Critical Resource

 

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.