February 25, 2014

Operation: Make It Through the Day Without Curling Into a Ball on the Couch and Sobbing for No Reason was officially declared a failure at 9:30am, at which point Matt made me go back to bed again since I'd only gotten five hours of sleep-- which is about double from what I got yesterday night, so that's some steady improvement right there! 

Once again, I got a super late start getting into the studio and getting started on my work. HOWEVER, I totally roughed out all five pages of my interview with porn star Jiz Lee! AND I did some serious groundwork on a half-page orgy for it that I thought sounded like a good idea when I was thinking of ideas for the comic and then once I started penciling it I realized oh right drawing tons of people having group sex is REALLY HARD YOU IDIOT WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF. 

Tomorrow should be enough time to ink the four non-orgy pages and then I'll probably have to do the orgy page on Thursday. 

In spite of how much work it's going to be, I actually did have a fun time laying out the group sex scene, finding all those difference positions, and I'm... looking forward to inking it. I'm excited about something I have to draw! 

The last two days have been rough, with my hormones all out of whack, and it drove home the fact that I need to really take extra precautions with my mental health and anxiety problems this year so I don't have another two month long breakdown like I did last year. With that in mind, I canceled a talk I was going to give in May at a university because that's when I should be neck-deep in OJST book stuff, between the Kickstarter and dealing with the printer. Public speaking used to be no big deal for me, but starting last year it became A Big Deal. A Big Bad Deal. They've been taking a really hard physical toll on me, making me dry heave or throw up bile from anxiety for a few weeks leading up to the event and then another week afterwards as my body slowly relaxes again. So I canceled the May lecture. 

I have a super low-key book reading I'm doing in two weeks with Jeff Parker about our graphic novel Bucko, and a couple panels I'm doing at conventions-- but those are all group things, conversational. I'll be okay with them, but I think for the rest of the year I'm going to turn down all Official Lecture invitations. Maybe next year I'll be in better shape. 

Ending this on an up note: I got to go out to lunch with my studiomate Lucy Bellwood* and our editor at The Nib**, Matt Bors***. I love talkin' shop and eatin' food with cartoonists I admire. It is so good. 

*Lucy Bellwood http://www.lucybellwood.com
**The Nib https://medium.com/the-nib
***Matt Bors http://mattbors.com 

Alright, good night you lovely perverts.