Apparently, there are websites you can't access from Texas anymore.
I remember how the use of VPNs became quite wise in Egypt towards the tail end of the half-revolution, certainly becoming a thing amongst more tech-saavy folk. Never would I have expected it to become a necessity after settling in America, but here we are.
The downfall of western civilization aside, work on TSG coming along today. Detailed fucker of a page though.
Awoke last night to the sound of thunder and discovered a mad storm brewing, lightning from every direction blasted bursts of light into the apartment. Most of the morning was gray, the city enveloped in thick clouds. Then suddenly by day's end, the blue behind the clouds revealed itself and the sun shone bright. It would've been sweltering hot had it not been for the windy tail end of the storm playfully lingering about.
Not much of an art-making day, but a good day nonetheless. Newsletter drafted and scheduled for late Friday night central time. Mythomatic orders dropped off at post office, and groceries picked up. Many emails responded to, but still going through the rest. 51 between inboxes, but many are notifications, and a few are bills.
Tomorrow should be a good TSG day, and Friday can be blocked off for Project Oldbook.
Drew and designed this cover back in 2019, but it wasn't published until late 2022, and I only got my comp copy this year because Walter (Chaw) was so adamant about getting it signed by Walter Hill for me. I'm glad he did, it's a delightful and humbling inscription which I'm keeping private. A fluke at the publishing house seems to have resulted in the absence of my credit though. Oh well. More pix of the book here.
Still recovering from toddler germs, may need another full day to recover. Can't write or draw for shit, so I figured working on [very belatedly] populating the website with projects from the past couple years is a mindless enough task for me to muster. Also getting the new newsletter platform in order. Getting all systems up to speed for optimum operation. There will be quite a bit of that over the next month or so after which I'm hoping for smooth, seamless sailing.
Counting myself lucky to have this ramen spot around the corner from my place for when my little angle brings home some of the sinister daycare illnesses he harbors.
Today will be a day for recovery and tidying up and very little else. Reserving my energy for a proper full grind in the days to come.
I don't drive. Which in America is hard enough as it is if it were only your own body that needed transportation, but with a child it's almost impossible to exist unless you succumb to the country's car-centric ways. This is especially true in a city like Houston where getting my kid to and from his daycare (a mere 2.5 miles away) has been nothing short of a pain in the balls.
Solo parenting this past week meant dropping my kid off at his daycare in an uber, only to uber back to my place where I also have my work setup. The same back and forth is repeated in the late afternoon, bracketing my work day which is also sprinkled with things like dinner prep, laundry, dishes, and tidying up (all of which with child I tend to need to do more of). Once he's back at the house, it's a back-to-back marathon of dinnertime-pottytime-bathtime-playtime-storytime-sleeptime, cherishing every moment of it, but falling prey to a deep kind of ultra exhaustion by night's end. Only to repeat the entire process the next day. A few consecutive days of this and you successfully have that living dead look down. No makeup, prosthetics, or special effects necessary.
I'm not even gonna get into the lack of productivity this causes.
I've been looking into hiring a trustworthy car+driver service to take care of my kid's drop offs and pickups because he'll be with me for the entirety of a month soon, but apparently this is so unheard of in this country that it's proven to be quite difficult.
Life in America is a case of constant problem-solving things that people don't even have to consider at all elsewhere. The United States is an exercise in obstacle course design as nation-building, I swear to god.
Decision: Will only assign any given day to working on a single project. Shifting gears between several messes with my head too much.
Quite enjoying the degree of experimentation that Project OLDBOOK (pictured) is affording me right now, and it seems to have come at a right time as it is starting to inform how I might handle a particular scene in the next TSG I've been thinking about.
Had big plans for today (accounting, Project OLDBOOK, TSG, and cooking up a storm) but have instead been rendered paralyzed by an unforgiving migraine. Medication useless. Hard to do anything at all when you can hardly use your eyes or even think through the sharp jabs of the dull knife of pain.
