Motivation has always been a little bit of an issue for me. Lindsey know’s this better than anyone. I have a bad habit of starting projects with grand intentions and loosing interest in it before I even really get started. Knowing this about myself means that I have to be extra careful when I’m about to make a big purchase to make sure that it’s not just another impulse buy.
The most recent and ridiculous example of this is rabit hunting. I don’t even remember how it started, but a few months ago I became very interested in hunting rabits. I learned that in England, where individuals can’t own firearms, they hunt rabits with high powered air rifles. I started watching videos of people hunting and it looked like so much fun. I started researching air rifles and saw that they weren’t extremely expensive and then started researching hunting laws to see what kind of permit I would need and when I could hunt. I even watched tutorials of how to skin and prepare a rabit after hunting.
To put this all in perspective: I have never been hunting. Not even once. Lindsey tried to be the voice of reason and tell me that I shouldn’t buy a rifle, or at least not until it was hunting season! But I was too excited. Every day I would do more research and get more excited about it. Obviously I should buy my rifle now so that I have plenty of time to practice before hunting season is here! I purchased the rifle, and as of today I have practiced with it about three times. I have no plans to purchase a hunting license. On the other hand it does give me peice of mind to know that if there’s ever a threatening dog or a rattle snake too close to my house I have something to use.
When we first started the comic I think Lindsey thought the same thing would happen with this. It was a reasonable assumption really, given my history of full blown excitement followed by complete disinterest, but I stuck with it, probably in large part because she’s doing it with me. Lately however it’s getting harder to stay motivated about this as well. I remember after Fanaticon we were extatic and ready to hit the ground running, but the reality of working full-time jobs and having hobbies aside from this webcomic meant that time was short. For a while I was working on refining Lindsey’s T-shirt designs, but neither of us have any experience working with vector images, and the rastor drawings just weren’t cutting it. I followed my usual cycle of activity. Watching tutorials, reading tips, trying it out with limited success, and loosing interest.
This is my first blog post without a comic in three weeks. I’m not going to make any grand promises about updating more often, or working on merchandise or anything like that. I just wanted to make sure I had a blog post for this week, and whining about not being motivated was the first thing that came to mind. So expect a comic every Monday, a blog post most thursdays, and maybe one day we’ll be bored enough to work on other stuff as well.
I won’t let you take all the blame here. A lot of the lacking with our comic stems from me, the artist. I will have small bursts of creativity where I cannot wait to work on the comic. However, more often I begrudgingly sit at the computer to throw out another comic page. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy drawing the comic. It is more that after working 40 hours a week, there are other things I want to do also.
There is also the fact that I constantly feel as if no one but us even cares about the comic. It is like throwing a party that nobody comes to and it can become discouraging. Hell, several of our closest friends don’t even keep up with our comic. That is nothing against them, they were never really web comic fans to start with, so reading ours was kind of forced upon them anyway.
Wow, this became whiny very fast. Like Justin said, we will keep going. Updating every Monday, and maybe one day this will be something more.
Hate to be fussy, but you’ve used “rabit” instead of “rabbit” for an entire paragraph. Sorry.
Also, as an English person I can confirm the air-rifle thing, although I never go hunting. There’s loads of rabbits near where I live.
Damn, you’re right. I wrote this while tired and at work with no spell check available, so there are probably loads of errors that I just didn’t bother to catch. One day I won’t be lazy and I’ll go back and fix it.