UK Web Comix Thing write-up

Gosh! Look at how much more stuff I have to sell than I did this time last year or before then!

This year's Thing was a bit more relaxed than last year, not sure if it was just fewer visitors or just that I'm a bit more used to these events now or what but it all passed pretty painlessly this time.

I'm so very pleased that people picked up my short stories, Full of Empty and Still Here; that's been really gratifying for me. When I'm back from Berlin, I may have a pint-at-the-retro-bar type night for anyone else who wants those or any dinosaur postcards.

Once again, I'm reminded of how friendly and generous a crowd it is, and I'm moved by how kind people were when I'd been a fool and packed too heavy a bag for my sore arms and hurt myself carrying things to the hall. It really is a good set of people.

Now, I'm looking forward to Toronto and the MCM Expo in May, both of which sound epic. I hope to catch some of you there!

Not that I anthropomorphise or anything, but...

Hello! This is my new best friend. We are going to have such adventures together!

Executive Decisions

I'm almost at the mid-point review at the (yeah, shocker) middle of the first stage of the MA I'm doing at the moment and it's interesting to be looking back over how much things have been changing for me since I started the course back in September.

It's funny how cyclical some learning experiences are, and I don't mean that I'm doing a course in Lycra shorts and a Day-Glo jacket, although I'm sure there's a certain appeal to that for some sectors of the readership of this blog (especially when most of the search terms you lot are using are things like "girl wanking dog", "life after meth" or you're looking to buy mephedrone, good luck with that, baby bio tweaking bestiality fans...).

No, what I mean is that when I applied for the MA, I was desperate to get away from interpreting and wanted to have nothing to do with that whole chapter of my life any more, wanted to stop being a blogger and wanted to make comics and wanted to really try to turn into a bit more of a businessman.

So, I've been doing loads of things to develop time-management skills and learning loads about business models and about saleable skills and things like that and been making loads of really intricate-looking notes in my sketchbook about how to project manage and how to calculate lead-times and how to work out your day rate and things like that.

Then, yesterday, in the Immersion programme, which is all about business skills for creative graduates, I sat there listening to a jewellery maker and a writer telling their stories and I just made a very important decision and started drawing all over the meticulous charts and notes I'd made because, you know what? They really don't matter nearly as much to me as cute little monsters and robots and sad-looking people with lonely faces.

I'm trying to work out how to merge this blog with the site at Cute But Sad Comics but there's so much I don't understand about how that kind of thing works, there's all sorts of strange voodoo involved in doing that. I think I'd like it to eventually be that all the posts and comics from there are on this blog, but tagged so they can be found easily, with a page for a portfolio type thing and an about me kind of thing there, too, but I'm thinking I want my life to be a bit simpler than having so many places where I update different things.

Funny, isn't it? I'm not moving away from where I was, but I'm so much happier with who I am.

So excited! The Thing, Berlin, The London Marathon...

So! This Saturday, we've got the UK Web Comix Thing. Despite my reservations about anything where they spell comics with an x, it's actually a really good fun event and I'm looking forward to it. It's inbetween Mile End and Stepney Green tube stations and runs from 10-5, so do swing by if you can!

I'd link but I'm blogging from an iPhone app that I've not worked out yet so links elude me for the moment, but it's easily found on the net!

I've got a new mini-fiction book, Full of Empty, as well as the dinosaur postcards I had done by Moo. They came out wonderfully, so I'm glad I bit the bullet and paid the extra to have them made that way. I'll post more about them once the Thing's out of the way.

I'm also in a bit of a panic now because it's almost marathon time! Four weeks to go until in theory I run twenty-six miles. I'm still apprehensive about whether or not I can do it in a way I'll be proud of, but I've trained so much more than I thought I could, so I'm proud of that if nothing else.

I've got the Finchley 20 this weekend, which is my big test, the longest prep run I'll have before the event, twenty miles of road race early on Sunday morning. I'm dreading it a bit, but I've got to do it! Then in a couple of weeks, the Kingston Breakfast Run which is 16 miles and then the big event. This really is it now. Can't be ill again now!

Breathe. Breathe again.

Can you smell it? Spring's in the air. Yes, it might be raining outside again and everyone isn't sure if they have hayfever or a chest infection but either way, that goo goes so very well with the crocuses, doesn't it?

