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8:29 PM

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Saturday, October 29, 2011  
RENAISSANCE MAN

I have always been torn on the subject of single-mindedness. Part of me appreciates it- some forms of single-mindedness demonstrate a level of focus and commitment that I haven’t had since I was a kid. There’s a drive and energy in that mindset that I wish I could find again. Those that have it (and use it correctly) tend to do amazing things.

However, there’s a downside to single-mindedness. You can get so focused that you lose track of other important things. There’s a danger in your personality becoming unbalanced. Not keeping a broader look at the world at large means you might not take the time to stop and smell the roses. Pity, that.

This is on my mind thanks to a number of recent events in my life. Things are ridiculously busy for me these days; from late August to mid-October, I was working my regular 40hr-a-week job, teaching two classes as professor, and also taking two classes towards the Masters degree I am pursuing. It would be an understatement to say that was exhausting- I did a shitload of work between those three things, and that was not all I accomplished during that time. I also managed to achieve a lifelong goal along the way.

In early January 2012, RED SONJA: RAVEN will ship from Dynamite Entertainment. This marks my debut as a comicbook writer, and that’s huge for me. I’ve been reading comics since I was four years old. I’ve been a comics journalist for the past decade. I suppose this is one of those “it’s about damned time” moments, and I’m okay with that.

My point, though, is that I wrote the book right alongside everything else I was doing.

What tears at me is the question: why can’t you just settle on one thing and do that? I’m a good teacher- this semester, more than ever, I can see the effect I have had on my students’ lives. I’m having a fantastic run as a student back in the classroom; by the time this semester is complete, I expect I will have four A+s and two As from the six classes I’ll have taken so far for my degree. I’m also a solid writer- dependable and reliable, if not flashy- and can tell a story that will entertain.

My lack of single-mindedness has carried over into most aspects of my life for a long time now. I remember a few years ago explaining to a good friend of mine in the comics business how much I enjoyed golf, and that I subscribed to more golfing magazines than comics-related magazines. He looked at me like I was drunk. But it isn’t just golf; I’m an avid bicyclist, too. I bounce from one thing I enjoy to the next, heedless of the consequences.

Honestly, for a long time, this is one of those things that has really bothered me about myself. I’m 41- shouldn’t I have written a ton of comics by now? Shouldn’t I have gone back to school five years ago and be finished and teaching full-time somewhere at this point? What the fuck is wrong with me?

It is only lately that I have begun to realize that the answer to that question is “nothing.”

Certain things in life, you need to be ready to do them. I wasn’t ready to go back to school until this year. I don’t know that I was strong enough at the keyboard to write a good comic until right now. But more than that, I needed have the skills and patience I possess now in order to finally chase what I consider to be success and have a chance of achieving it.

Perhaps the greatest of those skills is time management. When I started writing SONJA, my house was in the middle of massive repairs by my landlord. Not only did that restrict my time at the computer for working on the script, it also hampered my ability to grade my students’ homework, do my own homework… it would have been easy to just throw my hands up in exasperation. But I didn’t. I changed how I managed my time. I set goals for what I was going to do each day and defined how I would get them done. And on not one day did I ever fall behind or falter.

What this began to show me was that my lack of single-mindedness was an asset, not a hindrance. I began to realize that it is okay to want to do a number of different things and keep my options open for how I approach the world. I can teach. I can write more comics. I can finish this degree. I can do all the things I want because I am not so buried in my head that I cannot see how to do them.

That’s weirdly close to optimism for me, which is kinda scary. I’m just going to chalk it up to going through a midlife renaissance. After years of allowing my potential to lie fallow, I have begun tapping into pieces of myself I didn’t know still existed and developing as a person again. For the first time in a long time, I am able to ask myself “why can’t you do that?” and not come up with an answer. Because right now, I can. And there’s no feeling quite like having that particular knowledge at your fingertips.

3:20 PM

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Tuesday, March 29, 2011  
WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD PARENTS GONE?

Legit question, right?

I only ask because I watched some amazing parenting this past weekend, and it just appalls me to see so many others doing such a shitty job of it. Poor manners, inappropriate public behaviors, terrible attitudes, rotten language and lack of respect for authority. Honestly, people. Why did you bother having children?

Too often I look at these people and think to myself “because you were too stupid to use birth control.” Or they listened to a “religious authority” and were told it was wrong to do so.

On that one: are you shitting me? You’re taking family planning advice from some dude that took a vow of celibacy? A dude who belongs to an organization so corrupt that it has spent decades protecting child molesters from prosecution in an effort to cover its own ass?

Fuck that.

Parenting takes time and work. A little patience doesn’t hurt, either. It also takes a desire to just do it.

My friends Bill and Holly have exactly that.

This past weekend, they escaped the icy clutches of Indiana and headed out to the Arizona north country. I met up with them for a day of fun and frolic, most of which came from their three amazing daughters. They had triplets eight years ago, and that certainly isn’t an easy thing. Most people are lucky to find the energy and stamina to keep up with their first child. My friends pulled the lever and it came up jackpot.

Let’s be blunt- if you saw some parents out in public with triplets, you’d probably guess that those were a couple of overwhelmed adults, and that their children would be horrific brats. Most of us would do anything to avoid sitting near them on an airplane, I am certain. But that isn’t the case with Bill and Holly.

These kids? Amazingly well-behaved. They’re polite, inquisitive, and most of all, supportive. They have that special rapport that twins and triplets have, and even though they each have wildly differing personalities, their ability to function as a unit is impressive. Take what happened at lunch, for instance.

