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NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2003 My parents made sure I was able to read and write at an early age. By age four I had finished the Chronicles of Narnia. By six, I had gone through Tolkein for the first time. I read a lot, particularly because in Michigan, where I lived until the ripe old age of six, it was gray and bitterly cold much of the year (the rest of the time it was just gray, with occasional mosquito-attracting humidity). When we moved to Arizona in 1980, I got a color television in my room. Over the next five years or so televisions sprouted in just about any room in the house I wanted to be in. With quality shows like Love Boat, Different Strokes, and Facts of Life on (I had such a thing for Nancy McKeon), television just gave books too much competition. Oh, occasionally I would get bored, there'd be nothing on television, I'd beaten all the Atari and/or Nintendo games I owned a million times, and the computer room was too cold to go sit in, so I'd go find a book. But I would say that for every hour I read a book, I watched twenty hours of television. I don't even know if I would say I regret it. I mean, the television I watched back then gave me a lot of tools I use now. The shows I watched usually had a moral of some sort, and I watched a lot of PBS shows like Sesame Street, Electric Company, 321 Contact, and science and nature shows like Nova, Nature, and whatever Carl Sagan had going. I didn't get my MTV until my early teens (I lived in a smaller town where the cable company pandered primarily to retirees), and although we did have VH1 half of the day, there is only so much Rhythm Is Gonna Get You, Shake You Down, and Dancing on the Ceiling a man can take. But I digress. I kept watching television because that's what I'd always done. Slowly, though, something was happening to me. Something I'm pretty sure is a bad thing. I first noticed it when they started showing footage of Iraq being bombed during the first Gulf War, right at the beginning when reporters for CNN were stuck in a hotel there and reporting on what was happening even as the ceiling was flaking away above them. I found myself hooked on watching it, and at the same time... apathetic. Now, I'm generally a caring, loving kind of guy. A big lunk with a soft heart, you know the type. So to sit there watching that all happen and not react to it with awe or fear or anger or... anything at all emotionally speaking was just not right. It just seemed a little fake to me. My brain knew it was really happening, that lives were really at stake, that this wasn't just good special effects. But something else in me just equated it with watching some television show about war, just like I had with World War 2 footage or Vietnam imagery. I couldn't separate American soldiers putting their necks on the line from Blair and Mrs. Garrett having a heart to heart. Well, I watched less television after that. I tried to avoid watching the news particularly, because I think that was most of what had desensitized me. And it seemed to work. There were interesting dramas to watch, sitcoms to be lightly entertained by, and more and more selections to choose from as I moved to Phoenix and got expanded cable. I was still rotting my brain a bit watching Comedy Central and Cartoon Network, but at least I had clearly reestablished fiction from reality. When I started getting seriously into building websites as a career, and began creating online comics, I suddenly had a major time consuming hobby to explore at home. But the draw of watching television or playing Everquest (which is the subject of another resolution) was often more powerful than learning new programming languages or getting the next installment of Modern Evil done. I knew I had to pry myself away from them somehow because my online comics were more important to me than seeing who gets kicked off the island this week. So I took my first big step and cancelled cable. Followed immediately by moving in with a roommate who wanted EVERY channel available. I tried staying out of the living room to avoid the television, but it was often too tempting to pass up. Then I moved out to my condo, that my wife was going to move into with me once we were married last year, and didn't get cable. Then September 11th. I never turned on the television in the morning because I didn't allow time for it between getting out of bed and having to head out the door, but I had awakened early for some reason, so I decided to watch the news while I ate my cereal. I watched the smoke coming from the first plane having hit, and then I watched as the second plane hit. I had no trouble recognizing it as reality this time. I watched all morning at whatever television I could, and when I couldn't watch I turned on the radio. Have you ever listened to news on the radio? It's almost like reading a book, in that you have to create the images in your head yourself. They can't be manipulated (as much), they don't just show you certain angles, the commentator in your head doesn't have ulterior motives or bias, and there aren't commercial interruptions. I believe reality is up to the way you perceive it, and that so many of the things we claim are "real" are only so because enough people believe them to be. The problem with watching "actual" stories on the news is that they are from someone else's point of view. Your brain accepts it