Wake Up

I had been putting my life on hold.

I was a terrible student. People said I was smart, told me I was going to be somebody, urged me to live up to my potential, but I skipped school as often as I could get away with starting from the seventh grade. I didn't do my homework, which stacked up. I started missing crucial stuff in math class, earned a reputation as the weird kid, made enemies and alienated potential friends. I fell behind. I gave up. I dropped out.

Then college happened, and for one semester I felt like I was really going to accomplish my goal of getting a degree and leaving my shitty life behind. My anxiety got in the way--I didn't have a pen, but I couldn't bring myself to approach the nice girl sitting next to me and ask to borrow one of hers. I didn't have a study partner because I was terrified of strangers. The professor had a thick Korean accent and his descriptions of Venn diagrams would have gone right over my math-deficient head anyway. I skipped all study groups to avoid talking to people. I flunked the class, gave up on college and switched to part-time at a different school. I used my scholarship to take Japanese and Composition instead. Then I "took a semester off" because I finally realized I was having too many issues to focus on schoolwork.

For the next five years, I maintained a holding pattern. Work on the comic, do the art, hide in the bedroom, shelve the books. My only social communication was with my few friends or the people I helped at work. We moved out of the apartment where my Mom and I had weathered 9/11, and I retreated into my one-room hovel in my sister's backyard, shrugged off the lack of running water and heat, wondered if I might be autistic, came out as transgendered, dissociated and ranted on the internet and injured myself for kicks. I remember it as good times but it was really kind of pathetic. All alone in a little party house with my bad music and the undefined substances crusted into the carpet. Chest strapped flat, nails through my ears while my right eyeball flared up red and swollen every day from the layers of dust I swam through. Family drama alienated me from all relatives except my Mom. I kept in touch with the world outside through my modem.

I started going to cons. Met Seebs, Rah and Jesse for the first time at Anime Central 2004. I had been planning to stay with Rah, but when we all started talking at the tables it was nakama at first sight and we stayed in the same hotel room for the rest of the weekend. I didn't buy my next $80 bus ticket to Canada; instead Jess and Seebs brought me home from the convention to stay at their place in Saint Paul. They extended pseudopods and replaced my plans to go back to Nebraska with the urge to go native, which I did. Told my Mom I wasn't coming home except to pack my shit. She was sad, but my brother was getting out and she wanted to live with him anyway. I gleefully jettisoned my home life and never looked back. I didn't call her enough. I still feel sad that I didn't call her enough, but I just forgot. I knew I'd regret it very soon but I forgot.

Then Mom died. I went back to Nebraska to be with her during the end, got sick, came home, went back but I was too late. She died the night before I returned, and I was on the phone as it happened. The funerals weren't bad. She was polyfaithful so there were two, plus the wake where I wore an offensive T-Shirt to piss off the relatives who didn't like me anyway. My brother and I made up and I gave him a wad of money from comic fan donations to pay the funeral director for one pitiful box of ashes with a side of shitty attitude.

Now I had no connection to my past. Now I've been kissing-close to death and I realized I was wasting my life. Everything I felt was now under scrutiny as suspected bullshit. Two months later I had a petty disagreement with my childhood friend and he dumped me. I couldn't muster the willpower to apologize first like I always did, and because he never learned how to apologize at all we ended up never speaking again. One more piece of my old life fell away. Rain moved to North Carolina a few months after that, and I got depressed. I adopted a dog to force myself out of my head and being responsible for him got me through the worst of the sadness. Dogs and cats do their best to cure the blues by being small and pettable and needy, and in return we make sure their bellies stay full. It's a good trade.

The household moved to a small town where the atmosphere is much more laid-back. There are two colleges here, and I started thinking about going back to school. Thinking I didn't have what it takes to be a student, I was too old, too dumb, too anxious.

Then the accident happened, and I guess almost dying must have knocked some sense into me. Suddenly I was making plans instead of daydreaming about them. Small plans at first--see a dentist, find a good vet in town--and then larger ones followed from that. I got a therapist and a psychiatrist because I was overwhelmed, instead of hiding in my room and hoping the world would forget about me. The therapist hooked me up with health care and pointed me at assistance programs. Things became possible.

I re-established contact with my Dad, and we're slowly getting to know each other again. I really love the guy, but we've got to tread lightly for a while at least. I've always hated the idea of wasting my life, but now I feel more like there's something I can do about it. Medication helps with a lot of this, but some of it was just plain good luck.

So where am I now? Making plans. Establishing normal living activities like schedules and chores. Learning to work with the ADHD meds, and I've just started Zoloft for the social anxiety and OCD. I'm creating a new routine to replace the flawed one that was more of a prison than a refuge. There is comfort in routine, and just lately mine's been changing quite a bit and creativity has taken a backseat to the real world. I figure it's now or never--I either ride this wave or spend more years in the holding pattern. I'm impatient to get back to the old habits that I enjoy--comics and writing being the two major ones--but so far they haven't found where they fit in my new life. Creativity is kind of like a cat that will curl up in your lap if you stay put, but if you move around too much it gets pissed and wanders off for a while. Luckily creativity and cats are also sort of stupid, and will eventually come back for another try.

Hopefully within the next month or so I'll wake up with that cat back on my lap so I don't have to go chase it down like I've been doing. My comic is about to go awesome places and I'm getting annoyed by how slowly it's unfolding compared to the four-pages-a-week powerhouse of yesteryear.

Things go well at home. The Captain's nose is turning pink at the base. I still haven't mailed off the buttons for the folks who donated to get his vitiligo diagnosed, but I've got all the info here and will be getting to it as soon as I can. This damn cold isn't helping much, but it's slowly getting better.

Also, I've begun to think about college again. Scary stuff, but why not? "Too old" is bullshit anyway. I feel certain I'd make a better student in my 30s than I ever was in my teens.

