Vlog 20160918 - Corporate Retreats and Sabbaticalsss (Patreon)

Whew! Sorry this one is a bit late /:)) Thanks for your patience!

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Hello patrons it is Sunday and I'm back here again and lovely Vancouver British Columbia! So... Sorry that the vlog is a day late I tried to post an update from my phone and then ...when I backed out of the app it went back to the submission page and so I don't think that my message actually successfully posted so I'm sorry about that.

The situation was this weekend was my company's annual work retreat and we went out to Pender Island which is one of the Gulf Islands out there... you go out to the ocean and there's a bunch of Islands and Pender Island is one of them. I know we keep going to these places with no Wi-Fi or bad Wi-Fi it's really frustrating... this place had no Wi-Fi and I knew I'd be back Sunday which was, you know, just a day later. I thought it would be best to do everything under my normal course and get it done slightly laty. So apologies... and now we're recording!

The retreat was really good. This is the third one that we've done with our company and it's an intensive two-day session where we take an audit of the health of the company, try to really ask ourselves in a bigger picture way: "how are we doing, are we going in the direction we want to be going, where do we want to go and how are we going to get there?" and I've found it over the years to be really a valuable exercise... the whole time we were we there were talking about things that happened in former retreats and it's a really formative experience and something really special. But it is really intense. Sometimes you know when it comes to the fate of the company and this company that we're trying to build together which is very groundbreaking and very unique and... nobody really knows where we might get to as a company or whether what we're trying to achieve is really possible or... what we're trying to achieve really doesn't have these defined, clear boundaries and it's really hard to quantify sometimes.

But we really gel together as a group we really believe in our mission... as difficult as it is to articulate that mission... and we believe we're making great strides. And so, it's really intimidating to go to that environment and propose an idea that you know the entire company is going to orient itself around. I've been really fortunate that some of my ideas have been accepted in the past and it worked out but whenever it happens I feel very..." are you sure?? Are you sure you want to take this idea and run with it?? Because I just kinda came up with it in 30 seconds and not really super sure it's the best tactic but okayyyyyy don't blame meeee..."

It just goes to enforce the fact that none of us really know what we're doing. No one on this team is so groundbreakingly exceptional that they are a unique force in the universe. I really believe that everyone on the team is very talented but at the core it, we're normal people doing our best and we work together and we try to achieve really great outcomes. And so you have to maintain confidence in yourself that you belong on this team, that you believe in this team and that they believe in you. So you put your ideas out there and hopefully it'll gain traction and work out. And if it doesn't that's okay, it's not your fault... we're all pitching ideas, we're all trying, we're all experimenting. Together we will assess the mistake and reorient ourselves. So I guess that's me building confidence in myself that the big idea that I pitched will work out... fingers crossed.

Otherwise, I finished my first week of sabbatical. So as I mentioned in my last vlog we're doing a kinda 50-50 sabbatical maybe a little less. Last week I did 2 1/2 days on sabbatical and the rest the time at work. So I was at work Monday and I was at work... well obviously Friday was the retreat so I was "at work Friday". And I worked two days on comics and then a half day split between comics and work. And it's been tough! I gotta admit.

So one might think that the tough part is managing work... trying to get everything that you're doing done in about half the time... but no, the hard part is the writing. Really. Sitting here and making this book happen is really really hard work. And in a way that's justifying because it's so hard and I was trying to do it after working full-time: eight hour days, five days a week while maintaining a webcomic. The fact that I didn't make traction is not so surprising if you evaluate it like that and I'm really really grateful that I now have the space to really lean into it. But yeah, it's hard. Drawing full time is a lot harder than I think anyone my think it is.

