The Year of No Return
Pieces of my Mind #8
In like a baby lamb full of hope and wonder, out like a ravenous lion whose aggression is triggered randomly by wriggling brain parasites. 2024 was hell of a year. Here are my thoughts on some of the highlights.
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Late 2023, I received my ASD diagnosis. I put this knowledge to good use in 2024. It’s been a trip learning how the normies operate versus how I do things. Who the hell made up these unspoken rules of conversation? Was there a committee? Appointed or elected? They say I can’t just walk away from a boring conversation. They say I must pretend to be interested in what’s being said even if it’s not interesting. How inconvenient of them.
The diagnosis wasn’t crippling as it is for many poor souls. It was freeing. I thought I was bad at being a human. Turns out, I am. But I also simply see things differently from the average person. Understanding the differences, or at least being made aware of them, has been key in developing strategies that use my strengths to overcome difficult situations rather than beating myself up for feeling incapable of doing what others seemingly do without effort. Life changing.
So many areas of my life, and the life of those around me, have improved more than I could’ve ever imagined thanks to some deep introspection and cunning workarounds. One area I struggled with in particular is Executive Dysfunction (Go ahead, get those E.D. jokes out of your system!)
Because Executive Dysfunction manifests differently, I’ll leave it to you to research if it interests you, but the greatest hindrance it caused me was starting tasks that I really enjoy. For instance, I could clean or organize all day, no problem. But getting me to sit down in front of my easel and paint was like pulling teeth with tweezers—an ineffective pain in the ass…er, mouth! You know what I mean.
And I LOVE painting. Weird, huh? If it confuses you, imagine how I felt.
There was a physical, insurmountable resistance to starting things I enjoyed doing, such as painting or sculpting, that was both mental and physical. It’s difficult to describe, but there were days where a gun to my head wouldn’t budge me—even though I really wanted to do the thing I was resisting. It was hell, and had gotten worse.
This is not the first creative job I’ve had, so I thought back to what made me get off my ass and do that work. I came to the conclusion that I lack motivation. Yeah, there’s money, but money can be made much more easily doing almost anything else. And, as a rule, money, wealth, and objects simply don’t motivate me. Never has.
After some thought, I decided that my motivation came from my audience and community, which I currently lacked.
What’s the point of making art if no one sees it? Worse, how do you make art without having a community of like minded people who understand the process? Figuring out what motivates me was the spark I needed to overcome the resistence.
Hurricane Helene & Turning Forty
Who’d thought that a hurricane would be so destructive in the mountains of North Carolina? No one. I’ve written about the hurricane (READ IT HERE), so I won’t rehash the same details. Instead, I want to share positivity gleaned from mine and Cassandra’s experience during the fallout of the this unprecedented event.
We weren’t prepared. Now we are. That’s the biggest gift we could’ve asked for, a second chance. We’ve since stocked appropriate provisions for the next surprise situation if it should ever happen again. We’re as ready as we can be for whatever comes our way.
During the fallout, I wasn’t able to work on my art. I couldn’t even concentrate to read or pursue other distractions. I was focused on the damage to my locality and the uncertainty of its future. This break from the everyday ebb and flow of (work)life had a profound affect over me.
It brought clarity and direction that I was sorely missing. Why am I making art? I may explain that reason in the future. For now, scrutinize my efforts over the next few weeks to see how this answer, combined with eliminating the executive dysfunction, has transformed my creative efforts. Those closest to me have seen the remarkable change. Witness the change for yourself.
Lastly, a surprise gift from Helene—a novel. My novel.
I was a storyteller long before I knew how to write. Stories are simply telling enough white lies until the sum of which is convincing. What child wasn’t a natural storyteller? And when I was capable, I wrote these stories down. But they never felt like the stories that I read. They lacked the take-me-away magic of the books that kept me alive through the darkest times in my life. What did these stories have that I mine were missing?
Maybe it was the period of forced introspection, but something about writing clicked like it never had before. I get it, now, the missing magic. And for the benefit of every writer and the craft itself, I’d scream this epiphany from the mountain tops to save others from the struggle I’ve endured for decades, if it were at all possible. But it’s a realization that must be experienced, not learned second hand.
Let the novel borne out of the hurricane (there’s some beautiful poetry there, if only beautiful to me) be my testament to this new found gift.
A few weeks after Helene, I hit the forty-year-old milestone. Stuff like that never mattered to me. Who cares? This walking and talking meat bag has now occupied space for four decades! Whoop-de-do!
But the damndest thing happened. For the first time in my life, I feel ready to do something with it. Not little somethings that are just enough to get by until the next little something comes about. I’ve lived that life already. I’m ready to go BIG or go home. I’m talking big somethings.
Why now? Because after forty years of living on this hell rock, I finally have some shit to say, and the experience (skills) to say it!
You have to live a bit to make art. You have to do more than just occupy space. It’s not just a prerequisite to making great art—it’s a commandment from the universe. You need to feel things—the highest highs and the lowest lows. You need to lose and to love. You need to fight with words and sometimes fists. You need to do a lot of dumb shit, narrowly escaping justice, cosmic or domestic, so that you can tell your tale because without strife, without living, what do we have to say?
Nothing.
I’ve lived. I’ve built my skills. Now I’m ready to share with the world, through my art, what those experiences have been like, what they’ve taught me.
Accepting What I Love
Throughout my creative career, I’ve struggled with finding a subject matter that was me. It’s not for lack of interests. If anything, my diverse interests made sharpening focus more difficult. But there was a greater resistance.
