Collecting toys, the stupidest thing I was ever into.
Back when I was a kid up to high school, I was such a pathetic nerd over collecting toys. Every week I'd go to Toys R Us, Target, the mall, or even Walgreens just to look for a stupid hard to find Spider-Man toy or Star Wars figure. (Funny thing about Star Wars is I never liked the actual movies, I just liked the characters, so I ended up obsessed with owning every irrlevant fucking character that was ever made into a figure, characters that were only in the movie for like 2 seconds in the background.). Every collector has their own reason for collecting. Looking back at my toycollecting habits, it was just a way for me to fill my empty directionless life at the time. I always did good in school but never knew what I wanted to do with my life. Whenever I looked to my parents for guidance, they always felt awkward and never nurtured my creative side or interests. They hated confrontations over personal shit like that so they'd just buy me a toy or drive me to the toy store to pacify me. I just kept getting sucked into this materialistic way of life as a false sense of being content. When I got my driver's license at 16, I ended up driving to every toy store I could think of all the time. It was sad, real sad. Eventually when I started to become a more critical thinker from stubmling on Plato's Republic and some Allan Watt's buddhist writings somehow (both talk about materialism), I took a look at myself and decided to put an end to my shitty consumer lifestyle. I realized I had those stupid toys for years and they offered me nothing. I said to myself, "What more could I get out of some piece of plastic that hangs on my wall and does nothing but collect dust?".
It was at that moment that I started to sell all I could on ebay and used whatever I made to fund my artistic endevaours, which was in publishing my comics. I was getting into underground and alternative comics at that time and realized you didn't have to be a professioonal glossy Marvel asshole to make comics, you can just be yourself, as long as you were passionate about what you said and drew in your work. So that's what inspired me to do comics. Anyways, some of the toys were worth a lot and got me a huge profit, but most of them were worthless and were a huge loss (moneywise) when I calculated what I spent on them and what I sold them for. People called me an idiot for selling the shit cheaper than what I bought them originally for years ago. "Buy low sell high" is their mantra. There really was no choice though, that's how worthless the shit becomes, nobody is willing to buy it unless you practically give it away. I'd rather get rid of it and take a few bucks instead of be cursed with it forever by trying to sell it for a price no one will ever pay. Even though I was trying to fund something with those toy sales, my main goal really was to get that useless shit out of my life so I could have less garbage to lug around in my existance and focus on more important things. More to own is just more to suffer with in the long run (something I learned from buddhism)
Yeah, so I used all the money I made to finance promotional copies of my pathetic comic. Again, people are calling me an idiot for not turning out a profit with those free promos. Why? Am I suppose to keep hording money and just let it rot in my wallet? Make profit so I could use that to make even more profit, so on and so forth? At least when I "wasted" money on those promo copies, I was relieved from constantly wondering whether these comics were a good idea or not and if people understood my messages. I was willing to suffer a loss. And I did lose. Nothing really came out of the comics. Nobody gave a shit. But now I know, that's all I needed. I took the risk rather than just stand around restless, never knowing what would have happened. The only real loss is the one you let get to you. I regret nothing.
contact: joseangeles AT muchomail.com