I caught the bug that’s been circulating through the offices of San Francisco, and got quarantined to the apartment for a week. For a few days it was just time-wasting, movie-indulging, blankets and hot tea, but then I started to get ideas: stories and songs and dialogue running through my mind while I’m physically unable to pick up a pen to write them down. I completely re-composed the ending for my next book, every detail put in it’s place.
During this time I missed the gallery opening at Public Works and a lavish business trip to Vegas. (I’m beginning to thing Vegas is my kryptonite: every plan to go there has been sidetracked)
Yesterday I was able to sit at my desk and draw, and I’m putting together some of my favorite sequential pages yet. Working from rough pencils, painting from memories and places, then inking and lettering right on the page, mixing fiction and lore with the excitement of painting new colors and compositions. It makes me realize how defeated I was starting to feel from constant work, no breaks, and no time to think and let my mind wander.
I think there’s an expected dedication to over-working, that your worth is measured in overtime, and that creative side projects are a novelty. I seek to defy this: work hard in the office but never allow the creativity after-hours to die, because that’s the real reason to live and fight. It’s so bizarre to be caught in a situation like this, of over-working, while my unemployed friends are across the bay being tear-gassed and arrested in the Occupy movement. We’re in a time of extremes.
I still need to learn how to take a break now and then, being bedridden for a week shouldn’t be the only way to get a mind vacation.
-j
