The Anaether

I’m telling myself I’ll do better next time with the background and the perspective. And every other mistake that I’m just too tired now to bother with.

I’ve got some commission work this week so I’m a bit slow on producing new Anaether-related work at the moment. I’ll likely pick back up next week on comic pages.

I’ve been putting in a bit of work every week on hashing out the story more. I might have said before, but I need to re-thumbnail Act I. I don’t even know if it’d be possible to keep it under 100 pages. Maybe I’d try for up to 200? It’d still be way less than my ridiculous original 900ish pages that I have for Act I. There’s a bunch of fluff I can cut.

I feel like I don’t care about anything else in my life. It’s truly nice to hear that more people are getting vaccinated and the Covid death rates are dipping, but mostly I feel that on others’ behalf. Though it really is awful and infuriating that so many have died, continue to die and suffer from this pandemic, I have felt so much more peaceful being able to just stay home and focus on my work. What I look forward to this year is finishing the prototype chapter. Or at least, I really hope that I finish it by the end of this year.

If we actually do reach herd immunity this summer and my bf and I get vaccinated, I suppose we would end up attending the 2 weddings we got invited to this year. I really feel like if I didn’t have this project though, I’d look forward to those weddings a lot more. I get a lot of social anxiety, but once I get into the social event, it’s nice.

I wish that I could just hole up and work on this project completely undisturbed for like a year or two. What I should really learn is how to focus. I’m a pretty irritable person, and I allow things to get in the way when they really shouldn’t.

I’m generally annoyed at the pressure I receive to have kids. Not that the pressure is that bad, but some people always mention it whenever they talk to me. I don’t have any kids at the moment, but I plan to have them eventually. I can imagine myself enjoying the company of my own children, I’m just pretty irritated that probably the people who would apply that kind of pressure think that my life is that fucking boring, like the only way to spice it up is to have kids. Sure, I paint a lot of pieces with Vas and Syf cuddling, but it’s entirely different when you’re actually doing that parenting in real life. It’s a goddamn full-time job if you want to do it right and do it well. One of the things that annoys the shit out of me most of all is that the people pressuring me aren’t the ones who would be primarily taking care of my kids. It’d be me doing the hard shit of sacrificing my time and energy, and chaining myself to them.

I’m not trying to knock people who have kids, people who want to have kids, nor people who think kids are super awesome and make their lives that much more meaningful for them. That’s really great, seriously. I’m sure whenever I have kids, I’ll feel great too. But I’m having the time of my life, and I feel like people don’t realize how much I’m enjoying my day-to-day routine of making good money off of my art skills and working on my dream project. Being able to sleep in, not worry about childcare costs… like, fucking seriously. I know that the freedom I have right now is going to go away once I have a kid. I’ll be responsible for them full time for at least 18 years. I hate that people want me to take up a 24/7 long-term commitment when they wouldn’t be the ones making the magnitude of compromise that I’d be making.

I don’t think this should bother me this much, but it really does. I think another part of it is that it’s just another thing that society would expect of me. But seriously, FUCK society. Though I’ve come from so much more privilege, my generation still has had to deal with stagnant wages with way, way higher expenses for everything essential compared to our parents’ generation. The most expensive tuition I heard my dad mention was $8000/year. My tuition was like $50,000/year and now many schools are doing $70,000/year. When I was 7 years old, I remember doctor visits’ co-pay was $5. Last time I went a few years ago, it was $20. My dad recently paid $40 copay. You fucking think we can just have kids when our parents did?! Jesus fucking Christ. What my parents’ generation probably experienced in their 20s, I get to have in my 30s. Sorry, not sorry, but I just want to say fuck you. Most of us have had to put off our life’s milestones, like getting a car, a house, marriage, and yes having kids. So yeah. Sorry my life only started getting interesting, fun and debt-free in my 30s.

The only child I’m interested in bothering with is my brain-child right now, and I’d like to give it at least 5 years of as much attention as I can manage without having an actual kid. I’ve been wanting to get away from doing what’s been expected of me, and every day now in recent years I’ve been able to do that, and I feel like I’m finally happy.

Anyway. Seeing as how I love to procrastinate on higher priority obligations, I’ll likely sneak some work sessions into my next comic page before finishing commissions anyway.