Wuzzardry

Last week I had a final visit with my neurosurgeon. My head, having been cracked open and stapled back together after a dumb and 100% self-inflicted bicycle accident back in February, is pretty much healed. I can ride a bike again. I’m in the clear.

The first thing I did, obviously, was order a custom skate deck featuring Sunbun, everybody’s favorite guinea pig wuzzard.

It was the only logical first step! Actually it turns out custom decks are only like $20 more than blank ones so that’s going to be a game changer for me. Also possible low-yield business model?

Time will tell. I’ve also been out on the bike, and while I haven’t ridden super far, I was inspired to stop and shoot this very Field of Dreams pic while riding in open space a few days ago. Welcome back to my life, bike. I missed you.

Hi, I am a person who takes pictures of bikes like they are my children.

Mostly I’ve kept on working at this comic book project. In the spirit of sharing work and seeking feedback, I’ve been trying a strategy I’ve used in the past but never really realized was a strategy until just now, which is to assign myself a fictional deadline by which I need to share a certain amount of work with somebody. There’s of course nothing riding on this deadline, nor does the projected recipient know about it or remotely care if I share my weird little comic book notes with them by then.

I hardly ever even hit the deadline, but somehow it keeps me focused, possibly just because it makes an item to my to-do list, which causes me to crave the satisfaction of checking it off. I’m not totally sure this is healthy.

Because while it is effective, it also tends to divert my attention from the process to the product, and I wonder if too much of my attention lives there. I also wonder if it always has. When I was a kid, did I draw for the pure joy of drawing or was it in pursuit of the satisfaction of having made a drawing? (Showing it to my mom, receiving praise, nabbing the coveted fridge placement, etc.) I wonder if there’s ever been a time in my life where I’ve been as focused on the action of anything as I’ve been on the pursuit of getting it done.

Thich Nhat Hanh makes a suggestion in a book called Work that I randomly spotted at the library last summer and liked so much I bought a copy for Tiffany that she never read (that’s right, Tiffany, I haven’t forgotten): notice key strokes. Pay attention to the action of typing. Turns out I love typing. I actually take immense pleasure in the striking of keys to make marks on a screen. I just hardly ever notice I’m doing it.

I think that’s what I’d most like to accomplish with this project: to notice that I’m doing it. But then I never feel like working on it so I need something to motivate me to actually do the work. It’s a balance. Like everything, I guess!

I’ve mostly been working on the writing part - plotting and outlining for now and not much drawing. I have made (very) rough sketches of a few more pages. The drawing, I know, will go much more slowly than the writing once I get there, and I can’t tell if I’m looking forward to that or dreading it.

Or maybe I should just keep my focus on what’s in front of me: skating that sweet Sunbun wuzzard deck.

Til next time!