Try This

It's the year of the black water dragon, and I'm trying new things.  Like applying my skills to self-promotion and networking, reconnecting with the old, introducing myself to the new.  Like writing every single day, even if the result isn't worth the virtual page it's printed on.  Like getting up an hour early to get my behind to the gym.

Yep, did that today.  Yep, was awesome.  Yep, feel like a super-something-awesome and the endorphins are only just now wearing off.  Here's to the year of the dragon and not letting life get in the way.

Kobolds, Dragons, Resistance--Oh, My!

A friend of mine asked me for a favor, which earned a grumpy grumble from me because the favor request was right in the middle of my writing time (which is precious and rare enough these days), to which he said the following:  "I'm doing you a favor, I'm giving you every writer's dream: an excuse not to write!"  He was kidding of course, being a writer himself and very well acquainted with the throes and agonies of coming up with original creative content.  Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance in his book The War of Art, which I've found equal parts inspiring and comforting.  Pg. 22, check it:.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit.  We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

Never forget:  This very moment, we can change our lives.  There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.  This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.

This second, we can sit down and do our work.

It sounds very Churchill, actually, and when it comes to bearing down on the task at hand, you can't do much better than Winston:  "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."  Overwhelming enemy, thy name is Resistance.  Time to kick you in the teeth! 

Sketching out the kobold was a welcome diversion, but I find there's no shortage of diversions  and today is necessarily a writing day.  Gonna give myself a couple Take-Ten launches, then jump into the new script.  As always, starting in one direction has sent my brains in a dozen more, so in addition to the new and very essential spec (which I don't have a plot for yet) is a feature I've been kicking about, two novels, and a super-raw scripted TV pilot that just began to percolate yesterday.  It will be interesting to see which wins out on the keyboard today.  I'm hoping it's the spec, as that comes with a hard and fast deadline and it's a script that might actually get read before anything else.

So fingers crossed, start your engines, and let's tackle a writing sprint.  Check back for an update about how it went today or tomorrow (along with a new cartoon!).  In the mean time, type hardy, type long, and edit not at all!

Lizard-man With A Dash of Color

My, aren't we feeling visual today.  What is it?

Why, yes.  Thank you for noticing.  It's a lizard man.  With a toothache.  

I see.

Care for a dash of color?

Please.

Thanks.

My pleasure.  

How about a 'toon?

Certainly.

...just that kinda day...

Tag-Teaming Twins

When you have twins, reality becomes utterly defined by the term "tag-team."  They tag-team you, and, if you're lucky to have a partner in this (heaven help you if you're flying solo), you tag-team them right back. 

Take bedtime.  One washes, the other dries, the first pajamas, the second stories, the first waters, the second herds to bed as the first chaperones to the bathroom, the second chaperones to the bathroom as the first herds from bathroom to bed, then second hugs-and-kisses, turning out lights...wait, why are you crying?  Use words, honey--

"It was my turn to turn out light!"  

Okay, then you turn out the--  

"No!"  

Okay, you don't have to-- 

"But it's my turn!"  

I...(sigh).  Hey, where's she--?  Where are you going?

  

"My bear has to poop."  

No, come back--can you catch her, please?  Wait, why are you crying now?  

"Because I'm not tired!"  

Forty-five minutes later, team-twins rests.  In contrast, team-parents has aged a year and a half.

You tell yourself it's about balance.  You play with your schedule, trading sleep for exercise, diet for showers, hedging your present against your future.  You apply the self-control and critical thinking that got you through graduate school to watching the squealing piglet riding a zip-line commercial "again, Mommy!  Again, again!" with genuine interest and enthusiasm.  You resign yourself to never completing a meal or a thought or a sentence unless they're asleep, and even then you do so quietly.  

"It's tough right now," you say when asked how you're doing.  "We're finding our balance."  

No.  No, you're not.  There is no balance.  They win.  That's it.  You tag, they tag back, but there is no balance.  They don't play fair.  They cheat.  And they don't expend a single resource to keeping you or themselves safe and alive.  While you're looking both ways, holding hands, picking up, doling out snacks, wiping and cleaning and band-aiding, finding lost loveys, untangling, re-tying, watering, pottying, righting and wronging, they're siphoning what little energy you've got left to dedicate in total every forming pathway in their shiny new brains to devising their next tag.  

"Where's the--take that out of your mouth!"  Tag.  

"Oh my God, I just said because I said so!"  Tag.  

"No, you don't!  How--?  Whaddya mean yes you do want a spanking?"  Tag.

It's hard and it's rigged and it's war and they're winning.  And it's taking forever and over so fast.  And they're so incredibly cute, you feel lucky and grateful to be lost and bleeding on the battlefield, feeling your way, muttering about "balance" with your duly bludgeoned partner.  Knowing even as it's happening that you're both gonna miss this the rest of your lives...

Tag.