That's it for now. Musings on a quiet Wednesday morning while the sky is gray and the snow is a few layers thicker than it was last time I blogged. Hope you're all well.

Sketch Dump and Raffle Info

Finished the sketchbook last night. For some reason the computer was being sluggish, and it only got worse, so the scanning/formatting job wound up taking all day instead of a few short hours. I don't know why I didn't give up or troubleshoot; I think I was in a stubbornness stupor.

But never mind that! The art, the art!



I'll be raffling off this sketchbook in a few weeks, so start saving your couch-cushion pennies!

Another Boring Post

Today was a blur of cardboard boxes and spice.

I emptied out a whole cabinetful of boxed and bagged foods and threw out anything that was expired, corroded, moth-eaten, stained with mysterious substances, rusted, borked, degraded, stale, or otherwise lacking in num factor. I packed whatever was still good, except for a few spices that we use daily.

It was trash day so last night and this morning was all about hauling out bags and bags of waste. Ten years' worth of built-up clutter is slowly but surely draining out the front door and into the landfill.

Seebs has filled the dining room with expired computer parts and electronic alchemy devices. This was not so much to empty out the basement as to give the environmentally-friendly disposal connection something to do with their next, oh, month or so.



We are all working our asses off to get this move underway, but I'm hoping to find time for more art soon. I would like to keep updating regularly until the actual move, but I don't have an assistant, and each week's update takes something like 30 hours to produce.

If I want to be living in Northfield by the end of September, Kagerou needs to chill on the back burner and let me spend my time either packing, cleaning, or zoning out doing absolutely nothing so I don't go insane. I'm trying to combine the moving hiatus with an earlier plan for a mental health vacation. I haven't taken a breather since last winter's onslaught of horrible, spirit-crushing events and was about ready to lose my damn mind.

Even still, the delay is making me lonely and anxious to get back to work. This is a good indicator that my batteries are filling up, and once the comic is back to a schedule we should hit the ground running.

Speaking of enthusiastic laziness, I think I'm going to go to bed early and sleep late tonight. SO TIRED.

My Spanish Pipe Dream

She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal
Well she pressed her chest against me
About the time the jukebox broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of the neck
And these are the words she spoke:

"Blow up your T.V.
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own"

Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
Well, she danced around the bar room and she did the hoochy-coo
Yeah she sang her song all night long, tellin' me what to do

"Blow up your T.V.
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own"

Well, I was young and hungry and about to leave that place
When just as I was leavin', well, she looked me in the face
I said "You must know the answer."
She said, "No but I'll give it a try."

And to this very day we've been livin' our way
And here is the reason why:

We blew up our T.V.
Threw away our paper
Went to the country
Built us a home
Had a lot of children,
Fed 'em on peaches
They all found Jesus on their own.

-John Prine

I think the fact I've had this song in my head for the past three days is probably related to the Studio preparing to move out of the city next month. If all goes well, we'll be taking up residence in a big house with an enormous yard in a quiet neighborhood that smells like warm toasted cereal when the wind is right and everythign is in walking distance.

Anyway. John Prine is awesome, but this song strikes a kind of strange contrast when played while I read ghost stories and look at photos of Chernobyl the way I've been doing all morning instead of working on the damn comic.

I've been having a really hard time keeping my attention on my work lately. All I want to do is veg out and read travel blogs, walk my dog, and cook. I've lost track of time and bedtime rolls around before I know it. I'm like, "Sweet norns! I've frittered the whole day away!" Over and over again.

It's most likely just the usual end-of-summer burnout. I want to be out there digging up rocks, not in here sitting at my computer. It's not as bad as con burnout, at least. There were only two conventions this summer. Still, I've been going full tilt on the comic to make up for my lack of productivity outside the home, and this has been having an effect.

In particular, I'm concerned by how easily I've been blowing deadlines on updates that have been subsidized by donations (making timely updates not just polite, but VITAL).

The blown deadlines also set up a nasty cycle. If I finish the comic late, I don't get any days off that week. So I don't get to rest, can't work with full speed or skill, and tend to zone out. The delays might have been excusable the first time around, but it sets off this nasty chain reaction. I've been thinking about scheduling a few short breaks throughout the year in the future, just to keep me fresh. Lord knows I'd enjoy having some time off right about now.

Sure, I'd just spend it working on the comic, but at least I'd be pulling 20-hour shifts for reasons other than "because it's got to be up by tonight and I'm already late enough as it is."

In domestic news, my dog is lying in his little kennel with his head sadly slumped over one paw, occasionally sighing or groaning a little. He's bummed because there are three delicious dog treats on the floor and I've instructed him to leave them alone.

The Captain is amazingly clever for a dog. He picked up the basics of the "Leave It" command after the second session. If he continues to progress at this pace, he'll be ready to meet (and IGNORE) the cats in no time. I am very anxious to get him and the cats integrated and the whole rivalry over with as soon as feasible.

SO TIRED WAH BLOOGAH

The Captain has stopped peeing in terror. He has begun barking at odd noises, but I'm working on training that out of him. He has a little kennel-nest and a Kong and a stuffed monkey, and gets walked several times a day. He likes to play catch in the house with a bouncy tennis ball, but hasn't yet mastered the brakes. Wackiness ensues.

I've been sleeping very poorly since I got him, but so far each night has been an improvement. I've got some child gates and use them to pen him in the bathroom when I need to work, so the comic is back underway and I'm doing my best to make up for lost time.

Also, I cancelled my Amazon order for Harry Potter book 7 on CD after noticing that the estimated shipping date is in frickin' AUGUST and the copy at Target was only a few dollars more. Seebs got me it for my birthday present, and the world did rejoice.

Okay, back to work. Wish me luck!