Invest in Yourself

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Normally that sort of question makes what's left of my hair curl. In a job interview, it's a difficult question for me to answer. I'm good at seeing possibilities but possible, best possible, and realistic can muddle all together. As I was talking to a buddy of mine, I answered it realistically from a creative point-of-view: two books done and released with a few short movies also to my credit. As I said, realistic based on how I tend to work. It gives me room to overachieve.

Our discussion made me realize that how I've been approaching my writing of late has been an investment in myself. Other jobs may come and go but my love for writing should always stay, always progress, and the more I have to show for using that skill, even in limited ways, is for the best. He started showing me some of his investments in himself. He's even drawing again. I think it's been years.

How are you investing in yourself?

Active for a Change

It's been a busy week. I've got a little more power on this end and I'm still trying to find ways to use it properly. I want to play a bit. All that fiddling takes time.

First I've got one of those weekends where I've got stuff planned for every day. There's hockey tonight, a wrestling show for tomorrow and the Midwest Gaming Classic on Sunday. I should get a story or two out of all that, hmm?

A Few Thoughts on Comics from This Week

Dark Avengers #3 gets first billing this week. Much of the issue is Norman Osborn talking to the Sentry. "You know what," Norman more-or-less says, "you might be crazy, but you're not the only one in this room that is. Me am too." The scene goes on for pages, makes sense, finally makes the Sentry make sense to me, and accomplishes a lot. The rest of the book is good as well. Bendis' dialogue sounds real here for a change as opposed to the clipped, snappy 'real' he sometimes uses. The book may not have a long-term future but it's existence is worth it just for this issue.

Amazing Spider-Girl #30 is sadly the last issue of the regular series. It goes out with a bang, wrapping up the big storyline and setting the characters up for their briefer appearances to come in Spider-Man Family. It was a good book. I shall miss it.

Ultimatum #3 is a bit of a breather of sorts. This big, blockbuster, changing everything event is indeed changing things, in ways that would be less likely to occur in the 'mainstream' Marvel universe. This specific issue has a lot going on in it and yet feels like a breather at the same time. The characters involved are starting to get a moment, to regroup, and the issue ends with a 'let's go get him' moment. We get some confirmations of deaths, some craziness, some heroics, and some more deaths. Oddly enough, I don't mind Jeph Loeb here like I do on some other books. We're not getting the identity of Red Hulk until next year? Boo. Here, Jeph can do what he wants. It's working for me.

Night of the Living Dead - New York has the best art for one of these NotLD spin-offs yet. Story is suitably dark. What's it like being in a major city at the beginning of a major ghoul outbreak? The answer is 'not good'.

Tales of the TMNT #56 also had some really good art in it. The story brings the Han character from the most recent cartoon series into the Mirage universe, explaining his history with Casey Jones. Good stuff.

Issues #5 and #6 of Vincent Price Presents both came out this week. This is the only book I get from Bluewater Comics and, despite Vinnie 'hosting' it, it's been very lackluster so far. These two issues have redeemed the book a bit in my eyes. The story in #5 was calm but very interesting. I didn't care much for the weirdly painted style of the art at first but it grew on me and suited the story. The story is #6 was okay but the art was less so. A brief back-up story held my interest with the best art I've seen from Bluewater to date. The story was more of a prologue than anything else so I shan't judge it.

Amazing Spider-Man #588 and Amazing Spider-Man Extra #3 were both good as well, wrapping up a number of different storylines while prepping some new ones. I still don't like the story that got us here, but I do really enjoy the stories I'm getting.

There were a couple other books, but these triggered me to write.

Puzzlement

Of late, I've been dreaming a lot about almost being out of work, being in the last few days of a job. This is odd. I experienced that and those days were... uncomfortable. You'd think if I wanted to flash back to something positive, I'd flash back to the early days of my unemployment when the days were warm, the severance fattening my wallet, and baseball was there to be attended.

If I missed my job, why wouldn't I just dream about being at work? Seems odd to me.

Oy

The only thing more tiring than doing your own work is helping someone else do their work. I'm beat and my back hurts.

On the plus side, I'm writing this on my laptop via the wireless running in the house now.

Which is nice.

Fiddling and Thinking and Looking and Cleaning

I moved some equipment around and got my old iMac set up in a new area. It still runs. I started looking for a picture file and it turned out that it wasn't on the hard drive. Bother. I started going through old floppy disks to find it.

There's a thankless task.

Most of them will read but can't see all the files on the disk. I've been tossing whatever reads onto the hard drive for movement onto my newer computer systems for backup. I've gotten all too used to hearing the whirring click that indicates the disk won't read. Annoying.

I did find the file I was looking for so it wasn't completely worthless.

I do have better things to be doing. I think I'm writing something in the back of my head as I do this. This happens a lot; subconsciously working on something while I tinker with something else.

I wonder if my even older Performa will still boot up?

DRUMS! DRUMS!

If we could go back and ask seven year old Me what he wants to be when he grows up, the answer would be either 'baseball player' or 'drummer'. The reasons aren't complicated to understand. Playing baseball is fun. Animal on the Muppet Show is awesome. Done.

Apart from occasionally whistling, I have no discernible musical skills. I've had the opportunity to fiddle around with instruments in the past but I had no real clue what I was doing at the time. It always looks so easy so I never understood why I couldn't at least get some sort of rhythm from my head to the bass guitar or drum or what have you. I didn't expect to pick it up and rattle off a song, just two sounds together that seemed like they went together.

When I first started playing Guitar Hero my respect for people that play guitar for real increased. I know that playing the game and playing guitar are really nothing alike but I figure that if medium on the game kicks my butt, then real guitar playing is probably even more complicated. I huzzahed the true guitar heroes with all due respect.

I got to play drums on Guitar Hero World Tour last night. The same huzzah goes to the true drum heroes. My buddy has some real drum playing experience and the game frustrated him a bit. I got the hang of it a little. Considering it was my first day, I felt good about what I managed to do.

Maybe I can be a fake drum god, in the living room anyway.