I think a lot of my frustration in trying to write these things stems from the fact that there’s a lack of shared knowledge about the subject matter. I try not to have super wordy exposition panels like the first panel in this comic, but it’s important to the story that the reader know how things work. It reminds me of when I tried to incorporate bar-tab games into the comic. Unless you bowled on SIN League and already knew the rules, you just didn’t get the joke. I had work friends tell me that they liked the comic but had to go back to previous comics and read the explanation of things in order to get the joke. Someone once told me that if you have to explain a joke then it wasn’t worth telling in the first place, and you may have noticed that I don’t talk about bar-tab games anymore.
Last week I bought a new camera! I’ve been selling cameras at my old job for two years now and have actually been teaching a class on DSLRs without actually having one of my own. But since I’m changing jobs and loosing my discount I went ahead and bought a Nikon D3100 while I still could get a good price on it. So far I love it. My favorite thing is being able to control the shutter speed. I love doing night shots and setting the thing for a thirty second exposure. Today Lindsey and I went for a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway in search of some good sunset photos, but unfortunately the cloud cover was too thick to get anything really good.
Most of our readers already know that I’ve started a new job. Previously I worked at Best Buy and while the job had it’s perks, and I loved my coworkers, a combination of terrible store management and ignorant customers made it a very frustrating job. Over the summer I started looking for better work, but of course that’s getting harder and harder to find, but I was lucky. I was hired as a teacher’s assistant at a local elementary school, which was a very significant raise over what I was making and also a much more healthy working environment. But there is a downside…
While I love my new schedule because I work the same days and the same hours every single week. It’s going to be a problem because starting sometime next month I have to be there at six o’clock every morning. For those of you not familiar with the bowling league I’m on, we start at nine thirty or ten and usually don’t end until after midnight. As much as I hate to admit it, going to bed at one AM and waking up four hours later to get ready for work it’s going to be possible. At first I said I’d try it and see how it goes, but currently I’m getting up and six thirty or seven to go to work, and I can already tell that I won’t be able to keep it up when I need to get up at five.
What’s that mean for the comic? Probably nothing. The Story line of the comic is now pretty far removed from real events, so I don’t think it will be an issue to keep writing it even when I’m not bowling. But for me personally it’s a pretty big blow. Bowling on SIN League has been a big part of my life for two years now. It’s where I see my friends and where I cut loose. This new job is a huge opportunity for me, and I’m really excited to have it, but it means the end of a lot of other things in my life.
So far I’ve worked two days at the school, and it’s been great! Tomorrow is the first day that the children will be there, wish me luck.
The appearance of TWO new characters and I love it!