fri/20220729

Yesterday I said, "back when I ran a publishing company" and it hit me that I'm running one now only this time it's all me.

PRESS(A)01 definitely delayed but only by a week or two (this was part of the design in leaving June-August and December-February free of other releases): in what is most certainly a cliché, I had a dream last night and it gave me the conclusion that the piece needs. Going to work this bit until I get it right – or at least until it feels right enough with what came before it. Final edit / linedit pass and even-numbered page numbers yet to go on the Affinity iteration of it – BTW, I've found that doing two line edit passes – the first with odd numbers, the second when I add even numbers – works well.  Absolute final deadline remains Sunday, 07 August.

I'm not feeling THE BOYS this season. Something's off.

thu/20220728

The pieces are in place and the typos have been mostly corrected and my brain is in a half with-it capacity having slept last night at a blood sugar under 200 which was lovely and I have to do that again – my body may have other ideas but I'm pumping it with so much insulin something's got to break (for the good, though possibly for the ill).

Here's what I'm thinking re: PRESS(A) 01's release: if I haven't printed out a full, physical copy by tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to delay the full release. I'm on no one's timetable but my own so I can do that sort of thing, nice/nifty. Absolute, final deadline, though, is the day I turn 41 (07 Aug); it is my birthday present to myself, my final settling of her estate.

There are 15 bags of mulch in the truck. I see lifting and carrying and mulching much mulch and more editing and rewriting in my day's future that may or may not come to fruition.

wed/20220727

"The Final Countdown" has, appropriately, been stuck in my head all morning. Pagination, margins, print tests, snap/to, etc etc etc: my capacity for switching roles, especially without space between – as is the general way it goes in the summer – is at a low ebb (not that I'm very good at it any other time during the year). Snippy/snappy, et al.

And yet here I am – even though I told myself that it probably wasn't a good idea to do these morning things while the PRESS (A) endgame is being run. While I generally don't listen to myself, I'll chalk these up to wanting to write something in the midst of being in the throes of publisher/designer role until the last bit of laser toner is spilled and the first copy fully assembled.

The writer wants to play again but my brain is in the margins – and so it is and so it goes. Going feral not unlikely.

tue/20220726

12 point spacing between lines, margins lined up, on and on it goes: racing towards that first print test; trepidation ensues but relief that I only have to do this for the first time once. 73 pages.

Back screaming slightly less than last night so that's nice, mower back being a brutal beast, especially when you screw up any lumbar support said mower may have once possessed by getting clotheslined and thrown by a swingset – back/ass, meet ground  – but that's a story for another time already told.

I love my new doorstops and will order more doorstops soon. Back to work.

mon/20220725

It is still finished and I've thus spent the morning neck deep in the throes of Affinity Publisher formatting/final edits (never underestimate the impact that page turns will have on a text) but the dominant notion this morning is that I already want to go back to bed; tornado warnings at 0100 (north of us, we had some lightning but nothing major) and a strange sensation of being stretched like putty which threw my balance off considerably. Maybe I was replaying what Wanda did to 838-Jim-from-The-Office?

Goal today is to wrap up the formatting so I can see how the formatting actually looks on paper and then decide if I have to scrap it and start over with a larger format. I think I have to finish mowing the in-lawn too.

Hm. That stretching feeling might have basis in reality.

final edits of a deadline blown

… on the final parts of PRESS(A) 01: tightenings and transpositions and memories resurgent via aural readings, for better or for worse. Doesn't look like I'll hit my lock deadline of today but, as was the case with my first blown deadline, COMICSTORYWORLD, it will be worth it (screenwriter for Abrams's STAR TREK called me up for an interview I’d forgotten I requested two days before the second deadline). Pushed it to Wednesday, though my guess is that I'll be able to say "I'm finished" before then.

Still aiming for release next Sunday to newsletter subscribers though I might push that off until the next week. All depends on how the assembly process goes. Don't want to rush it.

weight bearings

(previously...)

28ºF, sunny: I am almost able to breathe through both nostrils and am, for the most part, fully recovered from the last week. Exhausted, but that's nothing new. As a good friend said yesterday, I'm bearing a lot of weight on my shoulders. My shoulders hurt: edging closer and closer to those immortal words, "fuck it": fuck the politics of it all, the caring, the waste of breath, the constant feelings of a life if not unlived than lived on others' terms and wants and needs. None of the weight, the pressure, has been worth it nor will it ever be in the future.

Started re/emergence0006 and found something I enjoy and can have fun with. Weird, all that good stuff: sometimes it's fun just to go into something with no expectations of anything and noodle about until you find something that strikes you and build on that. Temporary break on re/e0006 for next two workblocks to put together tomorrow’s newsletter.

breathing out of one nostril sorta

(previously…)

Delightful evening out at restaurant for first time in a year with good friends and delicious large shrimp and rye dulled the edge of the snow-covered rising this morning at 32ºF after yesterday's 70ºF under high winds and texts WRT barn collapse and transitional care (the collapse was much more interesting): my sinuses, they doth protest.

Finished TITANFALL 2 last night: def. recommend. IRON GIANT meets PACIFIC RIM (minus Kaiju) meets RED FACTION. Also finished the second half of MOON KNIGHT's debut and I'm in.

The first chunk of the day's work was one of those one-handed unicorns: a good writing morning. A skeleton emergent / a day awaiting.

voidwind serenade

Adrift in that post-release void, uncertain of my next steps except to take one and to do the work and all that stuff. Have to get better at ignoring the silence. Just do my thing and be. Working on it.

High wind warning at 2334 heralded, appropriately, high winds all night long, the open window and aforementioned high winds doing little to make my seasonal allergies made all the more worse by the superhighbounceballness of it all any better but the warning was cancelled not long before I got up and, after some heavy rain that I didn't hear because I was working and listening to good music, the sun is shining and the winds seem to have settled until they decide to unsettle themselves because Ohio. The fence still stands. Victory.

I am fascinated by these 360ºpop-up books.

Halfway through MOON KNIGHT Episode One (long story as to why we only made it halfway). Digging it and no I don't care about his accent. Picking up some Latveria / Doctor Doom vibes from Ethan Hawke and his village even though I know that "mygod this means INSERT MEPHISTO OR OTHER VILLAIN HERE is finally coming to the MCU" is the in thing and I'm definitely wrong anyhow so there.

Eating in a restaurant tonight, first time in almost a year: ever since T1D, I pretty much stopped enjoyed dining out – especially since I can cook most of what I would eat elsewhere at home anyhow; the plague made that decisive lack of enjoyment even more prevalent. Wasn't worth the effort. Good friends do, however, have a way of changing that calculus.

i am generating silence

Waiting room days are at an end, the patient being in transitional care for the next three weeks, meaning that I can, for 21 days at least, close the eye that's always open just a little bit.

Nearing completion of THE SOCIALIZED RECLUSE’s second return, that return being a conversation with Wallace Stroby on my favorite film of all time, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Silence generation this morning as I still have to solve the high gain requirements of the Scarlett 2i2 picking up every bodily function and movement in the spaces between and sometimes below my words. The ease of recording with it, though, makes it all worthwhile. Again, should wrap that up sometime before lunch and release shortly thereafter. Will update this post accordingly once it's live.

Beware giant goldfish.