Happiness Withdrawls...

What you see here is my good buddy Chuck’s “To Do” list at work. I’ve been best friends with Chuck since kindergarten, and we’ve wound up at the same job more that once in our lives. Which is awesome. Well, it turns out that the boss noticed that I needed some “get up and go” and had Chuck add that to his list.

The problem is that I’m coming down from a brief but powerful creative high. I took the day off recently to doctor/redraw a children’s book. I called in sick to work, stayed home alone, cranked out picture after picture listening to iTunes however loud I wanted to. I jogged around the block a couple times when I felt stiff. I was never interrupted. It was basically everything my job should be.

Last fall I was working on a super secret movie pitch (that I still shouldn’t talk about.) But that experience had something to do with a comic book that I had drawn (168 pages!) being adapted into a movie. The movie being made would mean that the comic that I spent drawing for months would finally see the light of day. That little movie project was the accumulation of every daydream and fantasy I ever entertained coming true. It represnted everything that my life had been building up to. It was the crescedo that Little Billy Penn set into motion when he saw his first movie, cracked open his first comic book, and scribbled his first pictures. And nothing continues to happen with it. I still wake up everyday, and toil in the same job I have for the last nine years.

But this is something different. I’ve gone through “happiness withdrawls” before, but never have I felt them as severe as this.

Drawing a book/comic/movie pitch is sooooo frustrating. I’m just flirting with a tease. It’s like I’m torn between two jobs: one that makes me happy, and one that makes me money.

And work is NEVER REALLY THAT BAD. The dread of going back to work ALWAYS outweighs being at work. It’s never as bad as I think.

But I still get downright suicidal thoughts driving to work…