I found myself wondering yesterday why I was so tired, and then had to laugh at myself. Here's what's been going on:
I have been exercising for about five days a week pretty consistently since early October, usually in the mornings AND afternoons. I am halfway finished with my Christmas shopping and it's not even December. I've been using Duolingo everyday for 25 days now to brush up on Spanish and try to learn Japanese, and only just last night dialed my daily goal down from 50XP to 30XP because it was getting to be a little too much to keep up with. I am juggling two long, dense videogames and dipping in and out of two or three more. When I allow myself time, I watch Ultraman Geed or Gamemaker's Toolkit, ignoring everyone talking about Stranger Things 2, the Punisher, and all these other shows, as well as ignoring the stack of movies that's been on my shelf forever. I decided I wanted to brush up on anatomy and have started going back through one of my books and taking notes on the skeletal and muscular systems. I've been to four different shows this month, two punk and two more folksy/country. I'm on the last hundred pages of the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and getting anxious over how I still haven't finished this Savage Sword of Conan comic collection that I started reading two or three months back.
(stressing over the amount of entertainment you have access to is a really REALLY dumb thing and I wish it didn't bother me so much, but here I am)
And I'm out of my art funk just in time, through expensive retail therapy: taking advantage of some holiday deals, I've replaced my old scanner/printer with a new one that can scan my full 11x17in pages all at once rather than scanning in halves and stitching them together in Photoshop like I've done for most every single comic I've drawn since the first Burst Reach. I also realized just how badly my productivity was affected by my laptop dying early last year, so I bought a new one and a copy of Clip Studio Paint. So on top of everything in the previous paragraph, I'm learning new hardware and software to get back on track with the webcomic I want to launch next year. You can guess what the webcomic is about:
I also drew another social justice kaiju:
After spending all month doing little to no drawing, it feels like I have to learn how to draw all over again alongside the new tools, so it's slow, but it's happening. I'm also trying to put together a figure drawing party for December since I passed on it this month.
Oh, and the FRAG Holiday Bizarre is next Saturday:
I haven't really started preparing for that. I also went ahead and got signed up for next year's Conapalooza, and hopefully I'll actually get to table at ETSUcon again, since I've already applied rather than waiting til the last moment.
So it's no wonder I feel like this:
Of course I'm exhausted, of course I feel like all of my wires are crossed, of course I'm having difficulty getting my priorities in order. I'm trying to do too many things at once and need to breathe. So I'm going to go do that for a bit this week. Maybe you should too, if you're feeling ragged yourself.
One more thing. Here's a painting that I started drawing during the summer, inked and painted in September, lost under a pile of comics, and finally scanned with the new scanner this month. It took forever to come up with a title, but I've decided to call it Approaching the Right Path, because I feel like I'm getting there:
Finally: I'm getting a buttonmaker for Christmas. I am excited for all of the things I am going to make with it.
(Yes, the title of this blog post is also the title of one of my entropy paintings that's also a self portrait)