as reality, but it's only reality because you let it be that way. All those things politicians are getting away with that you don't agree with, that the majority of the American public disagrees with, I think they get away with because we've been conditioned to feel fearful and out of control, especially since 9/11. I have a wife I enjoy spending time with. I have so much more to learn about web design and development. I have comics to create. I'm taking classes towards a degree, for which I have to study in a quiet environment. So why would I watch television? Well, I certainly need news and entertainment from some source, but should it be television? Between cnn.com, azcentral.com, and NPR, I get national, world, and local news, plus educational programming on NPR. I have watched shows like Dateline, 48 hours, Cops, America's Most Wanted, and the news now for years, but have I learned anything from them? If I did, I couldn't name it. But I can write a book about the different things I've learned in the last four or five months of listening to National Public Radio. As for my entertainment need, I still go to the movies occasionally, I play around on my computer when I just need a little time to vegetate, but mostly I've started doing crossword puzzles and reading magazines and novels to relax and escape for a while. I want to note that I am not so extreme as to just banish television from my life. I'm going to ride "That 70's Show" out until it ends and I see the old episodes now that it is in syndication. I'll still watch some PBS programming, especially now that I have gotten my mind geared more and more towards politics. I mostly want to avoid simply turning on the television for "something to do." I've got plenty, plenty to do. So there's my first resolution for 2003. Read more, listen more, watch less. I've started down this path already, but I'm not where I want to be just yet. When I get the urge to turn on the television, I'm going to make sure there is a novel sitting there on the couch I can get involved in, or a newspaper I can open up to the Arizona Living section and work on today's Crossword and Scrabble puzzles. In the car I have NPR on unless it is past 7pm (when it goes off the air), at which point I switch to AM and see what strange things people are discussing there. When I sit down at the computer and consider playing a game, sometimes I catch myself and go catch up on comics my friends are doing, or go add to discussions on blogs and forums my friends either run or frequent. My mind feels better, my spirit is lighter, I'm better informed than I ever was from watching the nightly news, and perhaps most importantly, my scores on the NTN trivia game at the bar I frequent are up about ten percent! Darwin's Complex (and for the purposes of this resolution, when I refer to Darwin's Complex I am referring to the comic I am working on by that name rather than the website which will host it) is moving forward. It has even surpassed glacial speed, although it's still far from even a reasonable speed considering the constraints placed upon me working on it. The first seventeen pages have been meticulously scripted and broken down into the page layouts I desire. I've worked through the outline for the entire story several times, tying up loose ends all over the place and fleshing out some of the scenes a bit. Five of the characters, including two of the four leading roles, have been sketched out in every angle I'll need to at least start with. The first page of actual comic art has been laid out, the characters drawn, inked, and shaded, but the backgrounds remain empty. I have some photography I'm drawing inspiration from for some of the imagery, but I still have much of the look and feel of the actual "complex" to figure out. I'm looking at creators like Indigo Kelleigh and Jim Zubkavich to see how they handle the coloring of their titles, because the color they use provides so much of the emotional connection with their work for me. When I feel bogged down and just don't feel like working on Darwin's Complex, I at least try to work on an online comic. That's how most of the rest of my projects advance in fact. Between Slapstick, Sticks, Why I Do Online Comics, and Modern Evil, there's usually at least one I feel like working on. However, I've put off Darwin's Complex for way too long, and when I look at how long it is likely to be before I conclude it, I quickly realize that my pace has to increase dramatically or I'll be working on it until my kids are in college. And my kinds won't even be born for at least five more years! A lot of other creators seem to work at a pace of one page per week or two. So my second resolution is to get my pace up to the point where I can complete a page of Darwin's Complex every two weeks. It will certainly take me a while still to get there, but hey, I have more than a year still before 2004 rolls around and I'm making my next set of resolutions. A "midterm" goal of mine is to have at least ten pages done to put together into a book I can take a few copies of to San Diego in July and hand out to whoever will be kind enough to read them. Read them, or at least take a copy to Horton Plaza and leave it on a table in the food court, where a kid will walk by and pick it up. Then the kid brings it to his hotel room and leaves it there, only to be picked up by the maid the following morning. Who happens to be Jennifer Lopez. And, of course, she