No I am not dead! I'm just busy. :P

I was very surprised this weekend, when someone whom I'd have never thought read my page, asked me when was I EVER going to post something new? So here I am back at the keyboard again.

As most if not all of you know by now, I'm gonna be a Papa! This is part of the reason why there have been no posts in months. You see, when we first found out that my beautiful wife had conceived a child I was told by said beautiful wife that if I told anyone that she was pregnant before she was ready to release the news that I just might not live to see the little one be born!

I agreed (mostly to save my precious neck) to not post anything on my blog and she put down the knife. But a day or two later when I was going to post an update here, I realized that my upcoming fatherhood was all I could think about! So that part of the reason I haven't updated in a while.

The other reason is my wife's blog. Since almost everyone that reads my blog, gets here from my wife's blog, there's nothing going on in my life that she hasn't already posted about. Plus, Stacey does such a wonderful job posting pics with her updates that when I go an look at my blog, I'm disappointed. Mine just seems so boring to me in comparison to hers.

It's not just that she has pictures on her blog either, Stacey has a great talent for photography, that she seems to be able to make the most mundane subject matter seem interesting. While I'm a decent artist with paper and pencil, photography is just not my forte.

It was a very short trip from these two things to just forgetting about my fledgling blog entirely. Soon we began purchasing things for the baby and planning to turn the old computer room into a nursery. That, coupled with being moved back to day shift at work, and an entirely different department than where I had worked for five years to boot! I just let the blog simply drift into limbo.

However, I vow to try and post at least something once a week if not more from now on. So now all my faithful readers, you won't be left in the dark. (All three of you.) :P

The Machinist

I read about this movie on the internet tonight and it slightly reminded me of myself. Christian Bale plays a CNC lathe operator with insomnia who fears that he may be going crazy.

Working midnights is really starting to wear me down. It's been three weeks or so and I'm a wreck. When I get home from work I can't go to sleep. My body thinks "hey it's daytime we're not supposed to be in bed!" Most days I can't drift off untill ten o'clock or so.

Then, once I get to sleep I simply cannot wake up! If left undisturbed by Stacey or the telephone I'll sleep ten or eleven hours untill it's time to get up and go to work again. Even if I've had plenty of sleep it's all I can do to drag myself out of bed.


I'm ALWAYS tired now. It's beginning to be that I am almost always in a bad mood and grouchy. The other night I went off on my wife for several minutes before I realized what I was doing and had to apologize. And it may sound silly but I find myself hating our dog Frankie. I simply do not have the patience to put up with him.



I'd say this is about how I feel right now.

I can't say anything to my supervisor at work about this however, because working midnights is the only thing keeping me from being laid off. As most of you who read my blog already know, it's an extremely hard time to be looking for a job in Michigan these days. There's nothing out there unless you want to work for minimum wage.

So I'm stuck. I feel like I'm living life in slow motion but at the same time it seems like time is just flying by. Probably because I'm sleeping all the time I guess. I'm assuming that it will get better in time as my body becomes more accustomed to it's new sleeping schedule. I HOPE it does anyway.

Stacey has been such a sweetheart through all of this. She's been very forgiving of my moodiness and accepts my apologies so gracefully. She keeps telling me to not worry about it when I sleep all day and spend hardly any time with her. I thank God for giving me such a patient and loving wife. But the problem is that I miss the time with her also.

I'm so glad to see her when she gets home from work but I'm so sleepy that I'm lucky if I get an hour with her before dozing off.

So, anyway thanks for "listening" to me rant about my problems. Those of you that are believers just please keep us in prayer and I'll owe you guys one.

The Graveyard Shift

So now I'm working midnights. For the next month I'm to split my duties between inspecting parts and supervising 4 guys running production.

It's a very slow shift. The nights seem to drag on forever sometimes and I feel guilty when I'm just standing around with nothing to do. I've been using the time to work on my book, (Page three is penciled and needs inking while here at work I've begun the rough sketches for page 4.) but I feel like I'm stealing from the company.

