Discourse, Both Relevant and Meaningful

4 NEW PRINTS IN THE HE STORE!

Coffee Is Life, There Are Four Lights, Such Darmok and the remaining (25 or so) signed and numbered Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time Posters have just been added to the HijiNKS ENSUE Store.

The regular prints are available in 8.5×11″ for $9.95 and 11×17″ for $17.95. The Daddy/Daughter prints are marked down from $35 to $15 while they last!

WE FOUND MORE LIL’ WIL WHEATON PLUSHIES!!!

There are about 40 left. GO HERE and get yours.

UPDATE 4/13/15: I’m over my con crud, done with my taxes and working on the comic backlog. Thank you for your patience.

COMMENTERS: Is there a part of your job that your coworkers or friends envy because it doesn’t seem like work?

Give Your Love To Me Tweetly

4 NEW PRINTS IN THE HE STORE!

Coffee Is Life, There Are Four Lights, Such Darmok and the remaining (25 or so) signed and numbered Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time Posters have just been added to the HijiNKS ENSUE Store.

The regular prints are available in 8.5×11″ for $9.95 and 11×17″ for $17.95. The Daddy/Daughter prints are marked down from $35 to $15 while they last!

WE FOUND MORE LIL’ WIL WHEATON PLUSHIES!!!

There are about 40 left. GO HERE and get yours.

UPDATE 4/13/15: I’m over my con crud, done with my taxes and working on the comic backlog. Thank you for your patience.

COMMENTERS: What is the part of your part that you do the most that has the LEAST to do with your actual job?

Performance Evaluation

4 NEW PRINTS IN THE HE STORE!

Coffee Is Life, There Are Four Lights, Such Darmok and the remaining (25 or so) signed and numbered Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time Posters have just been added to the HijiNKS ENSUE Store.

The regular prints are available in 8.5×11″ for $9.95 and 11×17″ for $17.95. The Daddy/Daughter prints are marked down from $35 to $15 while they last!

WE FOUND MORE LIL’ WIL WHEATON PLUSHIES!!!

There are about 40 left. GO HERE and get yours.

UPDATE 4/7/15: I went to Seattle, got really sick (con crud), then came home and slept for about a week while complaining to my wife and getting better. All in all I lost about 2 weeks of productivity. I have challenged myself to backfill all of the comics I’ve missed. That means completing about 10 comics in 8 days. I hope I can do it.

Having people pay attention to you on the Internet is weird. Like REALLY weird. Comic Joel is expressing an exaggerated version of my opinions about being exposed to the praise and criticism of thousands of people every day. That “EVERYTHING IS RUINED FOREVER OH GOD… oh hey, a nice email!” emotional dichotomy is almost a daily occurrence for me. I, and most online content creators (I would imagine), are constantly bombarded by the most sincere, sweet and uplifting affirmation of our work DIRECTLY JUXTAPOSED with thoughtless, hateful condemnation. The best practice is try and parse the intent of the communique. Overly boisterous, hyperbolic positive comments can feel pleasant, but are easily forgotten. The same goes for quickly tossed off anonymous hate speech. It feels shitty to read that stuff, but the effect wares off momentarily. The stuff that really sticks (at least for me) are the well thought out comments.

When someone writes to tell me that my work has improved their lives, inspired them to make positive changes, or given them joy in a time when joy was severely short supply, it really reaffirms all the tough choices, sacrifices and mistakes I have made over the last 8 years or so. On the flip side, a really well thought out treatise on why I am a complete and total piece of shit can… sting a bit. I’m lucky in that these types of emails/comments/etc only come my way once or twice a year. Still, a few of them have made me rethink my willingness to put myself out there. I think the common perception of this predicament is “YOU ARE ASKING FOR IT!” People who think that aren’t entirely wrong. I am indeed asking for attention, and in doing so I am opening myself up for all sorts of attention. I am not able to specify what type of attention, positive or negative, that I would prefer. Well, I CAN specify, but no one has to listen/obey/whatever.

This is probably more of a private journal entry than a blog post, but as of last week (I’m writing this on 4/7/15), HijiNKS ENSUE has been my full time job for 7 years. I guess I’m feeling a little introspective and reflective on this, my Seventh Experimentiversary. Regardless of the above thoughts, the words in this comic and the words likely to appear in the next few comics, I am still EXTRAORDINARILY GRATEFUL that this is somehow still my job. Like anyone, there are things I don’t like about my job, but unlike most people I am doing exactly what I want, how I want and on my own terms. It is a gift, a blessing, a ridiculous magical dream. Every year I get to keep making comics and podcasts and tweets and tumbls for a living is like getting another Hogwarts letter. I don’t know why I was chosen to have everything I’ve ever wanted, and I’m afraid to ask too many questions, because I know how fragile personal/professional satisfaction and happiness can be, but I love my life and I owe so much of that to you Fancy Bastards. I had not planned to write all, or any of this, but it just sort of poured out and here I am without a mop.

COMMENTERS: Those of you who are not in the business of having people pay attention to you on the Internet: Have you ever gotten a taste of Internet fame? What was it for? What were the effects on your life?

