#authtober

I’m great at making work for myself.

I’m great at enthusiastic commitment and disciplined follow-through. I’m great at being a completionist. I’m great at turning my creative work into marketable content that can help me support my weird, irreplaceable career. I’m great at being busy.

I’m not great at knowing when to quit, or to release something gently rather than beating myself up over not getting as far as I thought I would with it. I’m not great at acknowledging what has been done, instead of what hasn’t.

I made it all the way up to 29 entries for Inktober this year and then I just...couldn’t. I got too overwhelmed with other work at the end of the month, found myself struggling to make it through busy day after busy day. I kept finishing more books, but the authors I’d selected to draw didn’t have decent headshots available to reference. They felt like too much of a challenge. And the more books I finished the more authors I had to choose from. Suddenly things didn’t feel straightforward. The idea of laying out another pencil sketch and inking over it suddenly felt like a vast and dreary landscape I had no desire to traverse. But I’d trimmed and prepped those last two blank sheets for the project because I thought surely, surely I could find the time to draw two measly little portraits in the next few weeks.

And then last week, as I was scanning the portraits I had finished, I realized I didn’t have to do any more. I produced an enormous body of work in October. It made me happy. I practiced. I made things with my hands. That was enough.

and what kind of father would let a snake wonder freely among innocents who do not know pain outside of that which he made for them?

why create new life that can be poisoned with knowledge? why call knowledge poison, if your children are supposed to have been born with free will?