work

It's been two weeks since my last post, public or otherwise. Much of my absence is due to illness.

True to being a workaholic, I tend to ignore sickness and press on with work. Typically if I feel strong enough to ready myself for the day, and strong enough to drive, I'm strong enough to work. Only on rare occasions have I been so ill that simply taking a shower was too much effort. My friends and coworkers aren't very fond of my stubbornness. Many are afraid that I'll hurt myself or worse. I've relaxed that policy a bit with my current job, as I can work from home if I'm not well enough to drive.

Less often will I see a doctor. Despite the fact I'm fortunate enough to be insured (a growing rarity in the US), the average trip to a doctor sets me back $350. Even with my current income, that's quite a bit of my monthly profit. For me to see a doctor, I need to be terribly sick, in unbearable pain, or terrified. My analytical mind doesn't help: Invariably I self-diagnose before seeing a doctor. After all, why go to the expense if all they're going to tell me is, "it's a virus, get plenty of sleep and fluids"?

In the last month I've seen a doctor twice. Needless to say, I've been quite terrified. Sometimes gripping, but more often a vague grinding terror that invades your sleep and drains your energy. The word "cancer" was thrown about, thankfully not by either of the two doctors I've seen (now you see what trouble an analytical mind can be). That word is particularly frightening to me given my family history. My mother, her sister, and other relatives on both sides of my ancestry died after being diagnosed.

The antibiotics I've been prescribed seem to working. I still have trouble sleeping, but I've been improving. Part of my continued sleeplessness is work. Since last Wednesday I've been working at new client in the southeastern 'Cities. The drive is longer, but I'm thankful for a change in work. Since early January I've been in the middle of a massive rewrite of my course material. After writing 6 labs of 30-40 pages each, my writing talent felt stone-dead.

Even though my current task is yet more documentation (up to 37 pages today!), the majority of my tasks are MQ administration and upgrade planning. It's a welcome change from the constant grind of lab writing.

Paper Girl is still on my mind, but it's been so difficult to work up the energy to write. I've been working on a second chapter centered around Miki. I can't quite seem to figure out how to start her story arc. Hopefully something will occur to me soon.

After my last entry, I had a rather lousy week. Not lousy because of the client -- they are in fact wonderful people -- but because of the situation. Through a long series of events I ended up updating software at midnight, Sunday morning.

In the end, that wasn't so bad either. The resulting fatigue wasn't pleasant of course; those who know me know I never sleep well, one such odd night can throw everything off for days or weeks. Nevertheless, I had forgotten how fun it was to do something at odd hours. The emptiness of the office, the silence while at times menacing, holds a unique sort of peace.

Such peace I seem to have less and less of as time goes on. I'm exhausted. I miss my friends and my apartment. I desperately want to go home even if for only a few hours. I haven't been home for over two weeks solid now. I haven't had a week home in over four, and it may be another four or five before that happens.

Yes, in the middle of this is my trip the UK. While I'm thankful that I'm having a proper holiday for once -- and even happier it's in the middle of all this mess -- it still is time away from home. I miss the comforting patterns of my weeknights there. I miss the sounds of the distant highway to lull me to sleep. I miss the central time zone! I haven't been able to draw or read for a week now. Every evening when I finally have time to do it, it's past 9pm. Given that I get up at 6am, my energy typically taps out around 10 or 11pm if I'm lucky. Even so, by that hour I'm so mentally exhausted that I cannot fathom starting anything at that hour.

Perhaps my attitude is to fault. I'm not taking care of myself mentally, I'm simply myself until everything is done for the day, saying "to hell with my creative pursuits". In a lot of ways, I need them more than I need to be home. Drawing and reading or any mental downtime, keeps me sane and happy. I really need to respect that more than I do.

When I first offered to say over the weekend on my current business travel assignment, I thought, "Greaaat, this is going to feel like an eternity." Even so, I thought that it would be well worth it. Traveling home every weekend hardly seemed worth it. The extra time in packing up my hotel room, checking out, waiting at the airport, the flight itself, the drive back, eats away at one's 48 hour weekend rather quickly. This is to say nothing of the fact that I have to fly out again on Sunday -- which doubles the whole mess.

If I were going to a different state, or even a different client the next week, it would be worth it. That is not the case. Instead, I'm on my fourth week with the same client and staying in the same hotel. The scant 22 hours of free time hardly seems worth all the effort. Instead, I thought it best for me to just stay here. The advantage is that my weekend expenses qualify for reimbursement. There's a small laundry on the fourth floor where I'll wash my clothes later this afternoon. For the relatively minor sacrifice of being away from "hearth and home", the benefits are well worth it.