It is a physical act... so one of the big barriers is that you get physically tired drawing all day every day. For me this is really hard and people get used to it but I typically draw ...I think maybe tops two hours a day on a regular a given week and then I might draw for eight hours once or twice a week. So that's like my weekends I'll have more time drawing and then my evenings. And you compare it to someone who's drawing eight hours a day every day-- it is physically very taxing. My wrist is already starting to complain and hurt so I'm already taking steps to to mitigate that and trying to keep my wrist as healthy as I can while pushing as hard as I can. My eyesight is also kinda complaining... I really need new glasses... and so the eyestrain issue is there... and there's tiredness and making sure you're eating healthy and controlling your anxiety and staying fit and it's going to take awhile I think for me to get into a rhythm. By the time I nail it, the sabbatical will probably be over, but that's the balance that I'm trying to strike.

So it's an interesting exercise. I've never really.... since graduating university and being unemployed, I've never been able to full-time dedicate myself to art. When I was unemployed it was a very very very different situation. So at that time I was just starting wasted Talent. I had taken my comic... which was a couple of years old that point... maybe 2 to 3 years old I can't quite remember... I'd been doing it on loose leaf paper with a straight ballpoint pen. And I graduated University and I realized "Oh there's like... a thousand people reading this and it's soooo baaaddd I don't understand how all these people are reading this!" and the comments that they were leaving like "this is really relatable, this is so funny" and how for it had gotten in its terrible terrible state was bewildering to me. And it was at that time that I decided "I wonder what would happen if I put it more than zero effort into this..." it's such a terrible way to live your life!! I find its something that keeps happening to me over and over again "I'll just do this thing it's just... no one cares whatever… Thing" and it resonates with people and I'm like "nononol don't please don't--- no I wasn't trying!! [shoot] I should probably try harder, sorry..." Anyway when I was back in being unemployed that was the first time I tried to treat the comic like it was something worth treating with any amount of respect. I would go through the effort of composing, penciling, inking and colouring it with markers and posting on a regular schedule... So that's when that whole discipline started... but I would not say I was attacking with full-time intensity. even back then, I'm like "there is no chance that webcomicking is going to be the thing that's going to rescue me from my situation..." I mean at that point it was absurd, and my full-time work was very dedicated to cleaning up my profile, building up my portfolio, applying to jobs, going to interviews. [That's] where my full-time effort was really spent.

Now is the first time that I feel like I'm approaching art with anything close to a full-time professional's mindset and resources. And it's an experience... it's something that I've always kind of kept in the back of my mind as an open question... "can I do it? Could I do this? What would it feel like, what would it be like?" And so I'm learning a lot and making headway. And I'm making progress... I have two pages left to do in book 4.. two more interstitials...so these ones are the hardest ones because for a while it was like "these are going to be flowcharts or something" and I was looking at them and I'm like "oh there's only these two and it doesn't really makes sense so maybe they should be illustrations" but then I was like "I know, I can make them kind of hybrid between a comic and an illustration" ... so I don't really know how they're going to go out but that's why these two were the last two is because.... I have a pretty good idea of what I want to say but not how I want to say it in those two pages ... it's all about the implementation that has to happen. And after that I can hand it off to my designer, but that's just four, and then I need to do the all the work for five.

But I know what needs doing, I think... we'll see... so that's the situation we're at-- oh we're already at 10 minutes, wow I can't believe I talked for that long I'm so sorry... So I'll have lots of stuff to share that I'll be sharing over the next coming weeks that you'll be able to see that's behind the scenes work for the book and I'm excited about that. So thanks again for watching, thank you for supporting me-- my income drops to zero when I'm working on the book, right? So I get paid hourly at work... and when I'm not billing hours I'm not getting paid and I have a bit of savings, but this type of exercise would have been really dangerous and maybe not possible if it wasn't for your support on Patreon. Having this safety net coming in every month gives me additional security to know I can do this, I can make this happen and I'm not going to screw myself over in any way ...so I just wanted ...I wanted to take a moment to really express gratitude to everyone who has backed me so far, for supporting me in this adventure and we're making things happen! Things are happening that wouldnt've been possible before! So thank you everyone and have a fantastic week! You'll be seeing me~! Bye