’t let being blackballed in the work world stop me.
The day I took up that title was the first day of a very moving chapter in my life.Things changed for the better for me. I found true love, I rediscovered myself as an author and an artist, and on some levels I have even achieved fame.
That email address is a very, very positive thing. All you have to do to see the goodness in it is to look past the letters and find the story within. In other words, you gotta stop being so damn shallow.
When I had less of a backbone, just a couple of years ago, I’d grind my teeth and explain it was my only email address and tell this story. Sometimes that worked. At least one time I got an “interesting” and then stoic silence from the individual who liked my work oh-so-much.
And when I did end up working with these people, I always regretted it. Can we say nit-picker? We are talking major nit-pickers – people who can’t decide what they like so they go to all of their friends to get twenty conflicting opinions on your hard work so they can come back to you, ask for changes, and then ask you to change things back when the opinions fluctuate. They have been people who go so far as to put a ruler on their computer monitor to measure where you’ve put the book title and demand you move things over by a fraction of a millimeter. (I exaggerate not.) So I’ve learned that “I don’t like your email address” is a red flag for “I’m not going to like anything.” Even if that next client isn’t going to be that picky when they decide they don’t like my email address, I would rather not take the chance.
These days I have two email address, but I also am tired of being judged so quickly. So my responses, like today’s, normally go along the lines of:
I’m sorry but I cannot take any more work on right now.
Mind you, I wasn’t lying today. But even if I had the time, I wouldn’t have taken that job. I am my own employer – the best part of the story behind that email address – and can pick and choose my work at my own discretion. And my own discretion says I don’t have to put up with it anymore. My own discretion says money ain’t worth it. My own discretion says that professional response was a hell of a lot less than what I really wanted to say.
The moral to this story can go to either side. If you’re a hopeful client you should stop and consider the person on the other end of that email is a real, live individual with a real life and real stories to tell. Otherwise you may just be shooting yourself in the face.
And if you’re the wouldbe business, you don’t have to put up with the crap. I’m not saying you should definitely have an email address with something spooky like “death” in the line, but if you just happen to like I do then rest assured it’s better to stand by yourself than to grovel at the undeserving.