I'm beginning to find that physical location isn't that important to me. Yes, I may be away from my familiar apartment. I may be in another state and in another time zone, but none of that seems to matter as much. I'm beginning to find that my laptop is more home to me than my home is.

Most of everything I do now goes through my computer or the internet. I write in word processors and sketch in graphics applications. The 15.4" LCD is the pages of a book or the silver screen, depending on my fancy. The tiny speakers are my personal concert hall. Here, I feel more at home than anywhere else. Perhaps I'm strange for that. Other's complain about being stuck in front of a glowing screen for hours on end. After a while, they want to get away. Even I tire of it -- my optimaligist loathes my love of the machine. Thankfully LCDs are far easier on the eyes than the CRTs of yesteryear. I always try to follow reasonable brightness and distance policies. Nevertheless, I'm not away for long.

Perhaps the reason I only rarely get frustrated with computers is because I don't see them as a barrier. They aren't a roadblock in the avenue of human communication, they are a gateway. They are a medium no better nor worse than other mediums of communication. They are just different, that's all.

I have another week here. Then the following week I go the United Kingdom for 11 days. Then I'll be back here for another week or two. Although the year is still young, I've put in almost as much travel as I did last year. What if this just keeps going? While I hope to have some time to spend in my apartment soon, have laptop, will travel.

I just checked in to my flight tomorrow evening. I usually like to do so as early as possible so I can get window seats. Yes, it's a bit childish, but they do make the trip so much nicer.

My next flight is on United, an airline only marginally better than Northwest, with a far more spastic and confusing website. When I checked in tonight, I clicked the "seats" button as I usually do, clicking my way past the pay-for-upgrade seats that I would have to pay for myself. Except that this time, something was wrong.

When the first flight came up, with its diagram of available seats, there were only two rows on the screen! Not two rows available, just two rows! I picked the window seat of course, thinking that the hotel internet was being shoddy again. My next flight seemed completely normal. I printed out two copies of the boarding pass and read them over. And then I understood what happened on that first flight.

On my first flight I was in first class.

I panicked shortly there after. "Oh no! I didn't!" Could I have clicked on some first-class upgrade without thinking about it? Was there a way to cancel it? I don't want to pay the ridiculous surcharge! Then I checked my itinerary from American Express. Clearly written in glowing LCD was "UNITED - FIRST". Further down the page on my second flight was "UNITED - ECONOMY". I didn't make a mistake, my company bought me first class tickets.

Somehow it seems less elite considering it's a 25 minute flight from Indianapolis to Chicago.

So after I posted the last comic, I actually had to go to the airport and catch my flight. I was a more than a bit disorganized before I left. I was running through my apartment, trying to clean and organize everything. I only had two hours from when I woke up on Sunday morning, until I had to hit the highway.

Usually I like leaving with just over two hours to spare. The airport is only a 30 minute drive from my apartment. Most days, I get through security in 10 minutes. On a particularly bad morning, it's 20. Even with the suggested 30 minutes prior to departure, I still will have a half hour or more to wonder around.

Of course, because I was so disorganized that morning, I didn't leave with my comfy two hours. I left with just under that, one hour and fifty-seven minutes. Even then, I still accosted myself for being so sloppy that morning.

Perhaps I'm strange, but I actually like airports. On the surface they appear to be busy, stressful places that only the uninitiated find wondrous. To me, they're an exciting gateway to endless possibilities. Different people, from different places, going to other places I may not even know exists. Its also like it's own little country. Its own security force, its own laws and its own customs. Each one slightly different, but still familiar. Even to a legal extent, this is true.

I've been drawing exclusively using my wacom tablet for over a week now. Already I can see the advantages and the abilities of the medium. I've found it to be far easier than I expected. It can also save considerable time compared to traditional sketching methods and materials. In the process I've found ways to streamline my production methods. I've found new ways to color my artwork. I've even found new ways to airbrush the colors. Finally, I've been able to do something I've been unable to do before.

The above piece is the first I produced completely away from home. I began sketching the piece in the Philadelphia Airport, while waiting for my connecting flight. I sketched and colored the remainder while in my hotel room. This would have been difficult or impossible. It would be cumbersome to drag my sketchbook, pencils, and other equipment in my luggage. And it would have been impossible to scan the sketch until I returned home. Now I'm free of those dependencies.

I've shown an earlier version of this image to my friends. Most of them were happy to see a second in the "series". To my astonishment, they have clamored for more. I have a few ideas, but I would like to take the weekend at least to rest after my trip this week.

Tess + Travel = Dorkery.

