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Truth is, I don’t know what I want anymore.

Or maybe I just can’t remember…

I have these drives… these compulsions… to act. I can’t read books anymore, because my brain is too “on” right now. I have three library books out, they were due today, I’ll take them in tomorrow and pay the 30cents… perhaps renew one of them… but every time I sit down to read one, I get into it, perhaps as little as half a paragraph, never more than a couple of pages, and something I’ve read has started connections and trains of thought within my mind and I find myself more entertained by my own mind and the pursuit of my new ideas than in what is on the page.

I have been inspired to create more illustrated childrens’ books in the past two weeks, trying to read these library books, than I have been in the last two years. I have had more new ideas for short stories, novels, and longer works and collections in the same period than in a long, long time, and most of them have come as I’ve been trying to read. I can’t get through the books – I can’t seem to concentrate on the authors’ ideas – I’m too inspired. Did I mention the other night I fought my way through less than half a page of The Hours before I had to get up and write down my own (not directly-related) ideas? Before I was done 100 minutes had passed and I’d filled an 18″x24″ sheet of paper with notes describing the relationships and timelines and story breakdowns of an anthology I expect my mind will force me to write before too long. Tonight, reading Dude, Where’s My Country, I’ve been inspired to create a series of illustrated childrens’ books and a new blog, where I write about things going on in the news and the world and in politics from a rational point of view that I sometimes have. Not “liberal” or “conservative” or about who said what or any of the garbage I keep running into – not just in the media (which includes Fox News and Michael Moore, both) – but among the people I know as well, but instead based on trying to look at what makes sense. Bah. I’ve blathered too much about that already. I’ll either do it or I won’t, and if I do it, it will speak for itself.

Sigh.

Where did I start? Oh yes. What I want.

Not sure.

Not sure it matters.

Reading stuff like this, facing the garbage that’s been going on in the government and the world in recent years, doesn’t just make me want to get the heck out of America (like many of my friends have said they plan to do if Bush is re-elected), it makes me want to fucking blow my head off. There is no place on Earth, no place I have ever heard of, or heard people dream of going to, that is free from this sort of garbage without also being free of basics like nutritious food and clean water and not-worrying-about-malaria. The only way I can think of escaping it would be to pass from this Earth, and seriously – even if I didn’t believe I was inescapably headed for Heaven, the atheist view that death would be just that appeals to me more than the reality of continued life on Earth, among humans as they seem to be choosing to be. Only each person can change themselves, so unless I can earn the trust and respect of 7 billion people and convince them all to make right decisions, what can I do?

It’s very frustrating.

And I don’t know what I really want.

I don’t really think God’s about to let me blow my own head off, though he’s been hinting pretty heavily that I need to get my ass down to the valley and pay a professional to teach me how to shoot and otherwise handle guns. Handguns and rifles, both. As soon as possible.

And I know some things I don’t want.

I don’t want to become an advertiser. Marketing … has never been my strong suit. I don’t feel I have the knack for it. There are elements to it that I just don’t seem to grasp. Perhaps someday this will change. Perhaps I will find the time and money to take a series of Marketing courses at a college, and perhaps after I do that successfully I shall begin to understand. But right now I not only don’t get it, I don’t like it, and I don’t seem to be good at it. I don’t want to be a “self-promoter”. I’ve been “self-promoting” Modern Evil and my art for years with little to no success outside of a small circle of my long-time friends and lovers. And now I’m writing novels, and that’s great. I like writing, I can stand editing, but … now I have to market them if I want to get any money out of them.

I’ve already invested hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours into each book. I’ve also invested a certain amount of actual money in them. Is my time worth something, or have I been masturbating all this time? I think it is worth something, and more than that I believe that people would enjoy reading my books once they got their hands on them. And I seriously don’t know how to get the books from where they are now – available for purchase – to where I’d like to see them – purchased, and in the hands of readers – without just buying them myself and giving them away. THAT I could do, know how to do. I know there’s some other way of doing it – something that involves people actually paying money for the books – I literally and seriously don’t have a clue about how to get that to occur.

And no, I don’t really want your advice about how to do it. I don’t want to be a self-promoter. So unless your advice amounts to who to get to do it (preferably for little or no money down – I believe a slice of each dollar earned as a result of their actions is due them, but I don’t have any money right now) or an offer to do it yourself, you’re not helping. Yes, I know I’m being stubborn.

But asking me to do my own marketing feels to me like you’re asking me to breathe used motor oil.

For reference: trying to figure out how to get my books to sell (ie: trying to do it on my own) has been more stressful and painful and has caused more anxiety for me in the last few days alone than working with my father has caused in the last … 60 days or so, combined.

