Hi everyone!
Since my last update, I’ve moved over to Twitter, have started a webcomic about dogs, and a Patreon, to boot. I really enjoyed my adventures at the Center for Cartoon Studies last year, and continue to learn as I cartoon.
Drawing Dog Park is the highlight of my day lately. Updates are every Monday, maybe more often as time goes on.
If you happen to be on Twitter, feel free to follow me! I’d be happy to follow back.
A Find Momentum update: People and Trees has been updated. It feels a bit refreshed.
Drawn on Wednesday, May 21, 2014.
I walk my dog. I go to work. I eat peach parfaits. Art happens on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons at the Valley Center for the Arts. Video games and board games happen twice a week too. Spouse has work pouring in, sits at a desk by the window. Debts are steadily dissolving. Long ventures down the Rec Path. Listening to Welcome to Night Vale. A strangely settled, calm, and fortunate life as of late.
Attending a 5-day cartooning studio at the Center for Cartoon Studies this August. Will hop a train and head to Vermont for instruction, camaraderie, and 24-hour access to the CCS studio space and production lab. I imagine it’ll help me get out of my head, I hope, even as I take it with me.
I felt like I needed to post something today, whether or not it was good, smart, clear, or true. These photos aren’t great, but here’s a short, three-page comic I’ve been working on.
On Monday, I started a full-time job with outstanding benefits; I sold two paintings at Delicious! the Valley Arts Council‘s exhibit on Thursday, the pumpkin below and the beet above; and I have an article to work on for a magazine I admire. My spouse has begun writing about TV again, and has some solid job leads in his field. I have red low tops to wear while walking outside, but left my heels to stay in the office.
In job searching, nothing works until it does. Advice is usually much more condescending than helpful, I’ve found, even as I offer advice to others searching. We are smug, the employed. We are so much closer to those who aren’t, or aren’t to their desired amount, than we realize. Please let me remember this when I forget it.
I found this TEDTalks: Life Hack episode powerful. Maybe striking a Wonder Woman pose for two minutes in private before my next interview isn’t a bad idea. Even thinking about the body-mind connection has me more relaxed, after a string of can’t-sleep-too-worried nights. I keep assuming that once my work situation betters, I’ll feel better. I should know better than that.
A friend gave me a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain last week. I can’t wait to see how my drawings improve after I’m done with it. I’m not usually one for accurate drawings, but I do need to learn how to do them before I can intentionally distort the way I perceive. Anatomy first, wacky later.
A sketch of my copy of the book’s cover art.
While updating my art blog this morning, I found this old colored pencil scene in my sketchbook. I have no idea when I did this, but I must like it more now than I did then.
Yesterday was good in the productive and useless categories alike. Tasks on checklist accomplished–check. (Checklist made after tasks accomplished–double check.) I also indulged in some Song of Ice and Fire geekiness (prompted by Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode) and spent the evening reading fan theories. I dreamed about Westeros to boot. Refreshing to get outside myself sometimes.
Imitating the House Stark sigil from the books’ appendix. I prefer this style over the snarling severed direwolf head used in the show.
No life from those seeds. I will need to buy my plants this season.
Things have been trying the past few weeks: our full-time temporary work was cut off suddenly, so we’ve moved into job hunt mode. I had a great interview for a position–I never think so about interviews!–but didn’t even make it to the second round. Loki’s had a rough time since his neutering, and hot spots have landed him in a cone. He’s handling it like a champ, though, staying pretty mellow most of the day.
In good news, I did get two paintings in the Oxford Cultural Arts Commission‘s recent exhibit. These two:
In other good news, a friend introduced me and Ken to The Bugle, my new favorite audio newspaper for a visual world. Andy Zaltzman‘s relentless nihilism has proven a perfect comfort for me when I’m stewing too long in my narcissistic frustrations. At least there’s the meaningless void that undos us all, right?
Maybe better than good news, I’m tucking into the Nag Hammadi library again. After some haphazard writing for the Internet over the previous six months, I’ve realized how much I miss writing about what really matters to me. Apparently what matters to me isn’t geek pop culture or news about space, although who doesn’t like reading about either? No: I need a place to explore paradox, I need to delve into intricate, expansive, unanswerable questions. I need to talk about silly Jesus stories from the 3rd century, so The Apocryphal Devotional shall rise again.
It may be a little late to plant seeds, but there they grow.
Cherry tomato varieties this year. More to plant when I find more egg cartons.
Ran out of agave nectar this week, but the coffee is still good just with cream.
I’ve been attending a comic art workshop across the river, and working on entries for an art contest. I finally submitted an article long overdue. (Yay!) The spouseman and I have been working overtime in a warehouse with dusty books to pay the bills. I have an editing project to busy me this weekend, and a magnolia tree brightening my window.
Loki continues to grow up into an awesome dog: quick witted and emotionally intelligent.
Had been so nostalgic for city life these past few weeks that I forgot the good things about suburban heres and nows that I’d be nostalgic for in another time. It’s been a strange nostalgia, mixed with feelings of helplessness and confusion since Monday. I hope Boston heals.
I’ve been cranky the past few days–Startler and Waldorf cranky, without the smart zingers.
But I’ve got no excuse for it: I’ve written another piece for EcoGeek (so lucky!), and one for a new website, Dorkjuice, on my silly excitement for PAX East, and I have a few more articles about green tech and geek news on the horizon. Be still my heart: I’m writing. I’m writing about topics I’m interested in, and I’m learning to write in new ways for new audiences.
And I’m buzzing with pitch ideas, excited for these new projects. Most of me is blue, though. Inexplicably blue.
It’s strange how good fortune doesn’t necessarily correlate with an all-encompassing happiness boost. I’m moving along in my goals, but these successes haven’t shaken me from some lingering “why-do-I-exist” crisis that everyone must constantly undergo, right?
Right? At least near constantly? Once a week, maybe, do you, too, face down either 1) the strangeness of your upcoming death or 2) the bigger strangeness of your excessively unlikely presently alive status and what can be done with it?
What to do with one’s life doesn’t have to be couched in terms of work, I know. I know it’s possible for people to have vocations and livelihoods that don’t intersect. But do those who find their dream careers still feel these crises lumped in with thoughts of their livelihoods? Do the crises have a different flavor for you, the ones who made it, the people I admire, who do what they love even when it’s hard? Or maybe there are levels of “what am I doing with my life” that those who’ve found their calling still reach when they’re not wholly consumed by purpose.
I’m lucky to be making strides in writing and learning in action, but I still have this core crisis. I could write about that. Maybe it’s inevitable to write about that when it churns like it has been lately.
From Buzzfeed.
Find Momentum 