Week notes #25

I've done 25 of these week notes now so I think it's a good opportunity to reflect.

If I'm honest, I'm struggling to keep up with them. Those who've been following along may have noticed I've gone from a fairly regular Sunday/Monday posting schedule to maaaybe by Wednesday (or only once every few weeks). The amount of free time I get each week is fairly sparse and that time I mostly need to spend working on comics.

Plus, with everything going in the world, I'm struggling to even keep notes of the things I've done in the last week and with tier restrictions/lockdowns, there's very little to report on each week without delving a bit deeper into family life which I don't really want to be writing about in a public space.

As such, I think this will be the last of my week notes entries. They've served their purpose of getting me writing a bit more than I was doing previously but I think I need to pivot back to a more standard form of blogging, posting thoughts more or less as they occur, sharing content I find etc.

Here are a few things from the last couple of weeks to note down before I move to the more regular style of blogging.

For the last few weeks, I've been playing with the Headspace app. I'd previously been using Medito and while the app was good for meditation, I've found the additional content on Headspace to be really useful to me. I can't help but feel guilty about leaving Medito behind, what they're trying to do by getting meditation and mindfulness out in to the world for free is commendable. I'll keep an eye on what they're doing and maybe move back once the library has been expanded more.

Our last few weekends have involved putting up the Christmas decorations and following that comes the natural progression of the annual build-up: Christmas films!

So far, we've watched Muppet's Christmas Carol, Elf, The Grinch, It's a Wonderful Life and Home Alone 1 & 2. On the latter two, every year on the run up to Christmas, I forget just how shitty most of the McCallister are. I still like the film and it's a Christmas tradition to watch them but man, they're douchebags, aren't they? I still love the films and get a good dose of nostalgia to when I was a kid, laughing at all the slapstick moments as our son now does, but yeah, they're not nice people really.

Our youngest has started walking. Only 5, 6 or 7 steps at a time but that'll soon increase as he learns to balance on his feet a bit more.

I appeared on my friend Tom's YouTube Channel the other week, where we draw and chat comics.

I also appeared as a guest on my favourite podcast, Make It Then Tell Everybody, where I also talked about comics.

I got a soundbar at the weekend which makes the house shake when turned up to a silly level, which is the sort of level you want to get a bit of that home cinema experience.

I've taken a short break from my main comic just to let my head work on something else for a while. I've been working on Splorers solidly for a year and a half, more or less. I'm still excited about the book, I just wanted to side step a little bit to work on real paper for a while.

I've started work on a new comic idea which I'm excited about. It's a sort of homage or riff off Sherlock Holmes and just a bit of fun. I'm thinking if I can get a few 3-4 page stories out of my head, it'll make a nice little book. I've got one 3-page story drawn out in rough, I've got a script for another story written and any others that pop into my head over the next few weeks or months will get noted down.

I've been approached by a company to test a graphics tablet so when that arrives, I'll get back on colouring Splorers properly. Ideally, I'd like to get the colouring done before Christmas which means I need to be colouring a page every few days in reality.

I can then take a bit of time off at Christmas and maybe get the lettering done by New Year or early January and then I can get the ball rolling with printing.