Weekly Update - 154 (Patreon)

Sad Riley sketch! Why's she sad? It happens.

So alrighty! Let's start on this Volume #1 and Character Sheet sprint!

Still kinda thinking about how I want to structure this, since I don't really want to go on a multiple-month hiatus from regular comics, but I also have to get this work done and get this book out!

So I think the goal for now will be to try and do 2 character sheets a week, and then in-between those I intend to work on Volume 1 page remasters.

There's 3 Mondays left in this month, let's give it 3 weeks and see where I'm at by then before reevaluating the progress!

Volume 1: 10/72 pages remastered

Character Sheets: Scott and Akira

Reading: Mistborn (~450 pages in, roughly 200 pages left to go)

Playing: TW: WH 3 and WoW.

Ramble:

Something I keep thinking about lately is capacity, and bear with me here for a moment because this particular train of thought is still loading at the station. I've realized I have a capacity for a general amount of stuff I can do and think about for a given time period. Compared to others, I feel like my capacity for things is particularly small, while for my husband and some of our friends, their capacity for things is extremely high. Yet all of us seem to fill that capacity, whatever size it may be, to bursting, all the time. No matter what's going on or how much stuff we're already doing.

Now, I realize this might sound like a "no-duh" kinda thing. Obviously everyone has their limits, and stress piles up and wears us down as we approach or surpass those limits. This is something we all deal with and something everyone knows. I don't think I'm breaking any sort of new profound philosophical ground here by stating that there are limits to the stuff we can all manage. Thousands of books and probably a million articles have been written on the science of what stresses us out and the like. However, just because someone's written about it before is not an acceptable reason to not write about it. And even if nothing else in this ramble is of any value to anyone, I will stand by and argue that sentence to the bitter end.

Anyway, what makes this concept of capacity interesting to me is that I think while most of us are operating at or above our limits, all of the time, we never really consider the fact that when we are operating BELOW our capacity, many of us tend to actually seek out things to fill it up. Anything. Hard things. Difficult things. Challenges. Things that stress us out. This is because if our capacity ISN'T full, we're BORED. Some people can have ten dozen different things they're already juggling, and they decide to pick up one more thing because they are BORED with the things they've already got. They do this because they haven't yet filled their capacity, as insane as that may sound to some of us with much lower tolerance for amount of Things.

It's counter-intuitive, perhaps, because we might THINK we are happiest when at rest, but I honestly am starting to think we might be happiest when our capacity is full. Not just full, but more importantly full of things that we actually WANT to do. Bills, work, errands, chores, all of these things can steal our time and fill our capacity to full or even beyond full, stressing us out and leaving us no room for the things we actually WANT to do. Operating at 110% or 120% capacity all the time can leave us worn out, exhausted, and miserable, until we start seeking out any excuse to just -stop- and do nothing for awhile. Stopping is easy. Nothing is readily attainable: play a video game, scroll through social media, stream a movie, take a nap. If those things sound really appealing to you right now, I'm guessing you are operating at ~110+% capacity on things that you don't really want to do.

But after we've stopped and done nothing for awhile, normally we don't feel any better. Doing nothing doesn't recharge us, it doesn't rejuvenate us. Whatever hours we had, whatever moments we took to just relax and wind down, we wasted them because all we did was -stop- and did nothing else, and our capacity for things is still full of crap we don't want to do.

The point I think I'm getting at is although we might feel like we want to just -stop- and do nothing as a solution to feeling exhausted and overworked, I think it might be more beneficial to actually fill whatever free time we have with something to DO. Something you WANT to do. Something productive. Something no one is asking you to do or that you HAVE to do. Learning a skill, picking up a hobby, going for a walk and getting some sunlight and exercise. It might sound hard to start these things if you're already feeling worn down from operating beyond your capacity for things, but my theory at the moment, and a big part of what's helped me with depression, is that doing SOMETHING is always better than doing nothing.

I mean, it's why I started this comic.

And hey, thanks for reading.