Frustrated to tears (Patreon)

Monday started out with a huge jump-start for me. Matthew had already completed a full script on HPV for me, so I could just begin drawing it right off the bat instead of researching and writing it on my own. I’ve been so intimidated of this subject so I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off… Matt had worded some things a bit strangely, I thought, so I tweaked them and when I asked him to read over the changes he said he was sure it was fine. So Monday and Tuesday I penciled and inked three of the six pages! That’s fanTAStic progress for me!

Wednesday a long-abroad friend was back in town and I figured ‘hey, I’m ahead of schedule, of course we can make time to see him!’ so Matt and I caught up with our long lost chum and then later that day I had a super long meeting with an organization that I’ve wanted to work with for years and years. I lost a day of comicking but it was ok, I thought, because I was ahead and I could bang out the final three pages Thursday-Friday.

But today there was a doctor appointment and then my two hour pole dance class left me exhausted and page four was really, really difficult for me to wrap my head around. So I gave it my best and drew this really awkward visual analogy that didn’t fit with the verbal one (as pictured!) and then Matt, who was finishing coloring the pages, started filling me in that a lot of my line changes didn’t work and were actually inaccurate. So now it’s Thursday and I still have three pages left to draw and lines on all six pages need to be re-worked and I have to re-draw this other stuff and it’s all fucked up and I’m so fucking mad at myself.

For the first time in weeks, I was going to be done with the comic by Friday and now I won’t. I’ll have to work through another goddamn weekend. A weekend when I have to go to a wedding and we have a (much loved and missed!) houseguest who’ll be staying with us for several nights, and there’s all these other commitments I agreed to do over the coming week and I just… I was going to have a break. I was going to have a week off. We were going to run a guest comic and I was going to get to enjoy my birthday week.

But now, I dunno. Should we just run the guest comic instead of this HPV one, and spend that birthday week working on this mangled comic instead? I need a break so, so badly. And I fucked myself over instead. Again.

Fuck.