René Talks About Death - What Else Is New ?

I have a reputation for being comfortable with the macabre - well, I guess that's what you get for being the guy behind a weekly comic starring the Grim Reaper and a bunch of dead folk. But still.
A colleague's brother-in-law keeled over at his job, pretty much dead on the spot, age 48. Now, I'm not afraid to die. I haven't been since about age 8. It happens, it's a part of life, and I'm damn glad that the idea is that at some point there's an end to all of this. Not that I dislike my life, but I've long ago accepted my death and I'm constantly trying to limit the amount of loose ends in my life because I know it can happen at any time. It's hard to understand for a lot of people, but to me death is just... death.
What *does* spook me, though, is... 9 hours a day (sometimes more), four days a week, I'm in the office. That's a pretty big chunk of my life. Statistically, the odds of dying while on the job are fairly realistic. And when I heard about that guy dying there, that *did* seem weird to me.
It's not that it would scare my colleagues or that it would get in the way of my work or any such kind of consideration. I mean, I could die in a bar, or on a train, or at home, and in each of those situations similar stuff would probably happen right after. It's the thought that I could die AT WORK. It's the idea that my last thought COULD be 'now to reboot that server' or 'I wonder if I've notified that user yet'. Too much of my time and energy is already being wasted at work, I don't want to DIE here as well. To be honest.
So yeah, that's my thought for the day. Think about it. You work to live, as they say. But what if you fail at that motto and work only to die while doing so ? Terrifying.

Entertaining Like Me.

Last week my Dead Like Me Series 1 DVD came in, and I'm almost through watching all the episodes. Turns out there's one I missed ! And so far - I can't sleep too well this evening so I'm watching some episodes this very moment - it seems to be the obligatory compilation episode, where the plot facilitates the reusage of scenes from past episodes. You know the drill. It's done in a good way though.

Dead Like Me is a lot like the Grim DotCom, but I've already handled that in the past of this blog. (Mental note: the image is dead - ironic, no ? Should fix that.) So now my mind is rambling on wether or not I should do a flashback episode as well, or a series of them. Then again, Clerks (the animated series, that is) already did that in a way more funny style than I would. And it's a six panel comic strip. I'd have to pull some pretty acrobatic stunts to facilitate a plot requiring flashbacks, plus flashbacks, in six panels.

The idea intrigues me now.

And I want my series 2 DVD as well. But it's special import so it'll take longer. Dead Like Me is such a well-written show, they shouldn't have pulled the plug. But then, the trend of recent years is that every good, insightful show gets pulled, so I'll try to just be glad there's two seasons.

I need some sleep. This is a weird week - I guess it's the good kind of weird - and it'll only get weirder. More about that later. For now I'll post this, then shut off the computer and watch the rest of this episode from bed.

John Fowles, 31/3/1926 - 5/11/2005

Writer John Fowles dies aged 79

"The French Lieutenant's Woman author John Fowles has died aged 79.
Fowles died at his home in Lyme Regis, Dorset on Saturday after battling a long illness, his publisher said."

I'm fairly saddened by this news. Fowles has been of great influence on me, both personally and in my writing. As you can read at the linked page (BBC news), I'm far from alone in that. And many people have written their thoughts there much more eloquently than I have.

So I'll limit myself to notifying you all that a man I greatly admired has passed away - before I could ever let him know that I did, I might add. I always hoped to have archieved a slight bit of greatness myself before doing so, to perhaps make it slightly more honorable. My own fault for waiting, I guess.
Nevertheless, the Probeersel books, the books that started me off in more serious comic writing, that still encapsulate most of my views on humanity, the world, and everything, that took five years of my life to complete and that some still say is my best work to date, those five books were heavily influenced by Fowles. I even paid direct tribute to the man in some of the panels in Book 5, and therefor, instead of writing things that others have also written, I quote from my own work below to pay tribute to a great man once more.

Mr. Fowles, you will be missed.

