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Weariness continues, though I'm doing far, far better than yesterday. Two sleepless nights took - and continue to take - their toll. A new surprise project has lurched forward and made its mark via a new burn on my wrist (thankfully not from the laser: I can both give cancer and remove it, go me). Had written a thing about another thing but didn't think that thing was worth committing to the digital ether. Not saying this one is either but at least it's more of the moment than the other thing was. A note to myself: "the words still aren't there; were they ever?"

cart / horse

Surprise surprise I got ahead of myself again and thought of form (zine! anthology!) and totally froze myself. Rededicating myself to working in / on whatever interests me in the moment and taking it day by day, minute by minute: shaping scrap metal, joining words together, drawing little index card cartoons of myself every morning, writing these things at midday. Not to say I won't pursue longer form or longer term works (longform doesn't always mean long term) but I won't set out to do so or assign it / them deeper value to my day and life than that. Make, release, make, release, make release...

the fathoming

While I've never had a problem running companies or saying good things about other people's output (if I like them), it's always been difficult for me to do the same with my own: there's a mental block that keeps me behind a wall of my own insecurity – even though I know I'd buy my stuff, I can't fathom others wanting to. As my wife said, I'm my own worst enemy (I've always known this one); as I only just realized, I'm now my only enemy: I've no one to create in spite of - I've only got to create for myself: I can be as weird as I want to be without having to justify myself to anyone. Hopefully – now that I know which wall to chip through – I can give myself the permission to accept, on a visceral level, that if I'd buy my stuff, it's fathomable that others might be as well.

filmic ennui

Trying to find my way back to a passion for film – not for the medium itself (I still adore it) but for the enjoyment of sitting by myself, deciding what to watch, then watching it. Thinking the root of the problem is two-fold: one, perhaps I've been looking at films from a "–maker's" perspective that I've lost the ability to just enjoy them for their own sake (not dissimilar to music when I left music school); and two, all of my people who I'd talk to about them are dead or gone. Books I don't have a problem with; comics, same. But I'm struggling to find my way back to that cinematic passion, the one who would salivate at the latest Criterion release or some other way to spend money on being in the presence of the promise of a cinematic experience. Thought I’d found my way back with a rewatch of THE MENU but, alas; maybe the answer is the same as it is for everything: accept it for what it is and know that it'll change eventually. Doesn't make it any easier.

"investigate yourself"

Beautifully put and particularly apposite for me these days, as I consider wrapping one phase of my creative life and moving to something new — and (as yet) unknown.

recapturing

Windy, cold: hello, Winter. Efforts underway in earnest to either recapture my passion for writing or to let it go with happiness as The Swell Season said and move on. Swapping out the order of bloggy release – Herbie and I will appear in cartoon Informality form midday, at least until I change my mind and revert to the same old same old – is part of it, the opening salvo, mostly to churn something again, to feel my brain wrap around a subject or twenty, to reconcile itself in text – present goal being to make this space one of synthesis, first in text, then in cartoon form; the opposite wasn't working, nor was synthesizing solely in cartoon form. Perhaps this will be the right path for this moment until this moment passes which may be in a year or by midday when I realize that I’ve made a terrible mistake and cartoon Herbie and I take it out on myself.

processing

Thinking today of how my means of processing life, my processings of processings, have changed over time. Writing - journaling in notebooks and reMarkables or blogging here - used to be the main way, but now I seem to have moved more over into fiction and cartooning. Attendance Cards as graphic blogging, having replaced the old daily maunderings that gave birth to this space for the last two years now.

In an effort to figure out where I am now – who I am now, creatively and, perhaps, more deeply – I've spent the last few years revisiting all of the art forms of my past: while it wasn't unpleasant to work thorugh Stone's STICK CONTROL, a return to music yielded little more than a reminder of why I left music in the first place (it served its purpose, to get me out of Ohio when I needed it most) and so here I am, even further back, playing with drawing and the memories of stick figures with my grandmothers at their respective dining room tables. Maybe this is where I was always meant to be, having given it up in my late teens, or maybe it's nothing in particular but what it is. Doesn't matter. I'm enjoying myself either way.

It's a hell of a thing to discover the source of your deep-rooted disappointment with yourself: only took 43 years to figure it out, but wow. Better late than never?

exploring

At the risk of sounding like a TED talk circa 2010-12, I've been relabeling my working time as "exploring time," a distinction from previous iterations of I: instead of being a writer or working on a project or learning to draw, cartoon, whatever, I'm exploring writing, exploring drawing, cartooning, zine-making, what have you. Part of it is a removal of a should / must / have to aspect of my creative practice instilled in me not only by my music conservatory background (that uniquely creative form of Catholic guilt) but by viewing my practice as a means of escape for parts bigger and better and what have you. As my brief bio says, "Among other things, I write": this is my way of freeing myself to explore those other things sans guilt or have to / must / should.

a third place

Intrigued by Oldenburg’s concept of the "third place" and cognizant that, as I've been working from home for 95% of my "career," I don't even have a second place, except The Paintshop, nevermind alone a place possessed of the communal / conversational features of Oldenburg's characteristics. Online and virtual doesn't count (in my mind). Maybe I need to work on readjusting my mindset to The Paintshop being both the second and third places? – though given that I haven't felt at home at any place save my grandparents' house on the lake and my shoebox apartment in Boston (perhaps that’s why I loved the city so much: an abundance of potential third places?), one could argue that I barely have a first place. Note that this isn't a lament, necessarily, but perhaps a framework for making my spaces feel more like a home. Added Oldenburg's book to the Kindle, as seems to be my wont for most non-fiction works of late. Food / thought, etc etc.