Category: Uncategorized

I had a plan, at the very very start of this year, that this would be a year when I’d start drawing again. It was very much a “plan” that I liked in theory more than practice, given that it lasted just one day before I abandoned it — I meant well, what can I say? — but it was something born of a real desire to do something creative for myself throughout the year.

This is, of course, also the year when this website kept failing, for reasons that were technical and beyond my understanding, never. Ind my control; as a result, the site was down for a few weeks a couple of times, and then the entire month of October. That last one was the one that really mattered to me, because it was the one that lasted and the one where I stopped writing here for an appreciable amount of time… and when I realized that this was the “something creative for myself” all along.

I’ve been thinking about my history with writing over the past few months; the loose-leaf sheets when I was a student that were versions of what I’d do here decades later, the zines I made when I was doing my Master’s degree, the reports and newsletters I wrote for various jobs and purposes in the years after that. I’ve been writing pretty continuously for more than a quarter century at this point, shifting (while in art school, ironically) from visual communication to written and training my brain to get better at that even when I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time. Writing is my process now. It’s what I do.

With that in mind, I thought that perhaps my 2024 plan should be to get a notebook for writing in. That doesn’t feel right, though; now, if I’m writing for myself, I want to do it here. When I didn’t have that option for a month, I felt the loss. Now that everything is back to normal, I want to take advantage as best I can… at least until my next personal retrospective changes my mind all over again, I guess.

…I really should draw more, nonetheless.

I’m not the best at packing for a trip, and that was especially true for the UK trip; at three weeks — well, just under — it was the longest trip I’d taken since, maybe, I was traveling to the States for months at a time before I moved here more than 20 years ago. I was out of practice, clearly, and I basically threw a bunch of stuff in the suitcase and hoped for the best.

What this meant in practice was that I ended up realizing halfway through the trip that I’d never noticed the number of holes in my jeans. And really, it was the holes in the crotch that were the problem; it’s not that I was wearing assless chaps, per se, but I was closer than anyone who’d feel comfortable with. They were so bad, in fact, that as soon as I realized their state, I decided to get rid of them. Why bring trash with me, after all?

The thing is, that wasn’t how it felt when I left the jeans behind. Perhaps it was the state of mind I was in at the time — tired, lonely, homesick — or maybe something else, but I remember very clearly the sense of sacrifice. Not in the way of, “I’m sacrificing something by leaving these behind,” but the idea of the jeans being a sacrifice to some unknown force that the rest of the trip would go quickly, and well, and that I’d be home again before too long.

I’m tempted to say it worked, but who can say? For all we know, the rest would have gone entirely the same had I carried the holey jeans with me. I prefer to think that wouldn’t have been the case, though; I like to believe in a world where magic like this exists, and it’s as simple as giving up a pair of jeans for the greater good. Magic that everyone can do.

Longtime readers of this site will remember that, back when I freelanced for THR, I made graphics for their newsletter every Friday; I used to post them here after a couple weeks, both for safekeeping/posterity, and also because there were often some that I liked, despite the speed at which they were produced.

Now that I’m at Popverse, I don’t really have the same need or opportunity to create images, although very occasionally, I’ve made edits to header images when necessary. It’s uncommon, but every now and then, when we need to have a “new” image for a story but there aren’t that many source images to choose from… so we have to come up with something new. They’re pretty understated, nothing that would really draw too much attention to themselves, but still be relatively aesthetically pleasing.

I mention all of this, because I’m a subscriber to Chip Zdarsky’s newsletter. You know, former Daredevil writer Chip Zdarsky. And in a recent newsletter, he clearly grabbed an image of the TV Daredevil from Google without thinking about it — and it was something I’d done for Popverse a few months back.

I take this as an unexpected compliment for my work, and a nice surprise to see first thing in the morning one day. Hey, if Chip Zdarsky thought it was good enough to use…!

It feels as if winter arrived overnight, when I wasn’t paying attention. I remember arriving back in the US in mid-November and feeling, as much as anything, surprised that it wasn’t colder and darker. Certainly, the days immediately following my return seemed surprisingly sunny, even with a crispness in the air. It added to my sense of disorientation, every time I stepped outside the house.

And then, unexpectedly suddenly, I was waking up to see frost on the roofs of the houses across the street, and freezing fog hiding everything past the end of the block. The air outside the bedclothes felt sharp and uninviting, and I started making the traditional winter deals with myself after waking up in the morning: I know I probably need to get up to piss, but if I get to stay under the warm covers, then I’ll do anything, I promise…

As much as it felt like the weather was cycling through the same catch-up routine I was moving through — shit, it’s almost December already, we’re supposed to have done stuff by now— there was a distinct sense of comfort in the change, as if everything was finally settling into some kind of place, some semblance of order, after literal months of upheaval and quiet chaos. I’d gone weeks (months!) of exploring new things and moving through new places, and finally I’d arrived somewhere where I knew the emotional landmarks and furniture.

