The ongoing board game saga continues; tonight’s lineup was Tiny Epic Quest, Santorini and Sushi Go! Party.
It was literally down to a tie-breaker scoring in the tie-breaking third game, but I came out in second place this time. I don’t mind; it was a fun time with my fiancée, and that’s all that matters.
The weather was inhumanly warm today, and I wasn’t feeling all that up to drawing, but the work must continue:
I’m going to be lettering the rest of this first issue before I do any more refinement on the artwork, so that I can get all my sketches properly laid out with the captions and dialogue. I want these pages to look as good as possible.
There’s only so many hours in the day that I can devote to scouring the job market before I get up in my own head; how fortunate that my habit building is paying off:
I’ve been able to spend several hours a day on my upcoming comics, but I want to keep this habit going at least every other day, especially if a day comes when I’m too worn out to work on the other comics. It may get to the point where I use this habit slot to specifically work on smaller stuff like Magic Beans; I’d likely use it as my cut-off point for the day.
Last night, my tabletop group met for the first time in nearly seven months; life just kept getting in the way, and we haven’t been able to meet consistently since then.
I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy taking on the role of Dungeon Master for my friends, especially ones with such great chemistry. Barely a session goes by where we don’t get some new kind of in-joke forming from their crazy antics, which I’m am only too happy to facilitate.
One of the silver linings of being unemployed is that when my fiancée has a day off, we can spend it together, and we were in luck that Valentine’s Day is one of them.
We’re both good-naturedly competitive when it comes to board games, but after 8 years together, we can laugh whether we win or lose.
Today was the first day that I could not complete my daily workout; I got about 2/3rds through the first set and my knee felt ready to pop out.
As much as I don’t want to break my streak, I’m paying attention to my body when it says “Nope.” I can always get back to it tomorrow with something hopefully less impactful on my knees.
One of the blocks on my Art Bingo card for this year is a redraw of an art piece from 10 years ago or more. Looking back at some of my art from 2015 and before was really a great indication of how far I’ve come since then.
This isn’t the artwork I’ve been redrawing; if I’d simply pasted the actual art in this comic, it wouldn’t have taken 14 minutes, so in order to keep with the spirit of the exercise, this is just an allegory.
Something that I resolved to keep in mind this year, is to always acknowledge when I’ve accomplished something, even if it’s something small; whether it’s a piece of art, a particularly grueling workout, or a household chore, I take note of when I’ve done well.
In my current state of mind, those are the kind of things that keep me going when I feel like the world is out to get me.
Anyone who saw my #gentlecomicshabit post yesterday will know what the big event of the week is; for those who didn’t, there’s no beating around the bush:
I’m unemployed again.
My probationary period with the company came to an end, and they decided that the position they had tried to carve out for me wasn’t a good fit with the organization as a whole, and as a result there was no longer a place for me there. While they acknowledged my talent in some areas and pointed out my difference in tastes elsewhere, it didn’t matter in the end because there just wasn’t enough for me to do that could justify my continued employment.
I’m not going to lie: this sucks. I don’t know if the full weight of it hasn’t hit yet, or if I’m just numb to the idea of being let go at this point, but I’m just feeling adrift at the moment. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, got up with a raging headache and was generally out of sorts all morning; thankfully some food, some meds and a nap helped with that by the end of the day, plus my workout involved a lot of shadowboxing in order for me to relieve some stress. No comic upload alongside this blog, call it a skip day, I’ll have something new tomorrow.
On Monday, I’ll be going into the office one more time, just to fill out all the necessary paperwork, and then it’s back into the job market for me. I already have a few ideas where to start, as well as some friends and family that can hopefully point me in the right direction to find something new. On the other hand, since I’ll be at home all day, it’ll be a good opportunity to keep building my portfolio; I doubled down on writing the last time, now I’ve go no excuse not to go all out on art.
To that end, I want to start frequenting my local library at least a few times a week. As much as I enjoy being at home with the cats and having the fridge almost within arms reach, such things are a major distraction, and I think I could get a lot done by spending three or four hours in a quiet, office-like environment instead.
No time to sit on my laurels like before; three months of employment is nowhere near as exhausting as four years without a significant break, so this weekend will be my only grace period. Come Monday, the real work begins.
Ciao for now.
It happened again, just when everything seemed to be going well…
I’ll figure out my next step over the weekend. Right now, I don’t want to think about anything.
