I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—”two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Its nihilism will be, I think, a pleasing counterpart to the aggressive lack on meaning that is “Jabberwocky”, the only other poem I’ve bothered to memorize.

Today, I went to the comic book shop and traded some copies of the comic books I made for the 5th Edition D&D Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide. I mean really. How rad is that. Twelve year old me would be amazed that I can actually draw well enough to make a trade like that. (And even more amazed if I told him that the day before, I got $90 for finishing a single page of my comic.)

Then I went to circus school and, as I expected would be happening sometime in the first few weeks, found myself really hating my past self for signing myself up for this. But I’m pretty sure that if I can tough it out for a few weeks of building muscle, future me will be very grateful to current me when she, like, grabs ahold of a rope, slithers up it without a care in the world, and poses gracefully.

Also future me will be generally happy at having a body that is in shape. I’ve had that in the past thanks to burlesque and pole dance; I kinda stumbled into it by utter accident and it turns out it’s really nice to be in shape. I never imagined. So yeah. Fuck you, past me. But you’re welcome, future me.

(I actually say things like that out loud sometimes. It may or may not help with making it easier to do stuff like ‘gruelling exercises’.)

I also got to stop on the way home to have a sandwich, and eat it in a waterfront park, looking out at the brightly-lit Ferris wheel and the gently twinkling lights of… I dunno, whatever the hell is across the sound from downtown. Bainbridge Island, judging from Google Maps. I like living in Seattle, it’s pretty when the sun’s not hiding for days on end.

And I also played with the new version of that use-my-ipad-as-a-cintiq program I’m in the beta test for. I need to fiddle with it a little more and write up my reactions to its UI changes. Maybe tomorrow.

Some things I've learnt about doing large projects over the course of doing Rita.

• Begin with an end in mind. It's very useful to have a narrative goal to be aiming for, and to have a point in the future where you are finished. Things may change, you may not arrive at that end from the direction you thought you would, you may come up with a better ending to aim for halfway through – but you're aiming somewhere instead of just flailing about aimlessly.
• Don't stress about schedules, but don't abandon it. If you're at a point in your life where all you can dedicate to the Huge Project in one day is a half hour, that's still a half hour of work that you're closer to the end. Sure, four solid hours of work would be a lot better – but a half hour is still tons better than nothing. Working on Rita has been much easier ever since my official schedule became “aim for two pages a week, don't fret if life gets in the way”; it frees me from traps like spending the precious little energy I have during down phases on making a page whose entire purpose is to HAVE A PAGE UP ON SCHEDULE, even if it's just a drawing of a sad person apologizing for no page.
• The easier it is to work on it wherever, the better. I'm told that Sergio Aragones draws his stuff on typing paper stuck to a clipboard; this means that he can work on an issue of Groo anywhere, even in a seat on a full airplane. I haven't reached that ideal quite yet, but I'm getting closer; much of Rita happens in my studio, but a lot of it also happens at coffee shops, in parks, even on the bus.

These are the principles that have let a complete slacker with no discernible work ethic like myself get a dense, 200p graphic novel done all by herself. Other people might have taken less than four years to do it, but I don't care. I've spent the time and energy my highly distractable, intensely solar-powered nervous system allowed me to spend on it, without ever turning a passion project into drudgery and an obligation.

A friend is debating moving from Arizona to Seattle. Telling them some of my thoughts on living in Seattle as a very solar powered person somehow became me talking myself into taking a desert vacation. To Monument Valley, specifically – I’ve wanted to visit there for most of my life, ever since falling in love with the caricature of it Herriman set “Krazy Kat” in.

I couldn’t do it by myself; it’s really a destination that requires driving to get around. But I think I may have just managed to propose a weekend trip to my ex-with-benefits, who does drive. And I have enough points piled up on Southwest that we could fly to Salt Lake City, which is only about a 6-hour drive from there. He’d proposed just driving but that’s about an 18 hour drive each way, over nasty wintry mountains, sort of over the edge of what’s quite sane.

Will this stoned impulse turn into a brief “charge up on solar power” vacation? We will see.

This morning, I sprawled in the living room with my ex-with-benefits and showed off the cool font I'd bought for use in Drowning City. We then looked at more cool fonts on the Internet.

Then we went to Trabant for drinks and a scone. I sat there after he left and drew three drawings of a robot chakat* for the next page of Rita. I find the fact that I will be paid almost a hundred bucks for this to be delightfully absurd; the Internet has made some very weird and personal works almost sustainable!

After that, I came back home and changed my clothes, then went out to my first Introductory Aerial class at SANCA. It was less grueling than I was afraid it would be but I am pretty sure that will change soon. A guy practicing wire-walking near where we were doing basic lifts and poses was quite taken with my crow leggings; he identifies with crows, he said, and uses the French word for “crow” as his Circus Name.

Of course people have Circus Names. I don't know why I would have ever thought that was not the case.

(Sadly for Young Monsieur de Corbeau those leggings are out of print.)

I am, of course, utterly terrible at this new skill. I will have to build up a lot of upper arm strength, and some friction resistance in certain particular places. This is no surprise; I was expecting as much from my pole dance experiences. And of course there are exercises designed for just this; I'm going to be hitting the chin-up bar in my bathroom door with renewed vigor over the next few weeks, using a different grip than the one I normally do, and doing some different things!

And now I am in bed, and must sleep soon so I can go to the dentist tomorrow. And then to see “Inherent Vice” with the ex-with-benefits, the ex-without-benefits, and possibly one of the ex-without-benefits' new significant others. Did that sound complicated? That sounded complicated.

* it's a furry thing, basically it is a cat-centaur. But “chakat” is funnier to say.

…was the second-worst con I’ve ever been to. The coveted spot of “worst con ever” was Bent-Con, a queer-oriented comic con in LA where I sold all of $100 worth of stuff in the first two days, and blew off the last day to go to the beach.

Wizard World New Orleans 2015 was pretty good. I didn’t quite break even but I was only down $200 and had a lot of fun due to stuff like Chewbacchus rolling a couple floats and a brass band through the aisles now and then; it was a big Nerd Mardi Gras.

This year? I didn’t even cover my table, let alone flying in from Seattle. I got to sit next to someone who had bult a wall-o-prints as tall as a standing adult across the entire side of her table. Which cut down what I could see of the traffic by about half. (And when I asked her to, like, remove some of it on Sunday morning, she refused. People who do cons: please don’t do this shit if you’re in artist alley. You may TECHNICALLY be able to do it but it feels really rude, trust me. One grid’s worth of prints, I can deal with, that’s normal, but completely cutting off my view of the folks to my left? You are being an ass.)

The view to my left for the entire con. Real neighborly when the biggest resource is eyes on your work.

Talking to other people as I packed up on Sunday, it turned out I was far from the only one. This was just a shitty con all around. Which is kinda heartening; it’s good to know I was not making a major mistake or anything. The various theories people floated were:

• No Chewbacchus! Which meant no party mood, which meant tighter wallets.
• 200 more artist alley tables than last year, without the increase in attendance to support it.
• Middle of January rather than early February meant wallets still hurt from Christmas.

I think all of these theories account for part of these terible sales! I looked at the sign-up sheet for next year, looked at my costs and expenses, and looked at the date for next year’s con: “TBD”.

Nope. I’m not taking a crapshoot on the next one being this shitty. I would have lost money even if I was a local. I mean, yeah, it might also be awesome. It might be another Mardi Gras party con. But I am not going to flip that coin and risk starting 2016 off with a shitty con.

Basically this was the worst I’ve ever done at a pro-run con.

Next con: Emerald City Comic-Con. Which I made more money at even on my first, worst year.