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?