loves it, shows it to her Hollywood friends, and I get a call offering me 10% of the take for the movie rights. I get this feeling every once in a while. Maybe you know it. It's the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach that makes me want to drop to my knees and scream between sobbing and pounding my fists on the ground. And the only person that makes me feel this way more than George W. Bush is the faceless individual that actually voted for him. Enough of these individuals voted for him that he was able to bring the vote close enough to cheat the rest of the way into office. Even if I thought he was doing a good job and was a brilliant man who got things done and didn't have his pockets lined with the gold from the big money people that pull his strings, the idea that he's NOT REALLY OUR PRESIDENT would kind of still nag at me. I'm not going to try to make the argument that he is or isn't our president here. The people who feel the same as me don't need to be convinced, and the people that don't feel the same as me won't be swayed by anything I have to say here. If any of you happen to be in the middle of the road on this somehow, may I encourage you to look at this and then do further research and come to your own conclusions? I don't want you to take my word for it blindly. I want to you seriously consider what you believe in, then match that up against the people in office making the decisions, and see how they match up. Anyway, the point for me is that I am really unhappy with the way things are being run in Washington. Bill Clinton may have had trouble keeping his sex drive in check, but I was never really unhappy with anything he supported politically, and I liked his approach to speaking to and dealing with the American people. Did I think there were lots of things he could have done better? Sure. But now I have a "President" and administration "representing me" who has brought me to new lows in my heart. I look around me and I see a lot of people that are angry, and a lot of people who are afraid, and a lot that are both. If things stay the same (and they likely won't, but if they did), and Dubya gets reelected despite his track record so far, I... I just don't know. So I'm going to do what I can to not have that happen. I'd be more than happy to discuss politics with anyone willing to. I want to further educate myself on what's going on, so that I can make the best decisions on how to use what time and resources I have to make a difference. I've sat idly by and let myself feel powerless about this whole mess for too long, and I'm done being complacent. This morning I've already written Senator John McCain's office, joined in on discussions at michaelmoore.com, and written this. This is just the beginning. My third resolution is to learn more about the things going on in my government that affect me, and see what sorts of options I have in changing things. It may be that what I want to see happen isn't the will of the masses, but that doesn't mean I have to just accept the will of the masses as my own. Last year I learned a considerable amount about the craft I claim to want to do for a living. This is the first New Year's Eve I have had the work title of Webmaster and really started to feel like one day I'll deserve it. Some of my attitude is about me being a perfectionist about such things, some of it is the typical artist that is always the most critical person when it comes to the work they create, a bit of it is jealousy of my friend Teel's ability to pick up programming languages as though he stepped on them on the sidewalk and they stuck to him like used chewing gum. Mostly, though, it is just frustrating to be able to envision things in my head like I do and then not have the know-how to even scratch the surface towards completing them yet. But the key word is yet. I've now jumped through three of the four hoops ASU has told me to go through towards being reinstated as a full time student there and then get into the college where my degree of choice, Graphic Information Technology, resides. I won't be able to start my degree program until fall of 2004 though, because my wife will be a full time student until then and we can't afford to both be. In the meantime, I've looked into getting federal grant money towards pursuing certification in specific fields of study that would act as an appropriate springboard toward my degree as well as give me more tools to make my imagination take shape. My fourth resolution is to get as comfortable with DHTML and Javascript as I am with HTML and CSS now, and to gain at least intermediate proficiency in Flash animation. People have said to me, when I state that I want to sit down and study the Bible, that it is a much harder task to do than it would at first seem. I have been told it is so complicated, so intricate, that you need other books as guides as you read it, because if you just read straight through you'll get lost, confused, and won't grasp it. Well, I've tried testing this information by just picking a place and reading until I am tired. And yes, it is loaded with meaning, and knowledge, and it is very slow going, but I don't ever feel "lost" or "overwhelmed." Just very, very intrigued. I have a lot of friends who aren't Christians, but who like to discuss theology, philosophy, and other topics just as potentially volatile. When I began taking my faith much more seriously in the last few years, I