Thursday, April 22

Good golly, never thought I'd be saying that starting your day off with a root canal was a net benefit, but I obviously let this tooth go too long. I'm flying on vicodin and really enjoying a lovely spring day, instead of worrying about the next shoe to drop (or tooth to blow up).

The funny thing about wallowing in a painkiller stupor, is that it puts a different spin on things, and shows how easily our emotional states are altered by, not only narcotics, but any number of stimuli. This is of particular interest to me now, because of how long I've been in this "action slump". I know the things I need to do (start small and expand), but I've continued to avoid that first step. I've been here before, and now that I see things through opiate colored eyes, it seems simpler. The proof will be in the pudding, but going through a week of the pain of an infected tooth has reminded me of how awesome a day feeling great is. And how precious. Not to be wasted on procrastination, or meaningless stress, but to be enjoyed.

Oh, and I picked up the sketch pad for the first time in recent memory, felt great and I need to have fun with art again. Been too serious lately, the kind of self importance that goes nowhere.

Okay, think I'll pop another vicodin and hit the sack! Let's keep our fingers crossed that the penicillin does it's magic and my mouth goes back to its old, happy self.

Tuesday, April 20

Evidently I've got a molar that's ready to blow, and this may be contributing to my general lack of enthusiasm these past few days. I'm angling to hit the dentist on Thursday, and as long as I can make it through tomorrow without this thing going nova, this should just be a couple of days of discomfort without spiraling into something more heinous.

Other than that, it's been fairly uneventful these past two days. Am not moving forward on my goals, and once I patch this tooth up, I'll be ready to go.

Oh, I did run into an old colleague and friend Mike McCarthy on the subway last night, which was an excellent surprise. He's an excellent conversationalist and writer, and I miss his voice in my life, there are so few truly interesting people in the world.

Sunday, April 18

Knowing what to do is one thing, doing it is another, I've been guilty of a lot of puffery lately relating to "getting serious" and today laid my hypocrisy exposed. There's no excuse, nor recrimination, I'm just being inattentive and somewhat lazy. In my lethargy I consumed "Monty Python: Almost the Truth", and excellent documentary of the troupe, and Eric Idle made an interesting observation that "people who want the Beatles back together just want to recapture their youth, and aren't really interested in what the old geezers are doing now". Cleese observed that he doesn't laugh as much, because he's heard all the jokes. Gilliam speaks of how difficult it is to be a 68 year old child, because there are so few surprises. All of these things, and more, got me thinking that there's a lot of that mortality thinking in the back of my mind, and it's influencing my attitude and actions. I've said this too many times, but perhaps now I "get it", I've got to shake things up. Shake them way the fuck up, my status quo is too comfortable, too self-satisfied, and I'm paying a price for it.

So, dear reader, keep an eye on the "Daily" block to the right, when the numbers look like they do today, I'm being a cock-up. When the numbers are equal or above, I'm in the game. The first step is to get to bed on time, so that the 5:00 wake up isn't such a shock.

Saturday, April 17

Slightly cooler in god's country (VA) today, beautiful, the pollen's kind of crunchy though and giving my eyes the business. Noticed that I've been gathering a lot of clutter, both physical and psychic, and need to be more judicious in what and who I allow into my life. If I had to choose a single word to describe my psyche these past few months, it would be "distracted", or deeper still "undisciplined". My goals are simple, and still I find myself chasing pleasure, when I should just allow that to happen on the fringes for the near term. I'll be taking a page from Napoleon Hill over the next few days, and develop that "burning desire that becomes an obsession". My complacency with past success is a sad, sad commentary on the machine I once was, and can be, when I bring all of my tools to bear. The scope of my ambition has been too small, it needs to grow. (Jesus, I just re-read that last passage, and if you're not "in my head" I'm sure it makes little to no sense, alas I'm in transition so bear with me).

Got my food prepared for the week, shined my shoes, cleaned things what needed cleaning. Oh, saw "Kick-Ass" this afternoon, and having read the source material, the movie is a significant improvement. It's not for everyone, but for genre fans, it's a big, fat, sloppy kiss. I'm not in the right state of mind to get lost in an escapist story, but if I was, this would be a good one.

Okay, Sunday is a day for fierce passion, passion I will take with me every day until I reach my current goals.

