Category Archives: Journal

This is me rambling about me, mostly. Current stuff: home, family, my head’s on fire… that kind of thing. This also includes everything imported from LiveJournal.

I hate loving these pills…

Struggled to get anything done this morning. Made a little progress banging on two possible scripts for Sunday, August 24th. Not working.

Went shopping with my 11yo to clear my head. Got home and decided to take a white pill (20mg, 4-hour methylphenidate — it’s basically a short-term ritalin). Aaaand BANG. I’m able to script again.  Wrote an all-new August 24th strip, then the next three days of the week. Then I brain-dumped into the outline and it all flowed gloriously.

I love the white pill, but I hate needing it.

Write It, or Live It?

I found the following gem while searching through my old Live Journal posts. Excerpted, it’s almost profound:

My life would seem more interesting to everyone else if I could strike some sort of balance between writing about it and living it, but more and more I’m finding that, when time permits, I prefer to allow my life to seem completely uninteresting to the rest of the world, and absolutely, fascinatingly packed with all the big and little things that make it wonderful for me and a few first-hand observers.

–Howard Tayler

Gonna be a busy week…

Sandra and I had our usual planning meeting, and she went all “art director” on me and outlined this week’s tasks:

  • Design new banners for the GenCon booth
  • Write & illustrate two weeks of Schlock Mercenary
  • Finish my two pages of the Massively Parallel bonus story

Here are the things she left off the list:

  • See Guardians of the Galaxy
  • Review it
  • See it again, because I hope it’s that good
  • Dress in steamy sorts of clothes and hit Salt City Steamfest for an afternoon and evening
  • Eat sushi with our editor friend who is coming to town
  • Sleep
  • Chase distracting things into the weeds. Catch them. Toy with them. Eat them. Repeat.

Wish me luck. I can already see rustling in the weeds.

I love a good discussion…

I’ve been waffling on this for some time now, and I think I’ve finally reached a decision. This site (howardtayler.com) will not have discussions enabled when it goes live.

Why not?

I love a good discussion. I like social networks, and I love being part of a community. But being part of a community where I’m the moderator, and the central focus is a lot of work. Aaaand maybe not all that healthy.

I’ve also found that it slurps up a lot of my time. Perhaps this is my ego speaking, but I think people would probably rather I spent time writing words and drawing pictures than reading comments and flushing spam-traps.

It’s a tough decision, though. I’ve been making art online for almost fifteen years now, and for that whole time I’ve been fostering communities and discussions. It’s going to be hard to let that go.