After a little moment on Friday of waking up from lucid dreams about very specific job offers for Ilmar and the London Eye melting into a Starbucks cinnamon whirl, I wondered if I was mixing my anti migraine drugs for something from the back of the cupboard again, but then I coughed and brought the MacBook Air through to the bathroom, checked the Pantone reference in InDesign and then booked myself in with the GP to get antibiotics.

Nothing says Spring like an ear infection, does it?

Well, nothing apart from there suddenly being a rash (I say that fully aware of the implication) of furtive and not so furtive eye contact when you're out for a run by the river or when you're on the bus or when you're accidentally logging in on websited of a more specilialised nature.

Of course, there may be some who happily gambol over to the house of a stranger or ask someone round to celebrate all that's vernal and good, but me, I get that little rush of excitement when someone gives me a look and then a sense of abject dread sets in and all I can think about is that I haven't washed the upholstery all winter and that The carpets are looking a bit grubby.

Obviously, I know that with all the running I do, people wouldn't likely be worrying about the state of the surfaces but for now, rest assured my moral superiority isn't maintained by any sense of duty to monogamy or fidelity but the memory of that view I got when I opened the curtains to that lovely spring sunshine on Sunday.

So, for now, Howard Hardiman is in a complicated relationship with Henry the Hoover.

Advice Needed: Towards an Integrated Future

So much to think about at the moment, I probably should make use of the blog as a place to let some of it out, eh?

I've been doing the Immersion programme with the University of the Arts, it's a business skills course for creative graduates that's meant to make us all supremely employable or to get us to the point where we're ready to set up superb new companies and agencies and things like that. I'm really glad I'm doing it alongside my MA, because it's helping me focus really clearly on what I might want from my career after I've completed my course and it's giving me such a lot of information in hefty bursts about time management, how to describe the work you do, we've even got an acting coach coming out to help us improve our presentation skills.

There's been a lot of work on looking at how we should be valuing our skills and experiences a lot more highly than we do and I think, like a lot of creative people, I've fallen into a trap of subsidising a low income with a sense of love for what I do and I realise that by doing that I'm likely to burn out and end up resentful.

I love what I do, though, so the puzzle's just to find out how to make sure I'm not going to run myself into the ground.

One thing I could do with some help with, though, which I'm not quite sure how to do, is that I want to work out how to try to join up some of the web presences I have at the moment. I miss this blog horribly, but I want to try to get more people to go to see my web comics over on http://www.cutebutsad.co.uk but I'm not quite sure if there's a way that the two things could be better joined up? This blog has history and a hilarious archive of shame and chaotic adventures on it, but that's got the name and the comics on it.

I'm the same person, though, so I'm not sure about how to do the whole thing of splitting up time spent ranting on here or posting drawings on there or tweeting or updating facebook or running a web-shop or whatever in a way that isn't quite so scattered.

Do any of you beautiful people in my coterie of zombies have any advice for me on this kind of thing? My grasp of technology gets about as far as holding a pen, which I do well, but I'm man enough to know I can't do everything, and web-fu is beyond me!

Anyone got any lovely ideas about how to stop me from feeling like there's too many different places to update so I can go back to loving blogging again?

(On a side-note, does anyone have an iPhone blogging app they can recommend that would work with blogger and possibly post update notifications to Facebook/Twitter?)

I love you all, but not the spambots.

Don't hold yourself down.

They say that something you shouldn't do on blogs is apologise for not posting and I'm totally not going to be doing that. I've been incredibly busy this last week and it's all in incredibly good ways. It's the UK Web Comix Thing on the 27th, I hope you'll get a chance to come along to see me there, I'll have my new tiny little book, Full of Empty, dinosaur postcards and I'll also have stickers as part of the Dino-Saw-Us passport project!

I'm still so glad I'm doing the Immersion programme with the University of the Arts. It's felt like a strange combination of psychotherapy, dragon's den, NLP, business coaching and for the first time I've actually felt like I've understood all that kind of stuff properly. It's really given me a huge boost in confidence to have a sense of clarity but it's meant I've been so busy! I'll tell you more as it's confirmed!

Win an Adventure Every Day For The Rest Of Your Life

Just take the time to enjoy your surroundings.