Today was my first day of class.

Monday I signed up for “Photoshop CS Basics,” which hopefully will give me the necessary skills to navigate this monstrous application I’m not running. See, I do all my wuss-grade flood-fills in LView Pro, and while it WORKS, most of the “how to color your comic all kewl-like” tutorials out there are geared towards Photoshop users. And don’t even get me started on the file-format issue. You want layers, you have to ship people PSD. The LVP format is unreadable by any app except LView Pro.

Up until Monday I’ve not had time to ascend the learning curve, and since the strips have to be colored, I’ve just stuck with what I know.

So I registered for the class, in hopes of being able to start doing all my coloring in Photoshop in a month or two, and start doing some really TASTY coloring shortly thereafter. Maybe just for posters and book covers, but certainly tasty.

Tonight was the first class. I showed up 20 minutes late, because Sandra told me it began at 6:30pm when in fact it started at 6:00. Fortunately for me, the teacher was also late. Like, a WEEK late. He was a no-show.

My arrival was a little uncomfortable. I sauntered in thinking I was 10 minutes early, and was greeted by a UVSC staffer who looked at me with angry anticipation.

   “Paul?”

   I said “No. I’m Howard Tayler.” I gestured at an empty PC in the corner. “Sit anywhere?”

   “Yeah. The teacher’s not here yet.”

   “Oh.” I went and took a seat, wondering why everyone was here 10 minutes before the start of class.

I still didn’t realize I was 20 minutes late. Fortunately, by the time I figured out that I looked like an absolute slacker bozo, everybody was completely peeved at Paul The No-Show Teacher, who had raised the bar for “slacker bozo” beyond my clearance.

I had just enough time to log in to the lab PC and enable a Dvorak keyboard layout on it before the UVSC staffer announced that the class would be extended a week to make up lost time, and that we should all go home now.

*sigh*

Richard took me out to lunch at Wendy’s yesterday. As we were enjoying our meal (we both got Dave’s Big Bacon Classic, which is easily the finest fast-food burger on the market today) I reached down to my hip to check the time.

No cell-phone.

   “Do you know what time it is?” I asked.
   “Why do you care?” he shot back with a grin.
   “You have a 1:30 meeting, right?”
   “Yup. I’ll worry about getting me there on time.”
I sighed during the pregnant pause, and realized that not only do I not need a cell-phone, I don’t really even need a WATCH.
   “It’s 12:05,” he said after chewing and swallowing.
   “Oh, good. Plenty of time, then.”

My first day in my new office was spent tidying it up. It’s a good little space in what used to be referred to as “the sewing room” or “the guest room.” I’ve got a north-east window level with the lawn (I’m half-way underground), and lots of space compared to my office at Novell.

And there’s a drawing board in it.

I went out to lunch with Richard Bliss, and we talked about all kinds of stuff. There was some Novell gossip (we’re both former Novell employees, and Richard is the VP of marketing for one of Novell’s most successful partners, GWAVA), some discussion of cartooning, but mostly just a good time between a couple of old friends.

Richard brought me a video montage of photos he has of me at various Novell events, and at Comic-Con 2003. It was really, REALLY neat, and it nicely illustrated my transition from a product manager to a cartoonist.

I did some scripting first thing in the morning. Schlocktoberfest is going to be dark, like I’ve said before. I just hope nobody thinks it’s dark because I left my day-job. I’ve been planning this story for YEARS now, and it’s just COINCIDENCE that it airs the month after I leave my 11-year career in I.T.

And now, my son wants me to play a game with him.

–Howard

Open Letter, September 20th, 2004

As promised in my last Open Letter, there’s been news in the queue that is “slightly related,” while still being of sufficient import to merit the application of some suspense.

That news has now broken. September 20th was my last day as a Novell employee. I resigned voluntarily, and am now officially “unemployed” for the first time in 11 years.

Most folks, upon reading this, will immediately let slip the hamsters of speculation, spinning those wheels with rattling incessancy. Rest assured, for every thought you readers may have on this matter, I’ve got at least half a dozen things I want to say, and ALL of them would segue appropriately from the statement in the above paragraph. The hardest part about all of this is choosing which thought to follow up first. What to say, what to say?

Let me start this way: there are numerous reasons why one MIGHT choose to leave a lucrative position as a visionary with a leading technology company, and most of them have little or nothing to do with what really happened in my case. What it really boiled down to was the simple fact that God told me it was time to quit.

God did not say why. He also did not offer me any specific bits of encouragement, like saying “Schlock Mercenary will be netting you a high five-figure income by the end of 2005″ (which revelation I would have greeted with all kinds of jubilant praise, yessirree, halle-LOO-ya.) No, for all I know the spiritual experience I’ve had in conjunction with this decision is leading me on a path that involves poverty, desperation, abject humility, and then a return to Novell as someone hungry enough to really get down to business.

The truly spiritual person doesn’t care about the destination in cases like this. For saints, it’s enough to know that the decision is the right one, and that God’s ways are not necessarily understandable to mortals.

I’m no saint. I’m scared spitless. But I’ve had this kind of spiritual prompting in my life on three other occasions, and I know that for all my fears, things will work out okay. I just don’t have a specific value for “okay” yet.

Now, before you start throwing money at me with the Paypal button, I need to say a couple of things.

1. My family and I can get by through Christmas with no income other than what we know will be in my final check. We’ve always lived well within our means.
2. If I get hungry enough in the bleak midwinter, I know I can find Novell-related work with my former customers, GroupWise partners, or even with Novell.

These two points are amazingly liberating. In the face of this new-found freedom, I’m going to spend the next 90 days pretending to be a full-time cartoonist. It may be little more than a sabbatical, or perhaps a pilgrimage-at-the-drawing-table. Then again, it may be a pretense that dictates the shape of reality. I’m not unemployed. I’m SELF-employed. Pretend that with me, please.

For those of you uncomfortable with the thought that God might be talking to me, feel free to pretend that He is just another one of the Voices In My Head. I mean, as long as we’re pretending stuff I might as well enable you in some comfortable fictions, right?

Watch this space. The game-of-pretend has just begun, and I think you’ll like the way it plays out.