It isn’t good for me.

And neither is staying up until 4:30 in the morning, or wondering how to get the server to stop using daylight savings time.

So I think I’ll go to bed.

No, I still don’t think I know what I want, and I don’t think I addressed much of what i meant to address (ie: long, painful discussions about the path of my life and my lack of companionship and work and the idea of ‘career’ and economics and the idea of the urges and drives I have now as compared to any sort of ‘plan’ or ‘path’), but perhaps I’ll post again. Later.

Later.

It (marriage) may be compared to a cage, the birds without try desperately to get in, and those within try desperately to get out.

-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

I just whipped out 5 more comics in the Invisible storyline, plus put together a handy spreadsheet to track what order to post them in, and on what days. It tells me I’ve done 36 ME24 comics total, I’m now 28 comics ahead, and I’ve got comics to post through June 11th, if I keep posting them M-F. Hooray for spreadsheets!

Okay, seriously, going to bed.

I’m not feeling altogether well lately.

No depressed again, I don’t think. That veil seems still to be lifted for now, after a long dusk in its shadow. Just … not quite right. Haven’t been sleeping well, paritally due to my mind and body throwing me off, partially because I keep trying to finish the things I start before I go to bed. Like last night I was trying to finish getting Dragons’ Truth online (which I didn’t actually complete until tonight at around 5:30PM) so I could put in that big order, and I fought with Photoshop and Word and then with CafePress until around 5AM. Which wasn’t nice.

But looking at my charts, chances aren’t good that I’ll be in bed before 3AM tonight, or that I’ll get up before Noon tomorrow.

Have I mentioned that I’m making an active effort to document when I go to sleep and get up, among other things? To give me some record, some idea, of what’s been going on with me. Because sometimes I want to know, and there’s no data. Also tracking things like how much time I spend working on Art or Writing or furniture … et cetera. And I don’t work enough on furniture. Or art. Or writing. Or any of it. But .. sometimes, with things like spending 12 hours getting everything together and formatted and laid out and whatever and then uploaded and stuff so the book is online … that doesn’t count as time spent “Writing”, does it? But it isn’t like the time is wasted, either. What about the hours I spent taking photographs and driving to town and waiting to get the photographs developed to put together the cover of the book? What about the hours of layout and subtle adjustments and per-pixel changes to a 1200dpi image? It isn’t writing… I’m not sure it counts as ‘art’, though I’d bet that people that did it full time, professionally would call it art. Sigh.

So.

I don’t know. There’s a part of me that’s glad, perhaps a little proud, of having completed and made available two novels and a collection of short stories and poetry, and that feels good. And then there’s a more vocal part of me that’s just a downer about the whole thing, because I really DON’T know how to market the books, so I don’t think I really will get any/many sales of them. And … there’s always that idea that people might not like them, and since I’ve spent so much time with them, since they’ve come directly out of me and my mind, the idea of that seems somehow to reflect on me… as though I’m not a good person if people don’t like my creations. And that doesn’t feel good, because … well, I just spent around $250 that I don’t exactly have … in the hopes that people will buy the novels in person, in the hopes that if I can sell enough of them I can make that $250 back, and more. But there’s that part of me that tells me that no one wants to read my books, and I’ve just put myself further “into the hole” for nothing.

But hey, Zoe, Angela, I’ll finally be able to give you the copies of LaNF that I owe you. So, that’s good. Sorry it took so long.

And I’m not feeling good about the whole furniture business business, in case you hadn’t noticed. I can only do so much on my own, and my father, in simultaneously making plans for an infinite future here and an imminent sale, has not-much-time to spend on the furniture. Though I suppose all the driving around in the woods looking for trees must count for something, and spending around $800 on a new chainsaw must count for something, and he’s doing what he can, when he can, with the time and energy he has left over. Which I guess is what I’ve been doing, since I haven’t really been spearheading any furniture-building that’s worked out. Though I have destroyed a fair amount of possibility as I’ve tried to work on my own, making mistakes and such that result in quite a lot of work to repair or recover from.

Which doesn’t feel good.

And I’ve been trying to make new friends and thinking/hoping about finding new lover(s), and that hasn’t exactly been going well. I keep finding people who have nothing to talk about or a lot to talk about (but none of it true) or people who still don’t know who they want to be and want me to help them figure it out and people who I get along with online but feel no chemistry for in person and people who have been so burned/hurt in the past that their introduction isn’t ‘Hello’, it’s “Please don’t hurt me.” And I’m just as single as (perhaps more single than) I’ve been for a little over six years now, and I haven’t really found more than a couple of potential friends… who are just as likely to move across the world and become totally different people as to grow to become my friends after all.

