Whether you call it cycles or seasons or patterns, I admit to going through them. Whenever I glance through my old sketchbooks, I'm surprised when I see that, at roughly the same time every year, I return to Subject X or Genre Y or Mood Z.

Is there a shrink in the house? Because I'm obviously not getting whatever it is I'm trying to tell myself.

One of those cyclical touchstones is "creatures of myth and folklore." Somehow, though, from a period over 15 years ago, my subconscious wove that subject together with White Wolf's Changeling: The Dreaming. I was then doing copy editorial work for WW and got comps on many of the CtD books. Never played the game, but I liked it's tone better than the other World of Darkness systems, and I especially liked the kiths (character types).

So, about the same time every year, I sorta "create" myself as a CtD character. Usually, I'm the quintessential boggan, which is ... demoralizing; it suggests that I'm the support staff for more interesting people, a drone, a servant trapped in my obligations to others. Instead, I wish I were an eshu--colorful, wise, clever, footloose and fancy-free. The process of wishing that I'm something that I'm not grates against my reluctance to accept what I am, and I get frustrated and depressed, even though I know--I KNOW--that I'm a mix of many different things and have the capacity to nurture different aspects at different times to different effects.

Sometimes, though, I just want a single point on which to focus, but I don't know how to help myself figure out what that focus should be. Hence, this annual mind game. Which is as good a summary of my "ongoing EDentity crisis" as I can give.

Anyway, about 9 years ago (divorced for two years, alone and lonely), I took a walk on the "wild side" to shake myself out of the post-boggan/eshu grudge-match funk into which I'd fallen. I did a redcap sketch, wondering whether I had some "inner punk" to call on, should the need arise. I surprised myself by just how much I liked how it turned out. But I was unwilling to fully embrace it and instead tucked it away.

I've pulled it out of mothballs and posted it at this [link] because, once again, I'm finding myself drawn to redcaps and--older and, one would hope, wiser--perhaps better equipped emotionally to handle the "truths" it wants to tell me about myself. You see, redcaps (at least in the game) are all about hunger and nightmares and craziness and rage, and--for reasons I'll keep private--I'm feelin' their pain of late.

Besides, maybe letting it breathe--instead of holding it back or repressing it--will do me some good. Let's call it "exercising my inner demon." Because I'm nothing if not a consumer with an appetite that is never satisfied. Which is a good understanding to have about oneself, but one that carries a weight of sadness surrounding the inevitability of disappointment.

Still, life goes on. And if I've learned nothing else, I know that this too shall pass.