Unsupervised Whiners

WE FOUND MORE LIL’ WIL WHEATON PLUSHIES!!!

72 more, to be exact. GO HERE and get yours.

Someone must have gotten them wet and fed them after midnight, because when Explosm (who used to handle my merch) moved warehouses, they found another box of Lil’ Wils.

I know I’ve said this 3 or 4 times in the past, but this is really it. These are the last ones. The old warehouse is completely empty and no more will ever be made. I promise. They are still half price. Just $10 while they last!

EMERALD CITY COMICON IS AT THE END OF MARCH!

I will be at booth 110 with my con-wife David Willis. I will have old prints, NEW PRINTS and THE SKETCH-A-MATIC! Come see me, and bring me booze and cookies as is our tradition. (There is a helpful map of various Hiveworks webcomics at ECCC here.)

I used to be a boss. A manager, really. It was one of the least rewarding, most frustrating experiences of my life. I love teaching, and I love mentoring, but all the love and joy of the teacher/student process are just sucked into oblivion for me and I have to start dealing with things like “I need to get off an hour early,” “I have a problem with my cube mate,” and “I am simply too dumb to carry out the simple set of tasks you have laid out before me, despite your very clear instructions and the fact that I have performed these same tasks (poorly) dozens of times.”

It was a learning experience, in that I learned that I should never ever ever ever manage a team of underpaid, 20-something dumb-dumbs ever again. Especially if the thing we are collectively doing is a thing none of us particularly care about. I like being in a leadership role, but I need to actually be passionate about the goal and working with competent, enthusiastic people who bring their own special skills and creativity to the table. Where I fail is at giving a shit or even a collection of shits about the reasons young people with $100K in student debt can’t just fucking download the website via FTP before they work on it so they don’t overwrite the changes someone else did earlier in the week when they upload THEIR changes! Fucking Christ, Todd, I swear to shit you are as dumb as a bucket of who gives a fuck.

COMMENTERS: Do you need to be supervised and managed, or do you need to be left the butts alone to get your damn work done? Are you a boss? For PEOPLE?! Gross. Stop that.

Motion For A Change Of Venue

WE FOUND MORE LIL’ WIL WHEATON PLUSHIES!!!

72 more, to be exact. GO HERE and get yours.

Someone must have gotten them wet and fed them after midnight, because when Explosm (who used to handle my merch) moved warehouses, they found another box of Lil’ Wils.

I know I’ve said this 3 or 4 times in the past, but this is really it. These are the last ones. The old warehouse is completely empty and no more will ever be made. I promise. They are still half price. Just $10 while they last!

EMERALD CITY COMICON IS AT THE END OF MARCH!

I will be at booth 110 with my con-wife David Willis. I will have old prints, new prints and THE SKETCH-A-MATIC! Come see me, and bring me booze and cookies as is our tradition. (There is a helpful map of various Hiveworks webcomics at ECCC here.)

One of the hardest things about working from home (and, trust me, I am NOT complaining about the fantastic privilege of being allowed to roll out of bed at 10am and work in my pajamas on the couch re-watching Fringe on Netflix) is KNOWING when you are AT WORK. When “the office” is your couch or your home desk, there’s this sort of constant feeling that if you’re awake, you should be working. Especially if you keep oddly and every fluctuating hours like I do. The days sort of blend in to each other and the concept of a weekend disappeared years ago. So there’s this general feeling that you are either A) ALWAYS at work of B) NEVER really at work, and it can lead to odd feelings of guilt when you aren’t working or to a lack of family time (eating dinner together, etc) when you are working.

The only reason I say this as a general experience as opposed to a singular weirdness experienced by only me, is that I’ve heard the same thing from dozens of other work-from-home creatives. For a lot of us, this feeling of a need for a separation of home and work life leads to moving the work portion of your day to a new location. This could be a coffee shop, or it could even mean getting your own office space. I know quite a few cartoonists that have to leave the dirty work of drawing butts and such at the ACTUAL office in order to maintain a reasonable semblance of a home life. Others have to completely unplug from the Internet for 5-6 hours at a time in order to stay productive. After 8ish years of this weird job, I am still in the “just sort of figuring it out as I go” phase. There are months at a time where I only want to work in my office from the hours of midnight to 6am. Then there are times when my sleep schedule syncs up with the mortal world’s and I want to work in the living room to be around my family.

I really like the idea of something like a Makerspace or a Hackspace where I could just be around other people who are trying to make something. I wouldn’t want to do it every day, but I know from experience that “creative energy” is a real thing (i.e. a fake thing our dumb lizard brains trick us into thinking is a real thing). Excitement is contagious and creative competition can be quite healthy. I do my funniest work when I’m pitching ideas back and forth with other creatives, trying to one-up each other or twist ideas into new directions. I wonder what that says about my 1000+ comics that I’ve written and drawn in total seclusion.

COMMENTERS: Do you find your productivity or creativity require a certain environment to get into gear? Do you ever need a change of scenery or sound…ery to do your best work?