So that isn’t, perhaps, working out as well as it could. But I still have my hopes. And I realize that I may in fact be destined to become an ascetic of sorts, to live my life solitary with regard to intimate companionship. So, I won’t be crushed if some 30 or 80 years from now I’m on my deathbed with no one holding my hand, no children carrying on my memory.

But it doesn’t feel good, thinking of it.

It occurred to me this evening that working at a local movie theatre might be reasonable, paying at least (perhaps exactly) minimum wage, but having the benefit of helping support my movie-watching addiction. The problems with that are things like having to work with humans (esp. customers, if I worked box or concession) during the course of the workday and potentially having to modify my personaly appearance to suit a dress code or to handle food. But hey, as long as I’m thinking of what sort of minimum wage jobs I could get if/when I move back to Phoenix, that is certainly one of them. My sister suggested I become a Greeter for Wal*Mart… easy job, no responsibility… probably a tough one to get. But stocking I could do better, perhaps, and make more money. I’ll look into it, perhaps.

I booked a hotel stay (mostly pre-paid, long ago, when I fell into one of those traps they’re always setting for you) in sunny Orlando, Florida earlier today, for the week of my birthday. Theoretically Angela and I will be going. Assuming there’s the money for it, I suppose. We’d like to see Disneyworld. We’ve never been. I’d like to see Universal, and maybe the big Disney zoo – which I hear features dragons and other mythical creatures. We’ll see. If/when we go, I’m sure we’ll have a good time. We always seem to until the next to the last day, when Angela explodes into a screaming ball of anger, and then after she calms down everything usually goes good again for the rest of the trip. So, that should be good. I’ll just schedule … the two of us doing separate things for that day, right?

It’s nice to have something to look forward to, even though there’s this nagging feeling I won’t be able to pay for it. Like this feeling I have that I won’t be able to pay for the San Diego Comicon this year, either. Hotels and airplanes (or cars/gas/parking) and food and stuff costs money, you see. And my brother is the only one who seems to want to attend/split expenses with me, and he still owes me from last year’s con and doesn’t show any signs of earning money between now and then, so … that’s a little iffy. But I’ve got the hotel reservation (cancelable until a week before the con without having to pay any cancelation fees) and I’ve got high hopes. I think I’ll fill out and send in the professional attendee registration this week. List ME24 and Anyone But You as a couple of my new comics… That reminds me that I’ve forgotten to post ME24s for yesterday and today/tomorrow. I’ll go do that now…

Okay, that’s done. (yesterday’s, today’s/tomorrow’s)

Anyway, yeah. I’m not falling too far behind on making new ME24s to keep up with my schedule. That is, I’m actually ahead through today, still, by one full month. And I was thinking of opening up Photoshop and whipping out another week or two worth of comics before I pass out tonight. Because I really do want to stay way ahead on this thing, keep it updating, keep it a regular comic. That’s on my list of things to do, sortof, to have a regularly updating online comic. And this one is easy and fun and even funny, sometimes. I’m thinking of intruducing a couple of new characters in a couple of weeks (which means you won’t see them for six weeks or more), and I definitely want to stay with characters that don’t have any faces or mouths or any reasonable way that they could be talking or interacting (or eating pudding). I have some good ideas for new characters moving to the neighborhood. And I want to say right now that the invisible characters that pop up were in the original drawings for the comic, but I didn’t get a chance to integrate them when I did 25 strips in under 6 hours, and they’re not the new characters I’m referring to here.

Which doesn’t feel too bad. At least something in my life is going as planned, and reasonably successfully. Though I do admit that I’ve never had a comic actually continue updating on a regular schedule for more than 25 comics. Which I guess is okay, since I already have 31 completed of ME24, and plenty of good ideas for more. Then again, are you reading it? Do you like it? Do I care if you’re reading it, or like it? I don’t think I’ve ever done comics to try to become popular or to build an online audience or get recognition. I think it’s like almost any other creative thing I do; my head is full of these ideas, and I’ve got to get them out one way or another, or I’ll run out of room up there. Anyway, I need to start forcing myself to work on and complete at least one page of the 24-Hour comic I scrapped after about 14 honest hours’ work on it per day, so I can get the pencil-work done within another couple of weeks and move on to the computer work and eventually put it online for a quarter or something. As it is, the 12 (or was it 13?) pages I’d completed pencilling are just sitting in a prone stack on the table behind me, and I’ve been spending my time working on drilling thousands of tiny holes in a piece of wood.