I mentioned this to my boss and he just blew it off saying that's how nightshift is, so I guess it's ok.

I find it amusing however to be supervising instead of supervised. I thank God that I'm simply back to work no matter what I'm doing.

Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?

I haven't written much about my return to work yet so I thought now would be a good time.

I returned to work on January 2, thinking that everything was ok. Boy was I wrong. I hadn't been at work for an hour yet when I found out that there had been arguments about whether to call me back or not. Bob my supervisor fighting for my return was no surprise to me really, we've worked together for five years now and he's taught me everything I know.

But a big surprise to me was that a certain supervisor that I've always had trouble with was also with Bob in the fight to return me to work. I've written about him before here somewhere, John.

Now if you had asked me who I would have thought would fight to keep me OUT of the shop I would have told you that he would have been at the forefront. He's always given me the impression that he didn't like me as a person or my abilities as an inspector. We have butted heads at many times in the past and nobody has ever driven me to the brink of loosing self-control like he has.

However, he argued FOR me when the debate began about whether to return me to work or not. He even insisted he didn't want one of the other inspectors to return he wanted ME specifically because he trusts me to do the work properly.

Wow! What a surprise eh?


But that's not all. A supervisor that I don't even work for was one of the most vehement opponents to my return. He's the IT manager here at our company and since I work on the factory floor I've had very little interaction with the man. His name is Mike.

I've no idea what he'd have against me returning unless it has to do with saving money somehow. I am one of the highest paid employees on the production floor, though that is not saying much here, they pay very little.

Also as far as I know my work performance has always been satisfactory to everyone here besides John's criticizms. So I don't know.

Either way I'm back to work. For the first two weeks it's been work as usual here, however at a much slower pace. There is little work and I'm told that often nowadays we only work four days a week.

Now the last and wierdest thing.


Last week my supervisor Bob came to me and said that because work is so slow I am in danger of being laid off again. He asked if I would be willing to step down from inspecting parts to running a machine making them. I said that I would although I didn't like it. (It's better than being laid off again!) He said that it would only be temporary and that as soon as things picked up again I'd return to my inspection position. He told me to expect to begin running a machine somewhere around the end of the month.

Then, the next day, Bob comes to me again and tells me that the supervisor on 3rd shift is taking an unexpected leave of absence. He then asked me if I'd be interested in filling this position for the month that the regular supervisor will be away.

(To be continued...)

My first post of the new year!

First off I hope that everyone had a great holiday season. As any of you who read my wife's blog already know, we went to Ohio and West Virginia for the holidays. It was lots of fun.

A lot has been going on and that's part of the reason I haven't posted. I got so busy that I just haven't spent much time on the computer lately.

First, I'm back to work! I returned to work on January 3rd. This was a great relief for Stacey and I as they were about to cancel our health insurance because I wasn't working. However, the situation at work is still sort of in limbo right now. Work is still slow and the other day I was asked would I be willing to run a machine instead of be an inspector if they kept my pay rate the same.

I told them that I was, but that I didn't like it because it feels like a step down from my current position as a Quality Inspector. Then, two day's ago, I was also asked would I be willing to fill in for the supervisor on the midnight shift for a month in February. Wierd huh? First asked to do a demoted position, immediately after offered a temporary promotion! Again I said yes, I would do it and now it's in God's hands. For the moment I'm still working as and inspector and that's just fine with me. Fortunately I like my job.

Page three of my book is almost complete and I'm beginning to ink it now. With the return to work I find it more difficult to work on my book. Now I'm so tired after work that I'm lucky to spend an hour and a half a day on it.

Finally today is my first day not SMOKING! I'm trying these new nicotine lozenges that a friend reccomended and so far they seem to be helping. The only problem is that I'm finding it hard to focus a little bit. Please keep me in prayer as I struggle to break free from this stronghold in my life.

Page 2 complete at last, or giving birth.

