Yesterday I got paid and for some reason, it seemed like a smaller paycheck than usual. But, I just checked it, and no, it's correct.
I just don't make a lot of money working roughly 24 hours a week at a rate that's less than a dollar more than the NY State minimum wage. But, I also don't really want to work more hours. What I NEED to do is try to focus more on earning money as a freelance artist in the hours i'm not working my regular job.
That's a GOAL, yo.
Meanwhile, yeah. I'm also trying to finally finish The Cat's Meow, the comic story that my best friend Steve D'Addieco wrote for me to illustrate back in... 1984, I think (cripes).
4:34 pm
Oh, man. It's already 4:30???
I'm really not very focused today. I've done a couple productive things, but nothing big and I accomplished those tasks in spite of myself. I'm just meandering through the day, I'm not very focused.
One of the stupid habits I've gotten into is realizing there are some tasks I have to do, prioritizing them, and then... not wanting to do it, But then I don't do anything else because I feel I should do this prioritized thing FIRST. Except I don't wanna. So, I don't and don't do anything else either, etc., etc., fucking etc.
Maybe simply articulating this idiocy will motivate me to get off of my ass and get it over with.
God, I'm stupid.
Meanwhile, in this First Year As A Sexagenarian, I'm hoping to rediscover the impulsive energy I had when I was a twenty year-old, just plunging into projects rather recklessly without much forethought, although this time around, actually following through on them. Self-analytically speaking I think I've gotten more hesitant over the years due to second-guessing myself out of perfectionism AND self-doubt and then, also realizing I tend to procrastinate so being self-aware of this performance weakness ironically sabotages my self-confidence as well (as opposed to informing my self-knowledge and attacking this weakness head on).
Whatever. If I am at all going to get things done, I just have to get through these mental obstacles and self-handcuffing practices.
I have to. I HAVE TO.
Friday, July 17 10:54 am
Yesterday was Thursday, and I actually remembered to post something on Facebook re: #ThrowbackThursday. I took a bunch of pictures from a sketchbook I was working on in 1979 and also some issues of the Buffalo State College RECORD from 1984, mostly. The sketchbook is from when I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. The photos aren't the greatest (I don't know why part of it always seems out of focus). But I posted some of my self-portraits, also a drawing I did of a lion from the Buffalo Zoo. Some of the things I didn't post were other pencil figure studies from class, a couple other unfinished zoo sketches, my attempt at caricatures, and then some character design stuff I did later, like, after I came back home from Pittsburgh. The RECORD stuff was assorted cartoons and some spot illustrations. Maybe I'll actually get my ass over to Office Max and properly scan this artwork and re-post these, but for now, here's what I shared last night:
Thursday, November 19, 4:08 pm
Jeez, FOUR MONTHS LATER???
Okay, I need to wrap this post up, publish it, and move on.
Well, catching up a bit, but broadly:
My wife went back to school (she teaches at a private boys high school, juniors and seniors, AP and Honors English) in September but there were a number of new procedures they instituted. Of course, everybody is still wearing masks. The boys had these portable plexiglas foldable cubicle things that they put on the desk in front of them. I've never seen them. They either have only a front and one attached piece (so L-shaped) to keep it upright, or its 3-parts and opens up like a U, so the student has a wall on either side of him as he watches through the front piece, if this makes sense. I believe it's the latter, because that seems to make more sense. Unfortunately, they're not the most durable things. I guess some broke the first day as students accidentally dropped them. Duct tape has come into play to fix these things. After a few weeks, my wife eventually got some rolls of clear packing tape to offer kids who had busted "plastic walls/portable cubicles" (I'm not sure what they actually call them).
In addition, the school's windows have been kept open to increase air circulation. Of course, it's now November and we're in Western New York, so things have been cold. Except for last week when we had a stretch of delightful unseasonably warm days (high 60s, even 70s!). I don't know how long they intend to keep doing that, but it may have be a moot point now since, as of yesterday, Governor Cuomo has returned Erie County us to Level Orange (from Level Yellow), so next week (11/26) the school starts teaching remotely again to all the students.
But, things have been at a more "relaxed" level for several weeks now. I can't remember when it started. End of summer? Earlier? Sorry, I'm bad at taking notes.
We haven't stopped wearing masks when we go out in public but slowly things have been getting more lax: people eating in restaurants, stores opening, etc. At the grocery store I work at, they had been leeping customers to one line and then peeling them off to the individual cashiers as away to monitor how many customers were in the store. That's stooped happening and returned to a more conventional, open method (people just getting in line at whatever cashier was open) but i don't if that will chaneg again now that we're back to Level Orange. I'll see tomorrow. As it is, yesterday we returend to spraying sanitizer ion the grocery carts we pull in. We had been doing that, then we stopped and left it up to the customer to use cart wipes. Also, we only sanitized the carts every two hours. The cart wipes were always available, it's just that us sanitizing the carts when we brought them in was another level of sanitizing. So, we're back to doing that.
And if they go back to watching how many people are in the store at the same time, well, that's going to be fun as we go into the weekend before Thanksgiving.
So... that's a bit of an update.
Oh, also, we had the election and a couple days after Election Day, since there were so many mail-in votes across the country, Biden was declared the winner but Trump wouldn't concede (the actual election day being Nov. 3, I think Biden was declared winner on Nov. 6). He still hasn't officially conceded, but there are now news stories saying:
“Do not expect him to concede,” one top aide said. More likely, the aide said, “he’ll say something like, ‘We can’t trust the results, but I’m not contesting them.’”
Another adviser said that after the legal battles and recounts, the closest the president is likely to get to a concession is, “he’ll acknowledge the results and that we’ll never know how accurate they are.”
“But we’re not there yet,” the adviser said.
(from NBC News, Nov. 11)
So, we'll see about that.
Anyway, I'm not sure when we actually stopped doing the lockdown thing over the summer. But, it's now 248 days since the original social isolation began. Things were loosened up a bit, but we're still dealing with Covid-19 as we go into the winter.
As for my attempts at trying get some drawing down, I'm still failing spectacularly at accomplishing anything. In late August and the beginning of September, I suddenly went back from working 24 hrs/wk starting in April to working 40 hrs/wk because they were short-handed as kids went back to school. But then they hired a new coordinator for our department and I was able to ease back a bit and I'm more working more like 32 hrs/wk. The additional 8 hours is great, actually, because I got into the habit of buying more stuff on-line this year, especially from eBay: underground comics, old paperback novels, etc.
Speaking of which, I have to stop my impulse shopping for a bit and start saving up for Christmas!
But, I'm digressing again!
I've impulsively started anew project this month: re-making this one-page comic story I did back in '82-'83 when I was working on the Buffalo State RECORD. My original intent was to do an 8-page remake of the original 1-page comic and to set Nov. 31 as my deadline, a specific response to my friend pam trying to write her script for her comic story as part of her Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month, natch!) challenge.
So, that was my initial goal: re-do the 1-page story, "Karen's Dilemma!" as an 8-page story and finish it Nov. 31. I think i decided to do this Nov. 15, halfway through the month. Okay, I'm already behind, but still, since the original 1-page story was done in 11 hours to meet a newspaper deadline, I thought it was still do-able.
Of course, since I started thinking about this project, it's already going through some structural changes, but I'll leave that for my next post...
Although, I will say this: the (working) title for this 8-Page re-make comic story is, 2145 A.D.: THE PERTINACIOUS ODYSSEY OF STARLA SOLARO.
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