was questioned a lot by these people. Why do Christians believe this? What about that? If this is true, then how can X be possible? And so on. Sometimes I knew the answer. Most of the time I just had to explain what I felt in my heart about it, but admit that I didn't know the Bible well enough to cite specific passages to make my point more clearly. (Of course, reading the verses word for word will still inspire many different interpretations, but that's another discussion all together.) As I look to the future, to what's going on in the world around me, to my family and friends, to the possibility of bringing children into the world later in my life, having as clear an understanding of my faith and as much information about the Bible as I can is becoming more and more essential to me. I have not gone to church as often of late for various reasons (school finals, the holidays, general exhaustion on Sunday morning, and others), and I can really feel the negative effect that has on my spirit. Now, I pray almost every day, and I don't necessarily think going to church every week is necessary to be fulfilled spiritually. I do, however, think that just like muscles need physical exercise of some sort to be healthy and grow, or at least not atrophy, so it is with the spirit. My fifth resolution is to find a small group my wife and I fit in that we can learn from, grow from, and make a difference in. I intend to begin studying the Bible on a weekly basis, and by the end of the year have done it so frequently that it just seems as natural a part of my day as brushing my teeth, eating breakfast, or anything else I do on a regular basis for my personal health. I am going to attempt to search out opportunities to discuss my faith with others, especially those not of my faith, so that I can be challenged into learning more about my own faith and at the same time learn about the beliefs of others. I feel so fulfilled and hungry for knowledge and understanding when I get done having a night of discussion like that, and it's up to me to find opportunities to harness the potential such interactions hold. This last Christmas I made a request in my "Why Do Online Comics?" column that for Christmas I wanted my readers to buy online comics subscriptions or merchandise for themselves. It's something I readily support, so giving money to online comics creators is the perfect gift for me. Well, I bought a few shirts from Achewood.com, and got a subscription to Serializer.net for myself. My family also contributed some money to PBS, another concept I support more and more all the time. Beyond that though, I'm not sure my message got across. Or the people reading didn't like the same things I was supporting. Or they're just generally apathetic. I don't know really. Hopefully it did some good. Now that the gift giving season of the "holidays" is almost past us, I find myself thinking ahead to what sorts of things I want to accomplish from a "charity" standpoint in 2003. A few things I already do, I'll continue. Like writing to a creator when I like something they've done and be really specific, so they know their efforts and detail work don't go unnoticed. Going to San Diego's Comic-Con and spending the majority of my "fun money" on the stuff online creators have brought to peddle. Spending quality time with my family and friends, people who have limited temporal resources but would like to spend some of their hours on me. Giving a reasonable amount of our time and money to others who need it more than we do. The thing I am working on the most is giving people more of my attention. My sixth resolution, in fact, is to just try to be more aware of the needs of my friends and family. I think recently I've been too interested and concerned with my own well being and just the things that directly impact myself and my wife. I need to open my eyes back up a bit and recognize the people I care about in whatever way they may need me to. It's easy to become paranoid and insular in the world nowadays, so I've got to be on my guard to not be on my guard so much. That way not only can I affect other people, but they can affect me. It's possible to get hurt that way, but it's nigh impossible to build strong relationships otherwise. There is a chemical substance I am having the hardest time saying no to. Marijuana doesn't interest me. Smoking? Nope. I used to like drinking beer when I went out, but it was for the taste, and when I decided to start exercising and quit drinking, quitting drinking was by far the easy part. No, the one thing I don't seem to be able to completely kick is Diet Coke. I'm getting better when it comes to Diet Coke, but I don't feel quite where I want to be yet. In high school and the beginning of my college years I drank 150-250 fluid ounces a day of the stuff. It dropped here, came back up there, but never stopped completely until January of 2001. From January to July of that year I didn't touch the stuff. Then, on the car ride out to San Diego that summer for the comic convention, I decided to buy one to sip on along the way. Before long I was back up to 50-75 ounces a day. On occasion I would go into Prankster's and drink small pitcher after small pitcher of it. I've recently gotten it down to an average of 10-20 ounces a day. My new rule is simple: I don't buy Diet Coke anymore. It's still readily available at many parties and other events or places that I get one or two every two or three