I think that I've stated before that I hadn't done any finished artwork in some time. I didn't know how out of practice I had become! I can remember a time when I could have done a page like this in a day or two. A day being about eight actual hours of work mind you.

But I am glad to report that page two is now complete. It's been a long time since I've been pleased with ANY of my artwork but there are elements of this page that actually please me. I'm not too please with the figure looking up at the sky or how flat the background in that panel is either. But the cross-hatching in the last panel is somewhat like I wanted it to turn out as well as the leaves of the trees closer to the foreground. Overall I think that a true professional working for a comic book company would be ashamed to show this page to his editor. But for me it's the best that I can do and I'm pleased with it.

Before any of you think I'm being too hard on myself please keep in mind that I read a LOT of comic books, and have been doing so almost all of my life. I'm only trying to keep an honest perspective on things.

I know that this may sound strange to some but I hope that even if I ever do become a professional penciler for comics someday, I hope that I can still look at my work and see what I got wrong as well as what I'm proud of. I think that it's good for me and will help to keep me humble. I've met a few really good artists over the years, some of them professionals themselves, and some of them seemed to me to be arrogant because of how well they could preform their craft. I don't ever want to be like that.

I was talking to my pastor on the telephone yesterday and he asked me if I enjoyed drawing. That was a difficult question to answer, there's no simple answer.

On one hand I love it. The feel of the pencil in my hands. Watching the ideas in my head take shape for others to see. The comfort of being familiar with the tools of my craft, sometimes they feel like old friends. And finally the joy of completing the work and holding it in my hands to look at and show to others.

On the other hand, I loathe it. The difficulty of making myself sit still for hours on end. The utter frustration of knowing what I want to draw but not knowing quite how it's done sometimes. The tedium of first penciling all of the small details I want, and then the anxiety of tracing over them with permanent ink.

I tried to express some of this to my pastor, Chris, and he told me that it was the same for him sometimes when he's preparing a sermon. He called it the process of "giving birth", a term I hadn't heard applied to a labor of love in quite some time. And it struck a resonant chord within me. That feeling of satisfaction that you get when you hear someone articulate something that you've never been able to put into words before.

Yes, that's exactly how I would describe drawing for me.

Giving birth.

So anyway, now that I'm done waxing philosophical, here's my new baby, Page 2. I hope you like it, but either way I'd love to read your comments.


Oh and again, those of you that pray, please do so for me. You see tomorrow, I start having my first labor pains for page 3. {:P

Back To The Old Drawing Board

Sabbath

"Do you believe in God, Brandon?"

This is the opening line to my Christian comic book. I've had the inspiration for this story for about ten years now. I've figured out most of the plot points and have them outlined in my head. As of late I've begun to write out this outline in some of my free time and send it to my friend Abel Ramirez to review.

Little did I know that by beginning to write these things out would inspire me to start drawing again for the first time in about a year! I'm a horrible procrastinator as the infrequency of my posts on this blog should attest. I haven't really completed any finished artwork to talk about since I was wed in 2006. Until now.

This is the first page of my comic and I started doing the rough pencils for page 2 last night. I'm excited and at the same time apprehensive at the same time.

This book idea has been something close to my heart for over ten years now, and every time I try to start working on it I only get a few pieces done and then run out of steam. You could say that these past failures have made me loose faith in myself to the point now that I don't really think I'll ever finish it.

I've seen many Christian comic books over the years, ranging from really good to awful. And every time I see them I feel like maybe God is calling me to make one for Him. I just don't know if it's really Him or just my own flesh telling me what I want to hear.

I guess eventually I'll find out eh? As of right now I'm once again working on the idea, and if any of you reading this are believers I ask you to pray for me that for once in my life I could actually finish the project. And that God would guide me in doing so, I want this story and artwork to be both entertaining and glorifying to Him. Even if it never sees publication I'd love to at least say that I wrote and drew this story, at least for my own satisfaction.

When, If, I finish the next page I'll post it for you. Maybe with a little more information about the specifics of my story. Please feel free to leave your comments on the art, or the idea of a Christian comic book in general.