thump thump thump skreeech

Paul Klee, Irrung auf Grün (1930)

Hello.

This would be the web-logger's correlative to the orator's nightmare of fidgeting at the podium, squinting into the darkness beyond the stage lights and awkwardly tapping the microphone.

Is this thing on? Is anybody out there? When did I lose control of my life?

Perhaps you've noticed there's been some downtime around here. If so—good for you. Not only are you still pausing to read a blog in the frenetic age of YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram, but you're checking one that hasn't been updated in six months. Your fidelity to a down-and-out scribbler and his moribund media format is a comfort and an assurance in these distracted, inconstant times. Keep watching the horizons for sails, friends.

I let the domain beyondeasy.net expire. Not because I intended to hang it up, but because I'm an idiot who didn't pay the bill on time. Well, I sent Google its fifteen dollars and it looks like things are back to normal around here.

You may remember at the start of 2019 I said I'd be trying to update more. You and I should have both expected half a year of silence to ensue: saying "I'm going to write in my blog more often" on New Year's is more often than not a declaration that you'll be closing the shutters and taking a very long nap, in spite of your intentions. It's like a jinx.

My only excuse for my inactivity around here—except for "I'm busy" and "funny how a day job becomes a job, am I right?"—is that I'm still allotting most of my productive leisure time and creative faculties to a third novel. No matter how many times you enact the process, you're certain to grossly underestimate how long it will take, how crazy it will make you, and how feverishly horrible it will be. But you've heard this all before. Haven't you?

Hello?

This would be me tapping the microphone and wincing as the feedback stabs through the dim auditorium.

Well, let's touch base.

1.) I'm still living in Philadelphia. My roommate now is the lovely and talented Madalyn, whose illustrations and paintings can be gazed at and admired on her Instagram^*. For my own part, I'm taking an indefinite leave from drawing comics. If you've been paying attention to this sort of thing, you probably guessed as much from the January 2017 date stamp on Comics Over Easy's front page.

Here's the issue: I'm probably left-handed, but during my pre-K years I was rigorously taught to grip a pencil in my right hand. This means that my wrist never quite does what my brain wants it to do. My circles look like round squares. I am incapable of drawing a straight line on the first try. When I was drawing more regularly, I assumed that I'd improve with time if I kept at it. I no longer believe that to be the case. It takes me five hours of drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing to put together something that an illustrator like Madalyn can whip up in thirty minutes. Even little people made out of shapes require an inordinate amount of time to make presentable, and I reached a point where I had to accept that my illustration capabilities have plateaued. I'm not going to get much better or faster, and the amount of time it takes to make a single comic that can be read in twenty seconds is more than I can viably commit. I'm gonna keep the comics page up just so it's there, but it's probably good as fossilized.

*Hm. "Her Instagram page?" "Her Instagram feed?" "Her Instagram profile?" Or is it just "her Instagram?" I don't know what the accepted usage is anymore. At any rate, it's funny that you can scarcely point to an illustrator's repository of work without invoking a brand name. Not "her site," "her online portfolio," "her blog." Her Instagram, her Tumblr, her Pinterest. In the future even our limbs and organs will be proprietary.

2.) Earlier in the year a (long) short story of mine called "Diogenes" appeared in the eleventh volume of Dark Alley Press's Ink Stains anthology. Sorry to say it's behind a paywall, but it's only four bucks if you have some means of reading Kindle books. 

3.) Remember when I used to write longform articles about Final Fantasy games? Well, I've been at it again. Though I'd prefer not to discuss how it came to this, I'd be happy to link you to a short novel about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance if that's the sort of thing you get your kicks from. But if you've already played this dreadful game once in your life, you're probably better off not wasting any more time on it.

4.) Speaking of games. Though I seldom play video games these days, I haven't become some kind of fuddy-duddy ascetic who doesn't know how to have fun anymore. I have lots of fun. Why, during a recent visit to the Great Swamp National Park I invented a game that I like to call "Frogger." Play begins when you're out in the wetlands and you hear the distinctive squealing and plipping of amphibians diving into the water to escape the carnivorous ape loping their way. What you do then is approach the pool's edge and stand perfectly still. You win the game if you can trick at least one of the little fellas into believing the coast is clear and peeking its head out above the water line. Standing still for such a long time isn't easy, but the real challenge kicks in when the mosquitoes start perforating your flesh as the sun pounds on the back of your neck and the sweat from your brow seeps into your eyes. But the frogs win if you give up and move on without spotting any of them. In most cases, the instant you bestir yourself you'll hear the yelping and plopping of at least five frogs that emerged without you noticing. Well played, muckdwellers!

Nobody wants to play "Frogger" with me. My friends and family have been citing it as evidence that I'm "getting worse."

5.) Last week my therapist asked me how I was doing. "Fine, I guess," I answered. Then I asked if any of her other patients report ineluctably feeling as though the ground is slowly and silently collapsing beneath everybody's feet, and find themselves vacillating between trusting their senses and panicking or taking a cue from the people around them and continuing about their business as though the world isn't imploding, overheating, spinning out of control, and jerking itself off to death.

She suggested that I've had enough shit happen to me during my adolescent-to-adult life that I'm uncomfortable with things being pretty okay and am unable to convince myself that there's not another shoe waiting to drop. I think she might be gaslighting me.