Getting back to the Masters

The last six weeks has been a period of coping and recovery for me. Everything sort of fell apart - as far as the Masters is concerned - after the Confirmation session. Didn't get a straight "pass" but suggestions of major changes which were not very clear. Afterwards I had a bit of drama with Bentley and was ill off and on. In the last two weeks however I feel much more confident.

Part of that has to do with getting back into production of Tales of the Galli and Seconds. Producing webcomics regularly is a good way of recovering some of the confidence I lost. But neither advances the Masters at all, other than sometimes giving me a "safe" way of testing techniques of digital art production.  The other thing I did was to get back into a housework routine. Wouldn't think that'd matter so much, but I find that if the house and home is tidy (though seldom neat) I feel better and can at least find things. Cleaning out both sheds worked that way as  well, as did looking at how my network is set-up and standardising how things are shared between PCs (still haven't got Samba to share mounted NTFS partitions to the work group yet).

So, all this means that I feel ready to get back into working on the Masters again. In truth my track record on this is pretty patchy - I do have periods of intense work but bigger patches where nothing much has happened. Not just distractions and procrastination affecting this, but not getting down and sticking to something hasn't helped.

I had the idea that having a studio space would help me focus on what I was doing so I created one late last year by converting a spare room and getting an extra PC just for that space. It's taken a few additions and changes to make that work, like moving all the stationary and art supplies in the room (and sorting them into sensible storage, I have a million pencils and pens!), rearranging furniture and using it. When I've used the Studio as a Studio (and not just a place where there's another PC) it's worked well. I created both versions of Our Differences Make us the Same in there. But when it hasn't worked it's just been another room.

Part of this might be keeping to a schedule. The general schedule I set up was (after some modification) this:

• Saturday: Creative / Fun / Webcomic day
• Sunday: Housework, followed by whatever
• Monday-Friday:  Workday / going out (shopping/appointments)

Mostly this has been dictated by my not having my own transport. The buses run a lot better on a weekday than they do on the weekends. But when I work it, it works well. Trouble is, while I've stuck with this routine on the weekends, I haven't so much on weekdays. It's been so easy to get distracted instead, to find "problems that need fixing" and prioritise them above the Masters. OK, sometimes this is the case, but most times things like that could wait until the weekend. So what to do?

I think I will implement two things: weekly goals, and a daily routine for weekdays (assuming no pressing appointments or much needed shopping):

• Breakfast: Go for a walk (mostly with a dog), have breakfast while watching a video, write morning pages
• Morning: Do creative hands-on stuff like drawing / formating / video editing, et cetera
• Lunch: Go for a 30 minute exercise walk (without dog), have lunch while watching a show 
• Afternoon: Do text based stuff like scripting / research / writing
• Dinner: Have dinner, probably watching a show
• Evening: collapse in a heap

Sounds a little over regulated? Maybe, but I haven't been following any sort routine really, and that's why I think, things have been hit and miss. I'm far better at artistic stuff in the morning, and better at text based stuff in the afternoons. Often I'm just exhausted by the evening. But what this routine means is me going to the studio (or wherever I need to go, like a library) and staying there for that period, even if I get nothing actually done. This is like that cliché of the writer in their library or den, sitting around and looking like they're "doing nothing". In reality they're allowing a space and time for them to focus and think, away from everything else that crowds out the day.

And I think that's what I must do, to get the Masters done.

The weekly goal is pretty straight forward. When I do housework I do a list showing the stuff I do every Housework Day, and the additional stuff I need that day. For the studio I think it's unrealistic to have daily goals (unless there is some sort of deadline) but maybe a weekly goal list makes sense. No good keeping that in my mind - like the housework list I need to post it up somewhere, and cross the items off after I do them. Have just the space in the studio for that.

Hopefully this will work, and I have to put the effort in to make it work.

Venus Envy

Posted before about Venus Envy, but I thought it was worth repeating. I always liked what the creator did with the webcomic, which focussed on a teenaged trans girl in transition, coping with school and lots of other stuff. But in 2008 it just sort of... ...stopped. Well it was eventually continued, at least the last story was. Here's the links:

• The original Venus Envy webcomic
• Part 2 of This is Your Life...
• Closet Space cross-over

Maybe one day it will get continued. Mind you, it is the nature of webcomics that most don't.

Taking the cat for a walk

I slept in a bit and decided to take Bobby for a short bush walk out the back gate. However, Xena decided to come with us. She followed Bobby and me for 20 minutes down the tracks and trails! The only other cat I've had that did that was Rorschach (in the 90s), who followed me and my partner across a busy road into a park where we had breakfast

ASCII Art Lives!

Check out these pages:

• Defacto2's list of NFO Tools;
• PabloDraw's homepage;
• An Abbreviated History of the Underground Computer Art Scene;
• 16 Colours.

Cool Stuff - I'm always amazed with what people can do with just 16 colours and the ANSI character set!