Friday, April 16

Evidently, it's time for me to take my own advice, and bear down on myself and achieve excellence. I continue to have the grand ambitions that I began the year with, and while I'm making fine progress, I'm letting the details slip and that's not how I roll. So. Here, this Friday April the 16th, marks the beginning of a new phase of focus. Two tools I've let slip, the Daily Journal (I don't need to tell anyone who keeps coming here and finding "February" as the latest entry) and the Weekly Schedule which is a paper tool I learned in college and is the best way I know to keep your head in the game.

Things that have been missed are a wonderful birthday "season", starting with my customers Deborah and Trish on Tuesday giving me a wonderful Burmese meal and a very nice gift. Wednesday brought a Thai meal courtesy of Richard and David, Thursday (the actual birthday) Jennifer treated me to dinner, Friday I got to catch up with Alex for another free meal and Saturday found me celebrating me with my family. Excellent.

Also collaborated with nephew Ellory to design and launch a site for an author in Colorado, lot of fun and it's been a long time since I did a home grown project like that.

Okay, once I save and upload this nonsense, I'm going to draft my schedule for the week. The targets I need to track in the next few months are simple but relentless:
1. Time Management (including sleep - been a bad boy)
2. Diet (need to add an element of mania to this high-protein cycle - have been a very bad carb boy)
3. Meet novel targets (nice weather = poor focus)

Doesn't sound that hard does it? Evidently you're not a lazy bastard. One more thing, a psychological one, need to limit mental energy on things I don't control, had a situation these last two days that got me way off task, I was anticipating something I had no reason to think was going to happen and it was a profound distraction. Okay, stay tuned loyal reader, this is going to be fun month!

Saturday, March 27

Sometimes your heroes disappoint, sometimes they exceed and sometimes they're just who you need them to be. I met Jim Steranko today, and if you're of a certain age and really loved comic books growing up, you know what an excellent moment it was. Well, not only loving comics, but also a budding artist and his work inspired me as only a few have.

I don't even know how I discovered he was going to be in town, but thank the interwebs I did. A three-hour appearance at Geppi's Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, with an exhibit of his original art for "Chandler: Red Tide". I can't tell you how much this particular work rocked me as an illustrator, though I now know I made a huge error thinking the original followed the usual size paradigm of comic art, it wasn't reduced but actual size (explaining a lot of my frustrations in trying to replicate it at much larger sizes).

I wanted to catch the whole thing, but got c-blocked by traffic when I initially set off for B'more. It was so bad I decided to turn back, when I got home I checked traffic and figured I could go the "long way" and still make it. Got there around 4:20 (an hour-twenty later than I had planned), paid my $10, and found the small crowd surrounding Steranko in front of a slideshow of his work. They were putting a mike on him for some BBC thing they were recording, and we went upstairs to the "Red Tide" exhibit, plus some paintings (a Planet of the Apes, a Shadow, a Spider, a comic cover featuring the Eclipse comics Valkerie, a recent Hercules cover, and another I can't remember...god, mind is going). He walked through the paintings, explaining as I'd always suspected that he wasn't a trained painter, though he did receive 30 minutes of instruction from the best guy he knew.

Great anecdotes on weasly coworkers (who, themselves were the lesser gods of my childhood) stealing art to resell, reading an article on Harold Robbins and stealing the negotiating tactic once used for "The Adventurers" for his own "Chandler" project. The progression of naming the project from Spillane (might get sued), to Hammett (Hellman estate would probably sue), then Chandler. Driving back and forth between Pennslyvania and New York, brainstorming new ideas as a way of making the trips profitable, coming up with the idea for History of comics, writing up some manuscript, only to have Stan Lee read it and say "too many good things about DC, I can't print this", self publication, distribution. The difference between an instinctive artist (Kirby) and himself (a designer more than illustrator, no wonder I was pulled to his art).

Getting his 10K check from the "Robbins tactic", setting out to create film on paper, identifying the soft/hard visual footprint of noir, then settling on graphite as the medium. Starting the way he wanted by designing, refining, then illustrating. Only to be told upon turning in the first pages that he had to move faster, realizing he had to get out of his comfort zone and illustrate directly with no design process. Taping up the windows in his studio, removing all evidence of time passing or time of day, eating and sleeping at the board. Cranking nothing but '30s jazz to stay in the zone, to color his thinking.