Life is pacin'

I just spent most of the past week being ill at home. Horrible. The past couple of years I seem to physically have become a more normal mortal human being, the kind that can get ill for MORE than one day. I can't say I've gotten used to it yet - it's a big drain on my productivity. Colleagues and friends say it's the body shouting a 'halt' to me with all the stuff I'm doing. Well, that's all fine, but my body better know who the boss is here. The mind wants to go on, I know that much.
I was barely better and already sitting behind my computer again cramming out text I was supposed to write, standing under the shower and coming up with new material for my comics, and pacing around the house while the brain just keeps going. Can't say that what I wrote was entirely flawless, but considering I was still ill, the flaws were all minor.

It's the pacing that's starting to worry me, though. I've noticed lately that when I really get on a writing / concept development spree, I pace. I even mumble a bit. I don't notice that I'm doing it because I'm deep in thought, fitting things together, throwing away ideas I can't use, looking at different angles, etcetera. But the past few days I've started noticing that I do this now. I pace. Not entirely like a madman yet, but I pace. Like you see crazy scientists and musicians do in the movies. Pacing around in my bedroom, which is easy to do because around my bed there's an exact U-shaped path to walk back and forth in.
I'm wondering if I should worry. I know one thing, though: I've been cooked up in this house for nearly a week, I've done all my chores and all my writing and drawing, and right now I'm biking into town and going to the bar. I need to get out of this house and mingle with less-obsessed people again for a bit. Even if just for a few hours and even if it's not the smartest thing to do to my body right now, just having been 98% recovered from this illness. The alternative is going to sleep with even more rambling and crazy ideas in my head. No, no, I need to be amongst people.

Going out on the town for a few hours, folks. I think I need to.

A message from deep within the valley

Survived another comics convention but I'm broken. Exhausted. I like conventions, but I don't like the organisational part. Contrary to what some claim, I'm a poor organizer and have to work very hard to keep things on track. Plus, I tend to take up most of the work that needs to be done myself because I hate bossing other people around, so to speak. So the past few conventions, where I was more in charge of the ClickBurg stand itself, I've grown more and more tired. To the point that I'm now considering never going to a comics convention again for the rest of my life.

It's just a temporary depression, I'm sure. But I have nothing but dark, sad, nihilistic, even angry thoughts in my head now - a serious dark streak. Result of working my ass off for quite a while again and going through the 'payoff' - the end result of all that work... and then afterwards being stuck with the inevitable wonder wether or not it was all worth it. Happens every time, I'm sure I had this thought after ClickBurg 2005 last May, and after the other conventions as well, but I'm too tired to remember.

I'm also growing more and more lonely right now. I can still stand it because I can handle loneliness well, but occasionally I break down and the actual emotion overflows me. I'm sure I'll get awesome creative material out of all this, but I don't even really have much time to sit down and express it all on paper. No outlet - that could be bad.

Last weekend I was around several women I like rather well. This morning in the train I was also surrounded by a few very attractive and interesting-seeming women.. but all I could think was how I feel like giving up. Ironically, as I type this, Portishead pops up on the playlist with 'Glorybox'. The weather outside completes the picture with dark grey clouds and bursts of rain.
I didn't want to try to solve the loneliness, despite having opportunity to do so. I don't want to chase anyone, I don't want to pretend I'm more interesting than I am. I just want to give in. I want to collapse on a bed, sleep, cry, I want to punch things, I want to scream -- I feel so damn... full. And restricted. Like I have a gazillion feelings, stories, images, and they all want out but the world forbids me to express them. That's how I feel. It's all self-inflicted of course, my damn sense of responsibility is the only thing in the way. Nothing really stops me from taking a vacation, or quit my job, or let Probeersel.com and ClickBurg fall to pieces. Except that. That there's a part of me that wouldn't be able to live with failing those responsibilities. They're my responsibilities and I take them seriously. But in doing so, I'm locking too much inside that otherwise could flow freely.

I wish I could just sit down and draw this. I don't want to be at work. I don't want to be part of the comics world anymore. I don't want to be 'someone' in the webcomics scene anymore either.
I just wanna be... someone who draws. I want that feeling back from when I was slaving away, creating things without deadline or audience. I want to pour my soul out on paper again without trying to fit it in a storyline or hide it in between lines of text - I want to breathe out. I'm short on breath. I want to come up for air. That's what it is. I can't breathe. I desperately need to catch my breath.