Have you ever come back to a hobby after, jeez I don't even know, years away from it? And you start looking through your old stuff and thinking "well yeah, I did really enjoy this and it was really fulfilling", but then you start trying to actually do it again and it's like riding a bike after years away except you grew an extra leg during that time? I mean, I know how this is supposed to work, but holy crap is it ever not going how I remember it going.
Anywho, I'm starting to work on my comic again. I actually was about, I dunno, 50% through the next storyline (after what's posted on the site) before I crapped out last time. The impetus for that was, if I'm recalling things correctly, buying and then remodeling a house, so... good reasons to take a break I guess. But still, I left right in the middle of laying down pencils for a strip, and now coming back I feel like my entire right hand is made of thumbs, and I don't just mean the digits.
Somehow.
So what do you do when this happens? I'm sure with a bit of practice it'll come back to me, and I'm obviously not going to need like another 10,000 hours to master what I'd already mastered. But the feeling of jumping back into something and immediately slamming into a wall you don't remember being there is pretty frustrating. Like walking through the doorway of your childhood bedroom and immediately having the floor fall out from under you. That's going to disrupt the nostalgia of the experience more than a bit, to say nothing of, y'know, possibly breaking a leg. Or something like that. Seems like you might loose any enthusiasm you had for strolling down memory lane in favor of vacating what is apparently a condemned building.
And let's just ignore the aspect of that metaphor I sort of just stumbled into that would leave you wondering whether the house you were living in was ever actually structurally sound to begin with (AWAY with you imposter syndrome!). The point is that it's a sudden, unforeseen setback that immediately curbs whatever enthusiasm you had for revisiting that thing.
Unrelated meandering thought, "curbs your enthusiasm." Do you think that has the same root as "curb stomp"? Like, is that supposed to mean "curb stomps your enthusiasm"? Because if so that saying is way more definitive and gruesome than I've been giving it credit for.
Right, with that etymological tangent (otherwise known as "future blog post idea") out of the way, let's get to the meat and potatoes of why I'm writing this post; I wanted to whine about it.
That's basically it. If you read this far hoping I was about to drop some sort of insight on how to get past these frustrating roadblocks, we're both outta luck. Feel free to comment below and tell me what you think helps, because I've got no tricks. In my experience about the only thing that works with this sort of thing is setting aside some time and exerting a force of will to just power through it. Start doing the work, and just keep doing it until it gets better. Until it comes back to you. Because it will, and you know right up front that you're going to feel fulfilled when it does. For now, it's just gonna be harder than you remember.
Sucks though. I'm right there with you.
Anywho, my comic is going to start updating again at some point. The site has already had a facelift, it's now easier to read and browse the comic than before. There's additional customization and sundry improvements coming, but that timeline is loose at the moment. I'm setting web development goals now, if that tells you anything about how well the art is going.
Ugh. I guess I'd better get back to work.
Comments
Post a Comment