I have this inferiority complex, for lack of a better term. It’s not a lack of confidence but it’s something on the outside edge of my ability to define. So I will attempt to define it anyway.
A few things. I developed who I am, starting from when I was a baby. One of my earliest memories was when I was having my diaper changed by my grandmother on her couch. I was 18 but that’s beside the point… heh. Anyway, it was probably just before my potty training had begun. At that age you just let it all fly without a care in the world. You’re usually in a diaper! Grandma should have known. I just remember the feeling of amusement and pleasure and relief as I produced a geyser of piss right in her face as she leaned over me. She let out yells and pawed at the stream trying to stop it. People laughed as they came in the room and saw the horror and my grandmother being angry in her way. I couldn’t tell you specifically what was said, but in my baby brain I noticed concern, mixed with happiness, mixed with a tinge of anger. Not from one person, it was everyone in the room’s collective emotions. Did this experience start to shape me? Maybe, since I remember it 56 years later.
My dad was a pretty good student in college but I don’t remember him mentioning he did any higher math studies. He dropped a physics reference on me while explaining a wrestling move when I was probably 12. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think he was explaining how grabbing an opponent’s arm and pulling on it will make them want to yank it back. Once that happens you can use their own motion to then try and take them down because their arm will be out of position to defend themselves. It was simple and probably a stretch, but that advice stuck with me. I saw him as the wise adult. I remained the child in this dynamic.
I was always the child to my parent’s adult. My classes in school, I was the student and the teacher was the adult, the person of knowledge, knowledge that I didn’t have yet. By college, I was confident and cocky but I never felt I had made it to the side of adult. An adult was a status I could never achieve. My friend Mike who I knew since I was 5 had a different upbringing. When he was 5 or 6, his parents started giving him a budget to buy his clothes and school supplies for the year in July or August. They would give him 40 or 50 dollars and say, “That’s all you get until next year.” He learned adult stuff like making a budget etc. very early. I started seeing him as more adult. He did have a drinking problem by the time he was 17 though. So I guess there is a downside to becoming an adult too soon. I’ve been nurturing my drinking problem very slowly over the last 35 years and have wrecked zero cars unlike him… I didn’t start drinking until my late twenties.
I could go on with so many stories but I don’t have so many minutes. I have been reflecting on these things because I notice so many goofballs in the news bleating about this and wining about that. I realized they never became the adults they should be in their positions. That’s so depressing because someone in government behaving like a teenager affects way more people than me, an artist that draws cartoons for a living. I find it frightening that because they are so childish that I actually feel like an adult now. That should terrify everyone!
These next couple of drawings were done at live events. Nobody was holding still! You never realize how nobody holds still at a party or event until you try to draw them.
Of the 10 recognized "complexes", if not inferiority you'd probably call what you feel either part of the Guilt Complex spectrum or the Dependancy Complex spectrum. Creative types are usually treated as circular pegs living in society's square holes, so there's an "outsider" element, where stability is hard to come by yet you pursue the lifestyle anyway. That might lead to feelings of "unworthiness" (guilt complex) or perhaps a dependancy on capitalism / the mainstream in its rawest form, where you don't have a steady job so you're strategizing for money at all times. You don't feel inferior to those more financially stable (in fact you probably feel superior as you're freer, in a sense, and making it work) but you do recognize how much you depend on THEM to be stable and be able to afford you.
Anywho, don't piss in their faces!