We were actually seated at two different tables- adults at one, the kids at the one next to us, about six feet away. Already, that’s a recipe for disaster for a lot of parents. Three kids without an adult sitting there could be an omen for a lot of restaurants- call your insurance agent! But not these three. Their parents have put in the time and effort to teach the girls right and wrong as it pertains to public behavior. They sat there quietly, drawing and coloring, waiting for their food to arrive.

Then, the potential for disaster struck.

A bee landed on one of the girls’ sarsaparilla bottles. But did she freak out and cause a scene? Nope. Instead, the group dynamic kicked in. One of the other sisters took her straw out of her bottle, reached across the table with it, and enticed the bee onto it. Then she got up from the table, slowly walked the bee and straw away from the table, and gently placed it on the ground away from the three of them. No yelling, screaming, or wailing.

I was flabbergasted.

Yet I wasn’t wholly surprised, either. The trio have amazing, committed parents that put in the time and effort to impart proper behavior and values to their kids.

Now I realize that not every kid that acts like an asshole is the product of shitty parenting. There are plenty of mitigating factors that lead kids down the wrong road and thwart the best efforts of their parents to raise them right. Environmental issues, body chemistry issues, simple lapses in judgment… shit happens, and I feel a great swell of sympathy for those parents that have to deal with it.

But let’s also be honest- there are plenty of people that should have never spawned. People that had kids for the wrong reason, people that never really wanted children… we see them all the time. Those people? I don’t feel sorry for them. I feel angry for them, and I feel sad for the rest of us.

Because it is ultimately the rest of us who pay the price. Whether it’s the simple disruption of a meal, or a criminal act against us, we pay for it. Time, tax dollars, patience- there’s a cost to society as pertains to bad parenting.

Folks, here is a simple fact you can take to the bank: planet Earth has plenty of fucking people. We aren’t exactly hurting for population. Growth is continuing at an exponential rate, and resources aren’t keeping up with them. We’re no longer an agrarian society, so you don’t need to knock out kids in order to have free labor to tend the crops. In short, there is absolutely zero reason to have a child unless you really, really want to be a parent. And I mean really want it. You’re ready to give up freedom, you think your genetic code deserves to continue into future generations… whatever. You’re committed to making the time and effort to do the job right.

If not… for fuck’s sake, don’t do it.

Wear a condom (or two). Take the pill. Get a vasectomy. Embrace abortion. OR: don’t fuck anyone at all. Whatever it takes, just be smart about it. The rest of us don’t need the grief caused by your mistakes.

8:41 PM

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Monday, February 28, 2011  
RESURRECTIONIST

Yeah, it’s been a while. I’d apologize for that, but it would be a lie. To be honest, 2010 was a pretty bad year. The first half was actually pretty good- I was happier than I had been in a long, long time. But then things went to shit, and when they went to shit, they really went to shit. Plans and ideas went by the wayside, projects were left unfinished, and I didn’t get book two completed.

It was ugly.

But I woke up on January 1st feeling clean. I had undergone a catharsis as 2010 fucked off out the door, and I knew it was time to get back on top of things, particularly because at the end of the year I had applied for, and was accepted to, a Masters program. For the first time since 1993, I was going to be fully committed to being in school.

Holy shit.

I’m almost done with one class, as it is crunched into an eight-week period, and to say that I’m happy about it would be an understatement. It’s different this time. I’m different. I’m finding myself committed to this in a way I never was before.

Look, I’ll be blunt: growing up, it all came really easy to me. I had to put little to no effort into getting high grades. I’m not (I swear) bragging, but I was blessed with a high level of intelligence, and one of the ways it worked for me was that I had a strong intuitive grasp of material put in front of me. (Still generally do.) I didn’t need to study- I could show up, essentially download the answers out of my personal random access memory, and ace whatever was on the agenda.

One of the great things about that time was that I was surrounded by others like me. Billy, Eric, Tina, Jill… extraordinary, gifted people. Thinking about it now, I realize what a privilege it was to have been their contemporary. Priceless. But I also know that they weren’t all like me, either. Our gifts worked differently. Some of them were putting real effort and caring into their work, pushing themselves to be the best they could be.

I was generally phoning it in. I know now that it was disrespectful to the job they were doing, but back then I didn’t see it. I didn’t care about anybody but myself.

When I got to ASU, my academic malaise remained. A rough first semester kicked me in the pants, and after that I pulled myself together, but I still didn’t really care as much as I should have. Why spend more time getting a 4.0 that semester when I could have fun and still get a 3.5? The way I pissed away my potential is ridiculous. I’m embarrassed at what an asshole I was.

And now here I am, back in school again. I’ve been teaching as a professor at ASU since 2009 on top of being a research professional and instructional specialist for the libraries, and I decided that I want to push myself more in the teaching direction. I like working with students, I like engaging with them, and I love seeing what happens when they put the pieces together and get it. You can’t pay for a satisfying moment like that. It’s wondrous. Way better than anything I get out of my day job. But I also want to broaden my horizons as a teacher- I would like to teach writers. I want to help others find their voice, they way my writing professors helped me.

That means getting a different degree. Thus: Masters program starting this semester.

Now that I’m doing it, though, I’m dedicating myself to doing it right. I want to test myself and see what I am capable of. I want to give effort, if only to show that I can. I want to live up to the example that my friends (and to be blunt, my teachers) set for me, and show them the respect now that I didn’t back then.

I’m not going to settle for “good enough.”

Only being The Best will do.

3:13 PM

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