Learning the Hard Way

I didn’t post a comic for today and that wasn’t the biggest fail that happened last night.

Tuesday afternoon I started to feel way more stressed than was called for. On the way home I lost it. I’m a fairly stable person but sometimes I push too hard and down I go. Last night I got pretty far down. I thought, after several hours of questioning all sorts of things from why to wherefore to small cog in the giant wheel of time, that I’d figured out what was bugging me.

I was about half right.

This morning, Wednesday, I got a triple shot of the cosmic cluestick and have an even better idea of what I did wrong.

I didn’t take care of myself.

I don’t mean I failed to eat right or failed basic hygiene standards or anything like that. I failed to take time for myself and got wrapped up in the deadlines and to-do lists that I created so that some They would  agree I was doing it right and some other They would acknowledge it.

And last night my mind and the Universe decided to let me know it.

Last night I was heart-sick, today I’m body-sick. Whether the one was the cause or merely a harbinger of the other is anyone’s guess. Probably a little bit of both, to be honest. But I listened, and I hope I really heard it this time because I don’t want to have another night like that.

To that end, things around Random Acts Comics-land are going to be a bit more fluid for the next month or so. I’ve got some housekeeping to do (literally and figuratively) and some shuffling of priorities and some decisions to make regarding my various projects. Nothing’s going away at this time, but I need to approach it all differently, correctly, so that I don’t hit this wall again.

Or be forced to break up with the Internet. Internet and I are BFFs and I’m not ready to give back my half of the friendship necklace.

So I’m going to spend the next few nights attempting to relax (especially the right arm, my drawing arm, it’s sorta on strike and didn’t even want to type this letter), clearing my head and considering my options. Since update days may be sporadic for the month of April, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on twitter in order not to miss anything.

Because if I don’t do this I risk true and total burnout. And no one else can tell my stories. Other people can tell other stories, but no one can tell mine. And it’s my stories that I want to tell. I draw and write because it makes me smile, it makes me happy. I need to remind myself of that and make sure I proceed with that, and my own mental and physical health, first in mind. The rest will work itself out.