days, so I'm not going through any kind of caffeine withdrawals, and I'm doing fine with only having that much. I would eventually like to get it to once or twice a week and then stick to that, and not crave it every time I see it. That is simply going to take time. The other addiction I fear is going to try to make a comeback sometime this year. Any of you who know what Evercrack is will really understand what I am saying. I used to play a game called Everquest. I've quit and gone back to that game three times now. It is multiplayer on a massive scale, where you have a character that performs tasks for virtual profit and gain better virtual skills. Around the 34-35th level of my character's existence, I found myself spending 6-8 hours of time in the game and often accomplishing squat. It's so hard to advance at a certain point in that game, I just couldn't bring myself to do it anymore. The false sense of accomplishment games like that can provide was gone, and suddenly its spell on me was broken. I was free, and I will remain free from Everquest. Of this I am confident. However. Sometime this year the makers of Evercrack will be releasing their newest venture, Star Wars Galaxies. Everquest in the Star Wars universe. The good Star Wars universe too, not this sick Willy Wonka and the Droid Factory crap Lucas is pulling out of his orifices nowadays. I can fulfill my dream of growing up to be a Wookie! No game has ever tempted me as much as this one, and if I manage to resist its siren song, I am confident I can resist the pull of anything entertainment makers can ever throw my way (with the possible exception of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King next December, which I have already given myself to freely). So as far as dangerous addictions go, my seventh resolution is to only drink Diet Coke on occasion (i.e. roughly once or twice a week) and to not subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies even if they offer it to me for free. Over the last two years I have lost 25 pounds. Other than cutting virtually all alcohol, my diet has remained virtually the same. What has made the difference has, quite simply, been exercise. When I'm working out five-six times a week, I'm losing weight. When I do it two-three times a week, like I have for I don't know how many months, I simply maintain. My doctor says I am in great shape. My body's running pretty smoothly, and I rarely get sick. In fact, my arms, legs, and back are right where I want them. But I've got two problem areas still. My stomach is, I think, still holding its shape in the hopes that someday I might snap and start giving it beer again. While this is not going to happen, I can't seem to convince my stomach of it, and it's getting annoying. Also, I don't know if any of you reading this have seen my head, but it is freaking huge. So I'd like to get rid of some of its puffiness so that it at least looks like a healthy huge head. Which means I'm going to have to exercise more. Plain and simple. So my eighth resolution is to work out more. Specifically, I want to work out aerobically five mornings a week, weight lift three times a week, and have at least one additional evening aerobic workout on the same day as one of my morning workouts. I'm halfway to that goal right now, and it shouldn't be hard to get back into the habit since I've been in it before. My couch at home is currently my workplace for the creation of much of my comics work. I write there, sketch there, ink there, and think there. When I need materials, I walk halfway across the house to my den. I'd like to have a place in my den I can work on such things, but so far that doesn't exist. Besides a lack of the furniture that would be conducive to working in my den, there are the problems of lack of space and lack of a lack of distractions. The place is generally somewhat cluttered. I have organizers, and at the beginning of a semester of school I organize everything pretty well. By the time finals come around though, things are sort of a mess. Also, it's far too bright for an artist's den. My wife likes yellows, whites, and other bright colors around the house, and I have found myself enjoying it far more than I would have imagined. For places where the idea is to have a fun, happy, peaceful existence, like, oh, every other room in the house, this sort of decor is ideal. But I've always done my artwork in dark places, like the bar I go and do a lot of my stuff in. I don't know why, I just like being creative in shadows. So my ninth resolution is to work on getting the den to be a place that is more conducive to me creating in it. I'd like to get a nice chair I can kick back in and relax in there, paint some of the walls something like a blue or maybe the right green or gray, and set up a system for organization that takes care of itself as much as possible so it takes minimal effort to keep it nice and tidy. Barring success of any of these things, I'll just keep the lights low in there when I work and make do. This isn't as important a resolution as the others since I have alternatives, it'd just be nice to accomplish. Family has become so much more important to me than it has ever been before in my life. Since I married Ginger over a year ago, my family has grown in leaps and bounds. Our marriage, of course, meant I had a second set of parents, a sibling for the first time in my life, and increased the quality of my relationship with