Feeling Old

Stacey thinks it's hilarious, but lately I'm feeling old. Yes, I know, I'm only 32 years old, but now with a baby on the way, I feel like my life is over.

What I mean is this, now that I'm going to be a father, I have to be more focused on his life and future dreams than my own. The best, most noble use of my energy will be to focus on improving Josiah's quality of life. To me, it's very important that he have a Father who gives him his full attention whenever possible. I feel that there will be little to no time to pursue my own dreams.

I fear that I've wasted my life up until now. Ever since I've been a child I've loved to draw, and I always took it for granted that someday I would eventually succeed in making a career out of it. But the last several years life has become so busy and distracting for me that I've allowed drawing to fall by the wayside. I always intend to set some time aside to sketch but when that time comes I'm too tired (Or maybe lazy is a more honest word.)

Now, Josiah will be coming into our lives and I want to give him all the love and attention that I can. I want to carry as much weight in caring for him as I possibly can. I don't want Stacey to feel like she's being left to do it all on her own.

I know that I've never seen him or held him yet but I already love Josiah so much that I can't put it into words. I can hardly wait to hold him for the first time. I find myself standing around at work sometimes just wondering what color his eyes will be and grinning like a fool.

I want to give him the world and the very best of myself. And because of that I feel like there will never be any time for my own personal interests or pursuits. And that makes me feel old.

Does this make me a bad person? Does it mean that as far as my own aspirations in life go that I'm a failure? These are the things that I'm struggling with, even as my pulse races at the thought of seeing my baby boy.

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