Brain and Book Printing Trubs (Patreon)

Hello my lovely patrons! Since my last post I’d keep starting an update to you all, but I’d hate every word I typed so much that I’d delete the whole thing and tell myself I’d do it in a few more days. And now here we are, a long time later. 

The last few weeks I’ve been having Some Real Brain Trubs. It happens about once a year where I have a great big crash and, of course, I forget it happens every year until it’s over. Which it basically is now! But when I’m in the thick of it, it’s impossible to think anything other than “I guess this is what life will be like forever now” 

I’ve been struggling with the split between having a public face, a very specific aspect of my personality, that has to always be “on” with my social media accounts and then the rest of me, the actual human being who gets frustrated, who’s sad, who has Brain Trubs and PTSD. I want to take a break from interacting on social media, but it’s literally my job. 

Haha, oh brains! 

In not-my-brain news, volume two of OJST is basically done. Matt’s been working on it every day for about the last six months or so, we have a completed video and the Kickstarter page is ready to go live. “Wait, but didn’t you JUST Kickstart volume one a few months ago?” people ask me when I tell them this. It was a year ago! Our last campaign was in May 2014, with the books delivered in… September? Or October? 2014. Matt and I are expecting it’ll be harder to get funded this time around. When it’s your first book, people’ll are like “Yes! Let’s make this happen!” but when it comes to the sequels it’s more like “Wait, didn’t we already make this happen? Didn’t I already help?” or maybe “Oh, I guess this is a regular occurrence, not like I’ll miss out on anything if I skip this one. I’ll do it next time.” 

Which I totally don’t begrudge anyone for thinking!!! I absolutely do not feel entitled to people’s financial support on these crowdfunding things. It’s a delicate balance, trying to raise the funds to create the things you want to make and to not also burn out your audience from constantly hitting them up for their money. 

Oh, and speaking of the book: We may have some printer troubles. Last year we used Shanghai Printing, which was a 100% great experience. If you’re a self-publisher, I fully recommend them. However when we emailed asking for a price quote to do this second volume, our rep wrote back saying that they’re not allowed to print this content. But he also reassured us to not worry, because he’s going to look into sub-contracting somewhere to make sure we can get it done. I’m not really sure how it worked last year, because they never mentioned having a problem with our content for the first book. Dang, why’s it gotta be so hard to print a book fulla wangs and bojinas? 

Hm. Hmmm. Even when I don’t update here for a while, every day I honestly am thinking about essays and articles I want to share here. I just worry. I worry about being a bummer or repelling people when I’m not being Twitter Erika Who Makes Dick Jokes. 

Tell me the best thing to happen to you in the last week. For me it was having a Monday morning meeting with two friends where we talked about our business accomplishments and challenges of the last month and our goals for the next. I look forward to our monthly meetings so much, I love what these ladies are doing and they inspire me so much.