my own parents and grandparents. Then, in November of 2002, my newly acquired sister got married. The man she married is now a brother of sorts to me, and he comes with a rather large family himself, which we have grown increasingly closer to. Ever since I visited Scotland when I was 13 and again when I was 15, I have felt a bond with my Cousin Mick, who lives in the borders there. After he came from Scotland for my wedding, however, he has gone from "nice person from my past" to "family member I care for and think often of" in my heart. My wife and I are very much looking forward to visiting him in the next few years and spending time with his extended family over there. I have all sorts of new cousins I have never met and would very much like to. Now one of my sister-in-law's husband's sisters is getting married, another of the sisters is already married, and he has a brother, parents, and one grandmother I have met. Perhaps the most stunning part of all of this is, they're all great people! I don't have a single relative I don't not just like but think is terrific, right down to my wife's sister's husband's brother's children. They all live within an hour of me, save my own parents and grandparents who are three hours by car or three seconds by cell phone (with unlimited minutes on the weekends). This New Year's Eve, I'll be spending the night playing games with my wife, her sister, her sister's husband, her sister's husband's sisters, and their husbands and/or husband to be, OH, and the husband and husband-to-be's families. This may all seem exceedingly silly, but please understand my perspective on all of this. I am an only child. I grew up living with or next door to my grandparents on my father's side, and of course with my parents. As big as that seemed sometimes (since I almost never (i.e. less than once a year) had the place completely to myself growing up), I feel like I'm only now beginning to understand what being a part of a large family can entail. And I'm loving every minute of it. My tenth resolution is just to keep building my relationships with my family members. I can't remember ever feeling lighter in my heart about my life, and between Ginger, who couldn't be a better life partner for me, and my family, who have proven to me my heart's capacity is far greater than I suspected, I feel far too fortunate to not try to give something back. Pictures have recently become far more interesting and important to me than ever before. This may seem odd, considering my main hobby, online comics, is pretty heavily loaded with pictures, but that's not quite what I mean. A while ago I got a digital camera. I imagined the main purpose for this purchase would be to collect "data" (sample material) for my comics work. In fact, I have recently begun to use it for just such a thing. But shortly after I bought it, I somewhat forgot about it, and it lay fairly dormant for several months. This was a point of frustration for me, but since I wasn't yet to the place I wanted to be with my artwork, I wasn't ready to start on the comic I was going to take sample photos for. I should explain something now about me and "vacation pictures." When I went around on travels by myself or with friends and/or acquaintances, I never felt the need to take pictures. In fact, I wanted my memories of such events to be based on the emotions of the times, the smells, the food, and things based more on my other senses. Pictures would dilute my memories I thought, allowing me to feel like I could just dump my memories out of my head since I had them on photo paper. So I rarely if ever took a camera along with me. This past summer, I took my digital camera to San Diego when Ginger and I went to the comic convention there. My plan was ingenious; I was going to have every person who was famous, in costume, or was simply in the wrong place at the right time hold my stuffed lion Sam Neill for a photo op. Then, when I got home, I'd put it all together in a story/photo album of sorts on my website. My wife seemed to at least not be annoyed by the idea, and in fact seemed to enjoy much of it. Except. We weren't taking pictures of the two of us, just of Sam. This was based somewhat on how I felt about vacation photos in general, and somewhat out of sheer stupid ignorance on the part of an otherwise unflawed husband (insert rolling of eyes and laughter here). So there came a part of the trip when the fact that we hadn't taken any pictures of us as a couple was brought to my attention. Well, we got a lot of great images after that, and the same mistake will not again be made, but something else happened that trip. I started rethinking my thinking on photos, not just vacation photos but capturing moments on film (or, in this case, Sony memory stick) in general. If I tried, and since I was already good at it, chances were I could have all of my memories the way I wanted them AND have the photos to go along with them too. Ginger, being a former photography major in college, is quite agreeable to this. Since then, I've learned of an even better trick with my camera. It takes movies too. =) So this eleventh resolution is to take the capturing of moments with my camera more seriously. I can still do goofy projects like the one with Sam Neill too, just so long as I keep the non-stuffed members of my vacation party in mind as well. My twelfth and final resolution for 2003 is to write more. I'm off to a pretty good start. |