Ambition and Itinerary

The past few weeks have been fucking killing me at work.  It’s the busiest month of the year, and two people from my team left at the start of the month.  I get home and am a dead thing, too tired to move or think.  This on top of having to look for a place and move.  It doesn’t stop there, because next week the Fall semester starts, which is another busy time at work!  This ‘day job I can stand’ has turned into what every day job I’ve ever had has been: soul-crushing.

There.  That said, I, like thousands of years of Christian peasants, am enduring the hardships of the present in hope of future pleasures.  (I should point out that I am not a Christian peasant.)  I have made a solemn vow to myself that by this month next year, I will be ready to quit full time day jobs forever and be supported solely by creative work.  It’s a tall order for 12 months, coming off of years of creative paralysis, but not impossible.

To jump-start me from the scattered stories and sketches that I do now to producing finished work, I will write two novels by the end of the year.  September and October I’ll be writing a zombie novel, and if it doesn’t suck I’ll be submitting it for publication.  Then in November, I’ll participate in NaNoWriMo, probably fleshing out a sci-fi short I wrote this past weekend.  Whether I deem them worthy of submission or not, I will start and finish in the time specified.

Then in December I’ll take it easy a bit, and begin prep work for a webcomic opus I’ve had brewing in my head for awhile.  In January I’ll do a shorter piece to practice, a webcomic I’ll update every weekday in January based on a fragment I sketched out last year (which is indebted to Peter Blegvad’s Leviathan, although it is nothing like it, and an abandoned storefront I liked walking by in Berkeley.)

This implies that during January I’ll be in the process of rebuilding my comic/art site (currently down) to prepare for the webcomic I’ll start in Feb/March (depending on website stuff) which I’ll update two times a week (maybe more once it gets rolling).  FOREVER.

All this is assuming that I have no major impactful life changes and do not win the lottery, in which case all of these things will still happen, but the schedule will get wonky due to my touring the world in luxury.

Let me know if you want to help edit some novels, build a website about my work, or support me financially for years.  Should I win the lottery and am able to take companions on my travels around the world, I’ll let you know.

Problems with SteamPunk – must be the pipes…

My email response to D.Billy after he forwarded me this article seemed like it should go here, so here it is.

I didn’t realize it (Steampunk) was that widespread beyond con-goers and BoingBoing’s constant fellation…but then again, my experience at NYCC and ConectiCon lead me to believe that cons are closer to the mainstream and actual useful methods of cultural connection these days.

Anyway, the problem with Steampunk is the ‘punk’ part, and has always been for me.  There isn’t much ‘punk’ about it – there literally can’t be.  There isn’t really much that’s ‘punk’ about punk anymore, if you
really get down to brass tacks.  In the light of capitalism’s complete triumph, that is, corporate control of government, media and culture, especially in the 80s and 90s, anything that can be marketed is
immediately stripped of it’s ability to be purely a rebellious or DIY movement the moment someone sees a profit in its mass-production and mass-marketing.  Thus we have shoe ads that say, “The mainstream is
polluted,” or that mimic the first minor threat album cover.
What does that have to do with steampunk?  The consciousness of this causes some folks to get a little too excited when something stays around long enough to gain a distinct identity and be recognized
culturally with first being co-opted by corporate interests.  This same po-mo consciousness leads folks to be suspect of anything that seems to be a fashion of rebellion without being the real thing.  I
think there is an urge to try and compare anything with a distinct aesthetic to an imagined past punk rebel utopia, and it will inevitably be found wanting.
My personal interest in steampunk is that I think it can be pretty, hot ladies like it, and it takes some DIY doing to make it.  I also like aesthetics that inject a little whimsical fantasy or fantastical thought into the everyday, people that you immediately invent little adventure stories about in your head.  That said, when
confronted with people dressed this way, most of the time I have to choke back my own revulsion at anything that smacks of pretentiousness or conscious thought and effort put into clothing.  This is a result
of the grunge mentality that was drilled into me as my generation’s (really those a few years older) first feeling of independence from what came before it/us/them.

–

(note: in case it isn’t clear, my general feeling is that people should buy/dress/act however the hell they want.  That said, everything is open to discussion/theory/criticism.  Also, SteamPunk can be liberating/interesting/hot.  I thought I should add those points after re-reading.)

The Design Observer article linked in the i09 post linked above is worth your read.

I made a silly comic…

I’ve been wanting to make comics for a long time, and I’ve been writing them lately, but putting off drawing them forever…then someone I don’t even know called me on it. So I drew one. Then colored it and arranged it in Photoshop. I even used a Wacom tablet for the first time. Now I will crash.

You can see it over there on my Flickr ->

I missed an Important Meeting because of my alarm

I was in my office, getting ready for an Important Meeting, when my alarm went off and I woke up.  I hit snooze, but didn’t get back to sleep, so I totally missed the Meeting.  Apparently, when I dream I am a person who has Important Meetings.

A beautiful place…

This may be the best website ever.  My favorite of the week, anyway.  (Note: people jumping on beds.  Clothed, mostly.)