I was afraid to show my true self through my art for fear of not be accepted.
Well, if 2024 has taught me anything, it’s that I no longer give a fuck what anyone thinks about me, because the people who matter accept and love me for who and what I am. I refuse conformity for the sake of the emotional security it’d provide those who don’t give a shit about me. If I don’t matter to you, you sure as hell don’t matter to me.
So, what is it that I love?
I love nature. I love the landscape bathed in silvery moonlight. I love vines that twist and knot themselves to reach new possibilities. I love the terrifyingly inspiring alienness of insect life. And maybe it’s just the ASD, but I prefer the company of any animal to almost all humans.
But I don’t want to be a nature artist. I’ve walked that path. And while all that nature stuff is inseparable from the core of who I am, it’s not my passion. Nature by itself isn’t the vehicle for the message I want to share with the world.
I was forced to hide behind being a nature artist for literal decades because it was safe. It was accepted, respectable even. it was the one thing about myself that I could safely share during small talk. How could anyone accept my true calling? How could anyone accept me?
I grew up during a renaissance of fresh new boogie men. Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees were just a couple of the new hellish monsters that haunted our dreams, reflecting the fears at the time—from satanic panic to stranger danger.
I have fond memories as a young, impressionable boy sitting on the couch watching these movies between my fingers. I assured my family that I wasn’t scared to relieve them of their concern and hesitation towards another scary movie finding its way from Blockbuster to the coveted living room VCR, projecting images of wholly gratuitous and equally unrealistic violence that only Hollywood could’ve dreamt up.
But like most things, the truth we try so hard to deny comes roaring out when we’re alone…in the dark.
During the long, impossibly dark nights in my bed, I shrank like Alice after nibbling that magic mushroom. Every sound in the endless void of darkness belonged to a monster so grotesque, so disturbing that only a young, hyper-imaginative mind could dream it into reality. And there, with my heart a kettle drum in my ears, with the darkness both expanding and contracting around me all at once like the anticipatory breathing of a predator stalking its prey, I regretted every stupid horror movie I’d ever seen and prayed for the sun.
The next morning, I picked out from the beckoning shelves of Blockbuster the next splatter-fest to warp my young mind. Oh how quickly we forget once we’re free of danger…
And movies were just the start. I hated reading, but give boyish me Stephen King or a Goosebumps—the gateway drug for so many millennial horror seekers—and I’d read for hours on end. While my classmates lost sleep over the assigned reading of Virginia Hamilton’s The House of Dyes Dreer, I was up late every night, under the sheets with a flashlight, devouring Salem’s Lot like the bloodsuckers that took up residence in the titular town. Salem’s Lot is still my favorite King novel!
My mother, who was always frank with me about the realities of life, is to blame for my fascination with the macabre. Still to this day, we discuss the very real, very going-to-happen-to-everyone reality of death, much to the disturbance of my father who thinks every mention of the word is recorded on some great ledger in the sky. Collect ten punches and win a prize—six feet below!
The fact is, facts can’t hurt us. And neither can the monsters dreamt up by twisted minds like my own. But what they can do, horrific fact or fiction, is prepare us for the realities of life.
My mother’s severe stroke many years ago distressed me greatly. I didn’t want to lose one of my only true friends. But I was never hysterical. I didn’t withdraw from life. When I was with her in the triage, I didn’t cry. I looked the surgeon dead in the eye and asked if she was going to live. He was hesitant but said, “Not likely, and if she does, she won’t have much of a life.”
I didn’t fall to the floor in defeat and self pity. I asked, as my mother asks each day since her stroke, “What do we need to do next.”
Did a diet of teen slashers and haunted houses give me the resolve to face the real scary shit in life? I don’t know. But it certainly didn’t hurt. Imagination is our sparring arena. It allows us to answer the what ifs and confront our fears in a way where no harm can come to us. And in doing so, maybe, we are better prepared for when the true evils of the world reveal themselves.
My varied interests inform my passion for horror and the macabre. The skills I’ve gained over the years, from painting to blacksmithing, help breathe life into my creations. And in 2025, it is with great pleasure (and relief) that I share my authentic self with the world. I hope you will continue this journey with me. This is the year of no return.
May my work provides you with as much awe and wonder as it does sleepless nights.
-Victor
2024 Honorable Mentions
Other important 2024 happenings that didn’t warrant much blabbering.
Found a snake in the grass who hadn’t noticed that the lawnmower was still out. Buzz! Buzz! (no actual snakes were harmed)
I actively sought out my people. If you’re a weirdo who wants to collaborate, talk shop, or just hang out—get in touch. You have a place with me. Maybe a club is in order?
I learned a mess of new skills this year—from CAD and operating a laser cutter to casting and molding—I’ve learned a lot. Education never ends.
The year started quietly, but ended with a roar that made clear where Cassandra and I stand in this world, as well as those around us. We will not be rattled by anyone or anything. We will not change our trajectory. We are forever.
I’ve been experimenting with less traditionally capitalistic ways to sell and promote my art. I’ve had enough of breaking my back to make others rich, playing games to please algorithms in hopes of a few crumbs falling from the table, and pricing out a large swath of the population who’d love to own my work. I’m still working on details with all that, but know that the gears are in motion. I won’t back down.
Your support changes the world. Really! And not just mine. It betters the world for everyone. Art is important. Your financial support allows me to create boldly and authentically. Each donation allows me to write another chapter or finish another painting without fear of the looming black cloud of financial uncertainty. Your gift allows me to share my gift and together we make the world a better place!