I've been experimenting with my artwork lately. I've been experimenting with my style, my methods, and the media on which I choose to draw.

One thing I've been toying with lately is to switch to a fully digital method. While I've owned a wacom tablet for years, I haven't used it to produce any sketches. I tried it a few times when I first tried the tablet,  but the results were just dismal. After that, I relagated it to airbrushing the color layers.

Lately, however, I've been experimenting with it again. At first I didn't think it would work, but the piece to the right proves to me that I haven't enough technical skill to leave my sketchbook behind. This will make it easier for me to update the comic in the future while I'm traveling. It's easier for me to stuff my 4x5 tablet into my laptop case than to bring my pencils, sharpener, sanding pad, smudge sticks, sketchbook, clipboard, and easel through airport security.

In fact, tomorrow I'm catching a flight for work. I had some trouble getting my boarding pass online this morning. An hour went by before I realized that I was at the website for the wrong airline. I always try to check-in online so I can get a window seat. Although I've been on several flights so far, I'm still enchanted by the vista of the earth thousands and thousands below me.

When I finally printed out my boarding pass, I was just as excited as my chibi-likeness. 

Sadly, I actually do get this way.  ^^;

I've been taking a terrible beating this week. Or rather, my body has. I'm in the dead middle of a three week run of assignments at work. Last week I was in my favorite city in the known world, Portland Oregon.

It's difficult for me to describe just exactly why I like Portland so much over other places I've had the opportunity to visit. The landscape is astonishingly beautiful. Never before has this young professional from Minnesota seen such tall trees. The weather was also a pure delight. Even in August, the air was cool and pleasant. The downside, so the locals tell me, is that rains "all the time" during the winter. Rain? In the winter? It's a little hard for me to imagine. I have a feeling that if I were to ever move there, I would miss the snowy winters of my native state terribly.

Beyond the environment, I loved the culture I found in the area. While I technically spent last week in Vancouver, Washington -- a twenty minute drive away from Portland -- I did have a few opportunities to hang out in the city itself. Unlike other cities I've visited, I felt far safer and more "at home" than nearly anywhere else. There's a thriving gay community in Portland -- or so my Internet searches have told me. My work schedule has prevented me from exploring that further. I really, really need to get out more. >_<

This week I'm in Connecticut. To be honest, I'm not sure what I think about this state. Most of my time here I've spent cowering in my hotel room. The city I'm staying in is far more dense than I'm accustomed to. I keep meaning to take some time to wonder the streets on foot, but I'm still adjusting to the time shift. Losing two hours one week then gaining three is a nightmare on the body. Furthermore, my current assignment starts at 3pm and runs until 9pm. As a result, I've been staying up later and trying (fruitlessly) to sleep in. Even worse, I've been skipping meals. On average, I'm eating about two meals a day. I've had a terrible "hunger headache" for most of this week, but I simply havn't the want nor desire to eat more. When it comes to sustenance, my body never reacts normally.

Next week I'll be in southern Texas. I'm not sure at all how I feel about that. While I'll be in a very, very big city, I have a feeling I'll cower in my hotel room all the more. I'm certain it's more my own paranoia than anything else that will lead me to such behavior. Until I started working at my current job, I rarely traveled and almost never saw an airport. The only way I ever saw anything of the world was through books and television. I must be a masochist to have taken this job, eh?

I haven't been able to work on any deninet projects for a few weeks. There's simply been too much stress, and too much going on in my life for me to spend the extra energy. I'm hoping that after next week things will calm down a bit, and I'll have a clear enough mind to start giving the project a serious effort.

I'm beginning to wonder just when I should start to produce actual comics for Novella. Originally, I had wanted a complete outline before I started that phase of the project. But what if I'm simply burned out with the outline? What if I've finally written enough that I should just sit down and draw the damn thing instead of plan, plot, and scheme? I really don't know. I thought I had written enough before the first time I had attempted to draw the comic, and that blew up in my face after six months. I don't want history to repeat itself. The outline is intended to make that sort of occurrence impossible.

The problem is, I can't really imagine what happens next in the story. I feel hopelessly stuck with the current state of the outline, and unable to write more. Instead of getting some actual work done, I seem to end up staring at the thing blankly for hours at a time. There could be a number of understandable reasons for this. My chronic lack of sleep, stress over a broken vehicle and then stress over buying a new vehicle, radical change in my diet, and happenings at the workplace have effected my ability to concentrate. Furthermore, I no longer connect with the story as I once did. While there are still good reasons to write the story, none of them seem as motivating as what came before. Maybe I just need to relax and work on it, even if it is drudgery in the near-term.