Doing What You Love
Hi again,
There's an old adage that says if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. It's one of those things we've all heard and pretty much any variation on it is attributed to one great intellectual or another and it was probably actually said by someone trying to sound profound or someone who was high or someone who was both! And as anyone who has ever worked in their life knows, even if you do enjoy what you're doing for work, it is work. Like, that's why as artists, we like to be paid for our labor because while we may have a drive to create, we also are expending great time and energy and care and years of built skills to actually make the things we're asked to or even just want to make.
And, for myself and for a lot of other creators I've talked to over the entirety of my life, there is a compulsion to create. It isn't something you can easily turn off and just walk away from--even when you aren't being paid or recognized or sharing your work, you're creating it because it's important to you.
What I want to talk about, briefly, today is feeling the burnout of having your leisure and your work be so overlapping.
Sonic Superstars
In my free time the past week or so, I've been picking up Sonic Superstars. I've been having a lot of fun with it, except for getting that darned 5th Chaos Emerald! And it's nice to play a game and have fun with it. But as I play through, I also feel a burden at the back of my mind that this thing I am doing for my own enjoyment in my off time is also work. It's important that I know the story of Sonic Superstars. It's important that I can draw the connections from the game to the prequel comic SEGA released on socials (it's a lot of fun) to the characterization of Fang in our recently announced Sonic the Hedgehog: Fang the Hunter series that'll be kicking off Sonic comics in 2024!
Because so much of my work is tied to the creative impulse--to finding interesting storytelling angles, to finding new licenses, to using my knowledge to help my creators better tell their stories--I have a really hard time shutting it off. And while I have the often enviable position of getting to work on things like Sonic or formerly Transformers or Samurai Jack or whatever, being an existing fan of those things often does blur the lines when I continue to engage with them between my job and my interests.
And it goes to so many other things. The movies and shows I watch, the other games I play, the podcasts I listen to, the prose I read. Sometimes, I just have a bolt of inspiration. I feel like I know how to translate it into the comics medium. Or I read another comic and have an idea off of that. And for as much as that can be lovely, it can also be really hard because you don't want your free time to feel like work time in any way. And that burns you out.
There're different ways of dealing with it. Honestly, a big thing for me since starting to work in comics has been trashy reality TV because it can scratch my itch for something to enjoy in my relaxation time, while also not really engaging the storytelling part of my brain in the same way. It's a palette cleanser in a lot of ways, like a little piece of pickled radish. I know a lot of artists who make sure that for their warm-ups, they're drawing not just something for themselves, but that is so wholly different from whatever it is they're drawing for work. Maybe that's a stylistic change or if you're drawing a funny animal book, it's practicing your humans or vice-versa, or doing object studies or photo or model studies that're just wholly different. And I know some folks who use that time to work on their personal projects or commissions and--honestly--I think sometimes that burns them out faster too because they're switching projects, not switching from pleasure to work.
Like so many things at this moment, I don't know that I have a good solution other than to really try to separate these things out in your life. It can be extremely hard, especially if you use the same location or technology or whatever for both work and leisure, but keeping interests that're wholly separated from your job and doing things to care for yourself away from work is so important.
Support for Palestine
As the horrific destruction of Gaza continues, I just want to share some resources that hopefully might make some difference. It's frustrating living in one of the 14 countries that in the U.N. voted against a truce to provide treatment and healing. It's surely frustrating living in one of the 45 countries that abstained. And it's surely frustrating living in one of the 120 countries that won and passed a resolution to try to end the violence and to know that while there is international support--that there are so many people in so many places fighting for Palestine--their governments won't listen to the will of the people who are asking to end a genocide.
Ceasefiretoday has a lot of resources all collected in one place--protests, petitions, phonebanks, etc. Jewish Voice for Peace has a form letter you can use to email your representatives. There's an auction, Prints for Palestine, that's open through November 3rd. I'm a particular fan of Shoujo Beat, A Roll in the Hay, and Madame Piggy. Once again, game makers on itch have come together for a huge bundle, Games for Gaza.
Just to have this all mentioned too: SAG-AFTRA's still on strike and therefore folks still aren't working. The Entertainment Community Fund is there to help. Organizations that're on the ground--or trying to be--in Gaza are often international and servicing other areas too. I know Doctors Without Borders is also providing support to Ukraine, Afganistan, and Congo right now. KOSA is still in the Senate and still a bill that has had proponents say the quiet part out loud about using it as a tool to further limit trans, queer, and marginalized voices online. And there is so much else still wrong with the world that I want to be hopeful and say working together, we can do something about.
See you next time.
What I enjoyed this week:
Blank Check (Podcast), Craig of the Creek (Cartoon--just finished the Heart of the Creek arc, so I guess we're very close to the end), One Piece (Manga--somehow, over the last month, I've managed to catch up on all 1100 chapters), Sonic Superstars (Video game), The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon (Book), Reverse 1999 (Video Game), Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video game), Wipeout (TV show), Last Week Tonight (TV show), The Simpsons (TV show), The Traitors (TV show), One Punch Man (Manga), Crimehot (Webcomic - Adults only), Thirsty (Comic - Adults only)
New Releases this week (10/25/2023):
Brynmore #4 (Editor)
Final Order Cut-Off next week (10/30/2023):
Best of Godzilla, Vol. 1 TPB (Editor)
Godzilla: Best of Gigan (Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Winter Jam (Editor)
New Releases next week (11/1/2023):
No new books from me this week.
Announcements:
Final weekend! I'm still doing a member drive over on my Patreon! You can read about it in a public post there! If you join, renew, or updated to the Feature Fan ($10) tier or above, you're going to get a Mystery Comic Grab bag! And as a patron, you're going to have a bit more choice on what all it is! This deal ends 10/31, so get on it now!
I'll be a guest tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. PST at Sonic Revolution's online convention! I believe our panel will be streamed on Twitch, but the majority of the con is on Discord! I'll be there with a big section of the IDW Sonic team!
Wanna support me? Buy physical copies of my comics at the webshop. If you want digital comics, or to just support me, there's Kofi. You can get some cool stuff from Ebay. You can support Becca from their shop, Patreon, or watching them stream on Twitch.
Also, plugging because I like good comics and if you read this blog, you probably do too. The ShortBox Comics Fair is almost over for the year, and there's a ton of good stuff available there.
Pic of the Week:
Nadja was giving Tiansheng a bath and it was very cute. But upon realizing she had been photographed being nice, Nadja almost immediately stopped and Tian was so sad, he was chirping in distress. That lasted like 20 seconds and then he forgot what he was doing and they both just sort of started licking themselves. Cats are dumb.
