So there!

The daily post challenge was kind of fun at first…since I had a lot of sketches from 2014 and 2015 to post. And I thought my sketches from the UK trip were pretty alright. But at the end of the challenge, to achieve my “traditional” 60 posts per year, I am overwhelmed! I mean with the whole social media thing. When do I post to Facebook? Twitter? Blogger? Do I differentiate between Blogger posts and Tumblr posts? After much encouragement, I started up an Instagram account…but what and when do I post there? How can I keep up with all this?—I’m just one man.

Admittedly, I am really strapped for time at the moment…being the director of my department, the interim director of another department since September (and likely through June), and being on the condo board of my artist loft building. Plus I’m engaged in a soul-searching exercise to plan out my next career move. I’m having some lovely conversations with mentors and former colleagues from ages ago, but it’s also a lot of time when I haven’t much to spare. And I extricated myself from my father’s woodshop after 6 weekends in a row up to NH to finish my started projects and begin purging my surplus collections. My purge keeps purging, as I open cabinets and boxes, declaring “I don’t need this!” and “I don’t want to store that!” wildly posting to eBay, packaging sold things, running to the post office almost daily, and meeting strangers from Craigslist to buy furniture I've refinished or built myself.

And then there is the association I’ve formed with Monica and Greg (and hopefully Mike!). It's exciting and motivational. Our first challenge to each other is "gothic tales" and I keep looking at my penciled pages, thinking, “soon, I will ink you.” In the meantime, Saved by the Bell is back on! I have three approved scripts for issues 4, 5, and 6. I planned out 6 (as it was approved by NBC first) but immediately turned to 4 when approval for 4 sprung about. Only did a little thumbnailing before holiday hosting duties began.

This was the first time I hosted Christmas holiday, and only the third time it’s not been at my folks’ house in my life (2002 was at my sister’s place in Savannah, and last year we were basically at Brigham & Women’s Hospital). Since my mom passed away last Christmas day, and my dad is making movement to sell the house, it definitely felt like time for change. Family friends Rich and Ken flew in from Los Angeles and Jacksonville, my sister and my dad drove down from NH. It was a fun few days. I only had a few moments that got me, and I tried to stay focused on joyful remembrance.

Anyway, daily post challenge complete. With my full plate, I will drop back to silence for a bit, to stay focused on actually drawing. I’m told to take pics of what I’m working on and post it to Instagram…maybe I will do that so you know I’m making progress. Otherwise, I’ll see you in August when convention season starts for me. Wish me luck hitting all my goals for 2016!