I'll be doing a massive friends cut after Otakon.
As a person, I am both private and serious. Considering that, it's pretty ridiculous for me to be sharing my daily life with hundreds of people. If you're interested in being a friend and staying in touch, leave a comment, shoot me and email or text, whatever. If you're interested in being "cosplay buddies", well...this journal is not going to be for that sort of thing any more.
Cosplay, while it is something I love, is not something that I want as a central part of my life. When I first started cosplay, it was completely amazing how I could make so many friends and so many people liked me and wanted to hang out with me. I was happy, with stars in my eyes. Now I'm realizing how shallow most of those bonds are. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of cosplay friends I have, I can count on one hand how many of them are actually real friends.
The world of cosplay attracts misfits like me for a reason - even the nerdiest weaboo can feel cool and popular. What's not to like? In a high school, and then a university, where I couldn't seem to make any friends or feel like part of a group, there was this community where everyone wanted my picture, wanted to cosplay with me, wanted to be my friend. Not surprising which path I chose.
Nowadays, as I continue to be the weaboo to a fault that I've been since high school, I'm still clinging to the cosplay community as the one group that I can fall back on, where I can always have fun and feel like everyone loves me. But, how unfulfilling it is! Once we're home from the convention, who of all those people really cares about me? As I pointed out earlier, only a small handful. And yet, I continue to cling to this, as if it's my one last lifeline. But, why?
When I ask myself, I can't really come up with a good answer. And thus, I think it's time recognize that maybe this community, which has been my life for the past five years, and once was a great community with which to share my creative energy, is now holding me back. Maybe it's time to move on?
These thoughts have been spinning through my head for the past couple of weeks. And I've decided, yes, it is time to move on. Many of you only know me as a cosplayer, and only want to know me as a cosplayer. That's totally fine! As a cosplayer, you'll still see my pictures up on ACP from whenever I do hit up a convention. It's not like I'll stop going to conventions with my friends (my real friends), after all. However, this journal, from Otakon on, really needs to be for my personal life, and for those of you that are interested in that, as opposed to my cosplay life.
I'm not saying, "I quit cosplay." How could I quit something I love? I'm simply relieving myself of a lot of the baggage that comes with being an active part in the community. In order to move on with my life and nurture the relationships that are truly rich and fulfilling, I need to stop catering to a community that I don't get happiness from any longer.
To my cosplay friends - you're all wonderful pals to see at conventions. I'm sure many of you are also wonderful people, and wonderful friends to those you care about. I look forward to running into you at cons in the future, and I will certainly keep you all favorited on ACP and admire your cosplays as I have always done. Maybe we will become closer in the future, and I will get to know some of you as people, not just as cosplayers. I really hope that can happen!
And to those same cosplay friends, just because I'm not including you in my everyday, personal life, doesn't mean that I want nothing to do with you. It's a pretty common misconception in the cosplay world that if someone doesn't want you to be in their inner circle of best friends, that means they dislike you, or don't respect you. I hope you'll all still say hi to me at conventions, as I will certainly still say hi to you! If you're in Boston, by all means give me a call and we can get lunch. But as I can't balance my time between 200 semi-close friends, I'm choosing to keep my best friends close and my convention friends...at conventions. If this feels like a blow to you, then all I can do is apologize and hope that you'll eventually come to understand why I'm making this choice.
We all reach turning points in our lives. Some of us take advantage of them, others don't. I've reached the turning point, and I'm taking the turn. If I don't, I'll still be here five years from now, updating my livejournal with cosplay stuff and wondering why I don't feel good about my life.
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furiousmice's journal
