Of Fever Dreams and Getting Down with the Sickness...

For the last three weeks, I've been suffering from one kind of illness of another; on top of that, allergies. Other than having the bulk of my energy sapped, I'm in good spirits. I am actually getting organized.

Going to be out of town for a couple of nights, but I'm taking my sketchbook. See you in a few.

How to Fail Art: Procrastinate!

So, I skipped updating for nearly two months as research for this post.

Okay, no I didn't. I'm a procrastinator.

It really struck me home recently, just a few weeks ago visiting a friend who had a table at MoCCA. I told her proudly that I was working on my comic again. She looked at me and said, "no, you aren't." Damn her, but she was right. I'm a procrastinator.

One of the biggest inner demons I possess is my ability to stonewall ANYTHING to death. Seriously, if only it were just me procrastinating at drawing. My life has been a series of events that never quite fully took off, and there's a point where the cause of it all just can't be chalked up to mere laziness. I have an adult case of ADD with a mild case of depression, and recently I've been getting both treated via my veteran's benefits. For the first time in a decade, I'm on medication; I'm happy to report that it has indeed begun to help me in a big way. On medication, it's akin to being able to swim without a huge weight tied around your neck, but even off medication, I still managed to 'swim'. So no excuses here, now: even on meds, I'm still procrastinating!

You can take away all your problems, remove all distractions, obstacles, and still, still, Fail Art. All you have to do is just never get started again. It's a problem that's not unique to me -life happens, and many choose to go out and have an actual life. I'll update the comic later, no problem! And that blog about failing at art? All in good time!

Many, many webcomics die because they just lose steam and never get updated again. Or if they do, it's very half-hearted, or a short lived burst. Such a cartoonist may be lazy, or they might have good reasons for skipping out on updates, but either way without a good structure in place to allow comics to be made and published at a constant rate, it boils down to a hard question: do you want to be a cartoonist, or are you just going to keep playing as one?

It's a question I'm asking myself tonight, on the seventh anniversary of my first attempt to put a webcomic online. And I'm going to reply 'I'll give it another shot. I'm done procrastinating!'