Which I’m not over 1/3 of the way through with, by area. Not necessarily by number of holes, since there’s a big black elephant between me and completion. And it may begin to go slower, since my father told me I’m not to use the cordless drills for the project anymore, and the corded drill seems to heat up a lot faster than the cordless ones. Though I do basically have permission to burn the drill I’m using out, if it comes to it, so maybe I’ll just see which gives out first, my burning hand, or the burning motor inside. I’ve run into a couple of problems with my current method of drilling the holes that can only be overcome at a higher cost of parts (the method that works better for accuracy seems to break a lot of drill bits), so I’ve begun adapting my style to accommodate the shortcomings of the materials I already have on hand. But I’m making progress. I’d have been making progress for the last couple/few hours, but the corded drill is two or three times louder, and it isn’t reasonable to run it after Heath’s gone to sleep.

So, here I am, typing away.

Should probably be typing at one of the short stories for an anthology of linked stories I’m working on, or on my next novel… which I hope to have available before the end of the year, perhaps (preferably) before the end of the summer, if I can bang it out. I really, really hope I’m done with it before NaNoWriMo rolls around again, since that seems to work pretty well for me. Maybe I’ll do MENoWriMo again this month, do my own little challenge, try and get a novel written in the month of May. Maybe I’ll get myself into a good rhythm, where I write a first draft in November and get it re-written and edited and together and available before the end of April, then write another first draft in May and get it re-written and edited and together and available before the end of October. That would be pretty sweet.

And not impossible.

Oh, and throw together a set of short stories every once in a while, too, eh? As long as I’m at it. And then every 18 months, publish an encyclopedia. Because who really has enough encyclopedias? Especially encyclopedias written by people who have no idea what they’re writing about? (That may just be a good idea, Teel. Toss it into the hopper and see what comes out the other side of your mind. Maybe you really will turn out an encyclopedia-like book before too long…)

Anyway, I’m getting tired and I have to go to the bathroom and one of those (or perhaps an actual lack) has caused me to be unable to come up with more things that make me feel bad to type about, so that’s that. Perhaps if I think of something, I’ll make another post, later. Or just sleep. It’s almost 3AM.

I didn’t get much done today, but at least I did something – by way of furniture building. I cut the tenons on the aspen legs for one of the coffee tables my father and I are working on. I had already cut them (generally) for length and had sanded them nicely. Basically, as soon as my father is done with the top, we can glue them in and level it and when that’s done, finish the table and put it out for sale. There is one problem with one of the legs that needs a little glue, and a little time, but I expect that if I do that tomorrow I’ll still be ahead of dad’s progress on the top.

Perhaps tomorrow I shall cut the tenons on the manzanita legs I’ve got prepared. I had made them for a coffee table, but I’ve now had to scrap three different tops for the table, so they’ve been waiting for a while. But dad’s been working on another top… I guess it just needs a little sanding and a piece of glass cut for it, and it’s good to go… so I just have to ask him if there’s anything special needs to be done for the tenons before I cut them, and I can do that tomorrow. And then that’ll be in the same position – legs cut and ready to be inserted into a top that my father is working on.

Except, well, tomorrow the big chainsaw is supposed to come in, and we’re supposed to go up on the hill and cut down a big juniper. Should be plenty of good wood to build many nice items from. Have no idea how much work and trouble it’ll be to get it down and onto the truck and/or trailer and home and … whatever. But with a chainsaw with a 36″ blade, we should be well-equiped. I hope. I have no real experience felling big trees. But after tomorrow (assuming the chainsaw comes in as planned) I will.

Oh, and as soon as my father selects some wood to use for the legs of the thing, there’s a bench he’s working on the … body? top? seat? whatever. He’s doing the part people will sit on, and after he selects some wood, I’m going to get the legs in useable shape. Which, unless he selects a totally burned or complicated piece of wood, shouldn’t be too much trouble. And then, when we get the two tables and the bench assembled and ready to go, he’ll finish them all at the same time, along with the legs of the small table I have been having trouble with (only with the varnish – it is otherwise complete), and we’ll have four new items for the store.

Now, considering the amount of actual work that needs to be done, if we could work even just a couple of hours a day each on the stuff, we should have everything ready to be finished … by the end of this week. Hah! Okay, okay, so, taking into account how things actually go around here, we shall perhaps be able to finish the pieces … by the end of next week, right? And then … let’s see… three to six months to sit in the store … and maybe someday I’ll be able to pay my bills, right?

Sigh.

I think I’m going to go make another post.