This might just be me, of course, this happiness and cozy affection for the start of winter, with the shorter days and the colder weather. I’ve often claimed it’s because I’m an October baby and therefore it’s my time, but that’s as likely superstition and nothing more. Whatever the reason, as the weather collapses down into freezing temperatures and the need for sweaters, hats, and heavy jackets, I’m feeling grateful and comfortable to feel at home for the first time in too long.

I remember very clearly a point when I was a kid — a teenager really, probably 14 or 15 — and impatiently ready for Christmas; I kept a diary at the time, because of course I did, and it was full of exactly the kind of dull things that you’d expect me at that age to be writing about, even if I (of course) felt very passionately about it all at the time. The reason I’m telling you this, though, was that I have a shockingly clear memory of it turning December and my starting to count down to Christmas Day, feeling that it was impossibly far away at 24 days, 23, 22, and so on. How could it ever arrive, when it was still 20 days away.?

Compare that with this year, when someone pointed out at the end of last month that Christmas was just four weeks away, and I broke out in the emotional equivalent of a cold sweat, wondering how it could be so close already. I hadn’t even planned out what gifts I was going to get everybody just yet…!

I don’t know if this is purely an aging thing, or if this year in particular has made me curiously aware of how quickly time passes. Certainly, the anxiety over not having planned everyone’s presents feels entirely new; I can remember going shopping the weekend before Christmas last year with some gifts still to get and feeling utterly fine about it, for example. Now, though, I feel as if I’m playing with fire and convinced that something will happen to distract me and leave me on Christmas Eve realizing that I’ve forgotten something important.

If there’s an upside to this, it’s that my Season of Caution might result in me finishing all my yuletide chores early enough to allow me to enjoy the rest of December in a holiday haze. Alternately, I might end up just being far too conscious of the rushed passing of time to enjoy anything. It’s beginning to look a lot like… middle age, I guess.

When I was in Scotland last month, my electronics decided to try to commit suicide.

It started on Sunday morning when I managed to drop my phone while taking photos on my walk around Greenock; I’ve gone… however long I’ve had cellphones (two decades? More? Let’s go with more) without dropping my phone and damaging it, but that streak came to an end when it fell and the screen lowkey shattered on the top left, with cracks extending all the way down. Oh no, I thought, this might be trouble. Maybe I’ll have to get the screen repaired or maybe replaced.

Any question about that “maybe” was resolved when, less than two hours later, I dropped it again in the apartment I was staying in, making all the cracks significantly worse. I got online on my laptop and made an appointment in the local Apple store to get it repaired… and then, on rising after doing so, immediately tripped on the power cable for the laptop, throwing it across the room, putting a 30 degree bend in the part of the cable that connects to the laptop — thankfully, it still worked — and scratching the laptop up pretty badly.

That evening, I dropped the phone a third time, taking a solid chip out of the screen.

I was telling my sister about the first few events that evening, and she pointed out that, on the last trip to the UK in April, I plugged my phone into a wall socket, only for the socket to literally explode and destroy the charging cable in the process. (As well as the power adapter I was using at the time.) “Maybe you’re cursed when it comes to using anything in the UK,” she suggested. It was beginning to feel like it.

The next day, I went to the Apple Store and paid an extortionate amount of money to have the screen replaced; it didn’t take that long and, honestly, was a pretty straightforward process. When I left the Store, I tried to log into my phone… and I couldn’t. It refused to recognize my thumbprint. I rushed back to the Store and panicking, asked what was happening. “Oh, you just need to input your thumbprint again for the first time, we forgot to do that before,” they said. “Why are you so upset? It’s okay. It’s not like it’s broken or anything.”

I didn’t want to sound too out there, arguing that all of my electronics had been trying their best to convince me otherwise recently.

Like Billy Pilgrim, I am unstuck in time again.

As I write this, I’m lying in a bed in an AirBnB in Scotland, and it’s 10:56pm; I’m also just off the phone with Chloe who’s on the East Coast of the US, and it’s four hours earlier for her — until the clocks go back in the US this weekend (as I write), the usual time differences are lessened by an hour — and also thinking about everyone else back home, who is three hours in the past from that. At the same time, I feel curiously divorced from the place where I actually am; I had a sudden moment of realization that I am in the same time period as my sisters, which I know is clearly true because I spent the evening with them, and yet, almost feels impossible because it’s so rare. In a very genuine sense, I’m not sure what time it is.

