There’s this old saw, “work while the sun shines,” that you may or may not have heard. As with most old saws, it can be applied and/or misapplied in numerous ways.

Yesterday I pounded through better than half of a full week’s worth of Schlock Mercenary work. I worked pretty much non-stop from 10:00am to 11:30pm. Yes, I did some gaming, and yes, I took “think breaks” where I paced around, yammered about stuff, or sat on the couch and pondered, but I was ON for almost 14 hours straight.

Then I came home and couldn’t sleep. I guess I finally dropped off around 2:00am.

Then I bounced awake this morning at 5:50am. I’ve already been to the church-house and back (on foot) to poke the accounting stuff I need to poke for the local congregation.

Sandra looked at me this morning and said “Just so you know, you’re in a manic phase right now.” She counseled me to take my vitamins, and pointed out that we’d just come off of a depressive phase. We talked about the crap I’ve been eating (pizza last night… I still have “pizza tummy” this morning) and how it seems that when I get my diet under control my swings are less dramatic, and I spend more time up.

Fine, fine, fine. I’m manic right now. Well… work while the sun shines. I’m taking my car in to be fixed in a couple of hours (engine thermostat is broken, it’s covered under warranty), and while I’m there I’ll do some pencilling. I’m going to need a patch of nap today to cover last night’s sleep debt, but I’ll be headed down to the Keep to see about inking a week of Schlock. In short, I might as well get as much done as I can before the sun goes down and my metaphorically reptilian blood cools to the point that all I can do is sit on a rock and hope nothing eats me before the sun comes back up.

I’m sure there are other ways to manage manic/depressive cycles. I’m not convinced that I’m even clinically diagnosable with a disorder, what with the fact that I’m actually functional (albeit only marginally, and then only with kicking and whining) on the down sides, but thinking about “how I am” in these terms is helpful.

–Howard

I plowed through twenty-one rows today.

For the uninitiated, a “row” is one row of Schlock comics taken through one of the four stages of creation — scripting, pencilling, inking, or coloring.

I scripted 8 rows (seven days – one week), pencilled 8 rows, and inked 5 rows.

That’s more than double (well… BARELY more than double) my “ideal” daily output of 10 rows. It takes this week’s output to 39 rows, which is an average of 13 rows per day so far, and is the equivalent of a full week of buffer (9*4=36… a full week of comics completed is 36 rows of work). Sure I still need to color stuff, but I’m happy with my output.

Sadly, I cranked the engine so hard that I’m wide awake and it’s almost 1:30am. I finished the last of the pencilling just under two hours ago. *sigh*. This probably means that I’ll be lucky to get six rows tomorrow… but I’m going to push anyway. The buffer has languished for too long in the single digits.

–Howard

Michelle at Dragon’s Keep had her iPod in the “we all get to listen” slot, and something came on that I liked.

(not that I hated the rest of the stuff… it’s just that something came on that I really LIKED)

She told me it was “Plumb.” I went home and checked out some Plumb on iTunes and on the Plumb website.

Wow. I’m enjoying this as much as I enjoyed my discovery of Evanescence three years or so ago.

Thanks, Michelle!

I think there should be a rule for Live Journal writers: don’t write about how much everything sucks unless you WANT it to keep sucking.

I’m not saying that depression, angst, sadness, or grief are all in your head, mind you. I’m just saying that sometimes the decision to write about what a rotten day it is results in the rotten day getting WORSE.

I’ve been feeling lethargic all week. I’ve had a really, REALLY hard time getting any cartooning done. It’s been like pulling teeth. I considered writing a journal entry analyzing this, and just two sentences in I was feeling so depressed and lethargic I couldn’t go on. Everything seemed pointless. Oh the crushing despair… blah, blah, blah.

I decided instead to write about what I did when I got tired of doing what little actual work I did — a couple of hours of RPGing. After writing about that I felt rejuvenated, happy, and optimistic about tomorrow’s prospects.

There are some things, like accounting, where if nobody writes it down it’s as if it never happened. I postulate that journals (be they Live, or Dead-Tree) are similar — what you focus on when you write about your life determines, at least in part, how you will respond to what happens next.

Goth-teen-online-angst-poets everywhere are clawing at their faces as they read this. Relax, kids. You aren’t completely undone. All I’ve done is given you power to be even angstier.