BLOG: Almost There... Stay On Target...

Welcome back my friends. Pull up a chair. Waste a few minutes reading whats in my head. The highlights anyway. Believe me, you wouldn’t REALLY want to be in my head! Its not a good place. But I get by. :)

I am sorry to those who are waiting for more new PLEASANT LIFE pages. I got issues 7-8 art done and ready to letter. I started on issue 9, about 5 pages in. Here’s a peek of flat colors on one of the pages:

I took a pause to really get STARSLAM BEYOND done. Happy to say I am in the final stretch. All the final pages are penciled and I am inking the last 4 now. After I get it all together I’ll see where I am at and if I need to add another page or two more to make it flow better. I wanna make sure I stick the landing when it comes to this book. The first of a two parter! Its likely gonna come in at around 260 pages. A beast of a book and its only 1/2 the story! Blurred out pages of some of the finale:

So I’ve been busy with that. Meanwhile, just slogging through life like everyone else. Trying to keep my head out of the news and whatever else is going on. Been listening to a lot of Ace Frehley (natch) and I took the chance to watch some music documentaries. We’ve had a run of good documentaries lately, especially music related ones. I just finished the Jeff Buckley one and man, its good. So good. I think I cried about ten times. If you know his story, it doesn’t end happy. But man the music is so raw and intimate. It cannot help but reach out and tug at your soul strings. I recommend it if you can handle it.

Meanwhile at the day job, I hit a milestone. 10 YEARS. Longest job I’ve ever had. Longest stretch before that was McDonalds at 6.5 years and a few summers here off and on. But I got a nice certificate, company dinner and a basket of fruit.

(Sorry the pic is fuzzy. This was taken off the company board post in the office. Best I could get.)

Lots of milestones surround the month of October this year. My pals Jacob and Kelly are celebrating one year of marriage. Very happy for them! They both been through a lot and somehow found each other in this crazy broken world. They seem deeply in love, happy and have built a nice life together. A totally new life, within two years time. Amazing. Incredible. Makes one believe in miracles.

Another milestone this month, today in fact, is the 10th anniversary of my divorce. Shit is crazy man. I never thought I would be married, let alone divorced. But life happens. My ex and I are friends now and co-parent well, which is a blessing. It was dark times for a long time and I never thought things would get better. But they did. Very thankful for that. That chapter of my life is fully closed and healed over. Now if i could just get over all the other holes in the soul that trip me up! An even longer process. Booze helps.

All this makes me wonder where I will be in another ten years. Hell, two years. Two months! Life has been all curve balls lately as I am aging. We’re losing our heroes. Prices are crazy. Money is tight. But art is still flowing. I got one of the 3 big graphic novels done that I want to do to finish this comics “career” I have done for 30 years now. Just PLEASANT LIFE (Issues 7-12) and the last STARSLAM to go. Then… what? What is my life without me doing comics? I entertain the notion that perhaps I could continue PLEASANT LIFE beyond the story I wanted to tell in this book and here on the substack. There is an ending and we will get there. But is there something after that? Not sure right now. Its a bit of a ways off. But next year, it will happen. STARSLAM and PLEASANT LIFE will be done. I’ve promised myself the opportunity to write books/novels/short story collections and get back into fine art painting. I do have other smaller sequential illustration ideas as well. Who knows what whimsy I might pursue as I run the voodoo down.

Point is, no matter how much I would love to plan what is to come, I am unsure. I got a clock on some things in my life. Next year my middle son will be 18. In four after that, my youngest will be an adult as well. Then what? Stay here and do another ten at the current day job? Move on to somewhere else? Move to a bigger city? Smaller city? What do you do with your life when the things that defined you are done? No more comics, no more raising kids. What does the next phase look like? What would make me happy?

Shit.. if I knew what would make me happy, I’d head there now. I can only guess. Maybe lose the weight and save money to travel a bit. Go experience the life I have left. That is what I should be focusing on. If I can finally climb that hill. Hope always springs eternal, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I hope you got your life and plans figured out. I don’t. So if you don’t either, you’re certainly not alone. Til then, the TREK continues!

Onward! (Thanks for reading) -T