Well.

Yesterday, the shipment of Rita 2 arrived. I put half of them them in the studio and half on the storage shelves; why bother wrestling with making space for all of them when I’m going to be shipping half of them out?

This morning I woke up with a cranky back, quite possibly from moving all those books around. I assessed my shipping supplies, found them lacking, and ordered some new ones, so I can get these things out as soon as possible. Then, I thought, I was going to crank on the Rainfurrest conbook cover and maybe get a significant chunk of it done.

But first I figured I’d go get some lunch and relax a bit. Because there was a lot of tension about all of this boiling beneath the surface of my mind. I grabbed the iPad, made sure it had all the stuff I haven’t finished reading yet downloaded into the Kindle app, and left the apartment. At first I thought I was just going to go to one of the sandwich shops on the Ave and come back and get to work. But soon I found myself getting on a bus for downtown, without really thinking about it. I ended up going down to Pike Place for a sandwich at Beecher’s, then lying in the little park nearby. (Google informs me that it was VIctor Steinbrueck Park.)

I kept my phone in my purse, except for purposes of time-keeping and route-planning. I didn’t need Twitter or MeFi to occupy myself on the road; I had a book. Specifically, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, which you have probably read already if you read lots of fantasy what with it being much-lauded.

I enjoyed it a lot. The main character was not at all an appealing person, in a way that felt rather familiar. Especially near the end, when he’s completely burnt out and has rejected everything of the magical world. It was a good thing to read today, with this weird emptiness hovering around the back of my head. It felt very much… adult. It was a fantasy full of regret at things that went awry, and a knowledge of what it’s like to live on after your youthful enthusiasm for a craft completely burns out, leaving you an empty husk with no idea of what to do next. I’ve been there with regards to animation. It’s not a place most of my reading ever prepared me for. Or maybe some of it was trying to and I just didn’t have the ears to hear it yet; I don’t know. A while back on one of the subreddits I read there was someone whinging about how they thought the phrase “you’ll understand when you’re older” was just a sign of surrendering to the dominant culture, which I thought was bullshit, and left a list of some “when you’re older”s that I’ve personally experienced. This definitely spoke to some of those Adult Problems via the framework of KID INDUCTED INTO THE SECRET MAGIC SCHOOL! and KID VISTS A MAGICAL LAND AND HAS A QUEST!.

I snagged the second volume and may read it soon. Hooray for coming in onto a series late in its life.

I cancelled out on pole dance class tonight, mostly because I just feel utterly exhausted. I’ve been pushing myself hard for the past few months, and haven’t given myself much of a break the past couple weeks due to needing to Get This Cover Done On Time. The immense relief when I did this told me it was the right choice; I could have pushed myself through it, and been glad for it, but sometimes you just gotta listen to the exhaustation.

There is stuff happening tomorrow but oh man I’m so glad I let myself just go sit in the sun and not worry about anything beyond a tasty cheese sandwich and a book today.

Also when I came home there was a package on my doorstep: two Gorillapod lights. When I finish shipping the Kickstarter books, I plan to reward myself by getting an annoyingly expensive and highly articulated action figure, which will live on my desk and get used for quick pose reference, quite possibly dramatically lit with those two lights because I find myself wanting to do stark shading lately and don’t want to have to work out every bit of it from scratch.