A lot of this comes from the fact that this UK trip has been near-constant motion for me so far, something underscored by the fact that, this morning, I wasn’t just in another city, I was technically in another country — England, vs. Scotland — and it took me a coach (that broke down, and had to be replaced), a flight, and then an additional car ride to get where I currently am. I started my journey at 7am (having woken up at 4am, thanks to an errant text from my US healthcare provider), and didn’t arrive anywhere for the next eight hours, somehow. That’s what every day has felt like for the last… nine days? Maybe before that, even, before I even left Portland…?

It’s Friday night as I’m writing this, and I’m grateful for the fact that I don’t have to work and/or go anywhere for the next few days; I’m not working or traveling until Tuesday, so aside from day trips to Glasgow and spending time with family, I have no plans. That last part, the not having to be anywhere part, feels necessary to a degree which feels almost melodramatic to confess; as workaholic as I am, I had to tell my manager this week that I was overloaded and overstressed, and burned out as a result. I didn’t mean it in any sense that required him to do anything, but it felt important to just say it and leave the truth out there. This trip has been filled with many good, fun things; it’s also just been filled, and it’s time to take a break before I break.

Yes, the site was down again, and this time for an extended period: a whole month. (Well, just over, as it happened.) I noticed it was down almost immediately, but fixing it kept falling down a list of priorities that had far more important things on it: in the last few weeks, Chloe’s been sick, I’ve been traveling for work a lot — first to New York for a week for NYCC, and I’m currently in the UK for two different conventions and seeing my family once again — and, in between the two trips, sickness and vacations for other people meant that I was running the site at work essentially solo for an entire week, and and and. Things kept happening; fixing the site was something I wanted to do, but didn’t have time at that very moment, no matter when that very moment turned out to be.

The site being down also helped me deal with the fact that, because so much was happening, I probably would’ve struggled to keep up with it even if I’d been able to; on the New York trip — and the start of the UK trip, which was another 3 day convention for work — my days pretty much consisted of getting up, getting ready, and working straight through until dinner, then some more work, then collapsing into bed, with little or no time for reflection or relaxation in between. When I was running the site from home the week in between, my traditional worktime expanded by an hour or so daily, and the idea of spending more time looking at a screen was not a particularly attractive one. So: letting things be quiet here for awhile felt like a plus.

Now, though, it’s back. I’m back, and I have some things to catch up with — two months of comics read, if nothing else! Technology willing, I’ll be here for the long run from now on. As much as I needed the enforced break, I think, I need this outlet all the more. So, hi.

Is there such a thing as time dysmorphia? I’m having another of those instances where I feel as if I’m living in three different time periods at once, because of the various things cycling through my life as I write. Like Billy Pilgrim, I feel as if I’ve become unstuck in time… but, thankfully, with less trauma as a result. (Well, so I hope, at least; check in with me in a couple of months to see.)

Almost all of this is work-related to some degree. The part that isn’t is The Now, because… well, that’s where we actually all are. The Now is the everyday and everything that entails, from the to-do lists at the job to the simple tasks of eating, sleeping, and making sure everyone else in the house — human and otherwise — does the same thing. That’s the easy part; it’s the things that are happening right in front of your face that you can’t get by, and just need to take care of.

Then, there’s what’s happening three weeks from now as I write: a trip to New York for New York Comic Con, and everything that’s happening there. It’s the biggest show of the year, and the busiest, too (especially after how strange San Diego Comic-Con turned out to be this year; this one, at least, has celebrities and studios that have had the time to work their way around the strikes), and I already know some — but not all — of what I’ll be up to for it. Meetings and emails and plans are happening, and it’s easy to slip forward into that as if it’s already there.

And then, there’s what’s happening a week after I get back from New York: a three week trip back to the UK, which is also currently in the planning stages. I’m booking flights to multiple places at once, hotels and places to stay at multiple places, trying to work out when and where I’m going to be, and why: who to see, who to talk to… It’s overwhelming and dizzying to try to keep track of. (The potential interviewees are also dizzying in their own right.) Time is a flat circle, as the show and resulting joke had it, but it’s a concept I’m beginning to see the appeal of.

The strangest thing about this is, I actually have something approaching downtime before all this happens, but it doesn’t feel like it: there’s so much planning and conversation about what’s coming that the actual downtime, the weekends off, the theoretical relaxation, doesn’t feel real. All the time I should be savoring because things are about to be crazy, I spend thinking about the planning that hasn’t been done yet.

By the time I get to mid-November, I might have lost my mind. But at least I’ll be back in one piece again.