Whistling in the Dark

I have had a journal, built painstakingly and developed carefully and updated faithfully for three years before it went fallow. So I was in the journal craze.

Then I had a blog. You know, a blog. Just like every other blog, really. So I was in the blog craze.

Now I have a web comic. So I'm in the web comic craze.

And that leads us here, to Livejournal. I'm nothing if not sheep, baby.

This is who, what, when, where, why and how of me. This is my life. This is the fakery I use to convince you I'm opening up. This is like a drum beat in the background. This is like a grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat with tomato soup on the side. This is me. This is you. This is about mirrors. This is about pictures.

This is words, and these are mine.

Food is my drug of choice. It always has been. I don't mean that facetiously, either. If I feel bad, I consume. If I want to feel good, I consume. I drown sorrows and joys into a fog of carbohydrates and fat, flooding my body with excess and letting the chemicals and hormones the act of sweet eating produces wash my brain and spinal cord clean, leaving only warmth.

Of course, all drugs are bad for you. And so it is with me, and so I need to cope. And I have any number of things I need to cope with. Cardiomyopathy, gout, sleeplessness (except when I shouldn't), aches, pains, Big and Tall shops, mood swings, clothes budgets, physical looks, a gut that could take out a Peugot....

Some of these things contribute to the habit, and the habit contributes to some of these things. It doesn't matter. Any way you look at it, the drug is drowning me in saturated succulence, driving me to death any day now.

And so we deal with it. I have. Cold turkey.

The methadone I'm taking to kill off the heroin of food is called Medifast, and it comes in plenty of lackluster varieties. There are unchocolate, unvanilla, unmocha and unorange shakes. There are soups -- cream of fake tomato, cream of fake chicken, cream of fake broccoli, and any number of flavored waters. I've got what they laughingly call chili on order. And I shoot up tiny bits to keep me going, while trying to ignore the cravings and the shakes. God it's hard....

The idea is to reach Ketosis, which means the stored fat in my body will release keotones into my system, and they'll fuel my body as the bad effects of the habit slowly fade. Right now, my body isn't sure it knows what's expected of it. I would kill twelve good men and true for a Taco Time Crisp Beef Burrito right now. I have no idea what that in particular has my brain locked, but it does.

It's hard. So very hard. I'll keep you posted on the successes and the weeks, though. Check in on Weigh-in Mondays for more.

I'm new here. You know that. I know that. And I haven't read my friends' Livejournals as much as I should. I know that too. Today, I'm making up for that -- doing some glance-throughs.

And I'm seeing times people I consider friends -- good friends -- were in crisis, and I had no clue.

How do you offer support for trauma months old? How do you recapture a missed opportunity.

Man. So far this is a depressing piece, innit?

This is the first time I'm running on deadline for Unfettered by Talent. Which catches me by surprise -- I could have sworn I'd drawn the denouement to the Teashop strips already. But, sadly, I haven't, and so I'm sketching it now.

Unfettered's a crappy little comic -- no one denies that. But, it still takes time. Time to sketch, to ink, to scan, to clean up, to letter, to upload. Generally I work in spurts -- doing three or four at a time. I like to do a few weeks' worth at a time. Buuuuuut, I'm also coming up on deadline for a Role Playing Game supplement I'm working on, which has most of my creative energies right now (and rightfully so, as they're paying me and Unfettered isn't). So, it's scribble out a strip when I can and type type type the rest of the time.

In early May, I expect to get a bunch of strips done, especially against a trip I'll be taking at the end of May. And, once we get into the summer I should get way ahead. But that's then. This is now.

(Just finished 'dinner.' A 'cream of broccoli' instant soup supplement. Now, I like broccoli quite a lot, but I don't like cream of broccoli soup. I never have. I had no expectation of liking this stuff, but it's what I had here at the office, and that's where I draw. Oddly, it's more tolerable than the real thing -- probably because I couldn't identify much of the original in it.)

The sketching and inking is done! A little drying time, plus a little erasing time, and then we scan, letter and finish. Almost home!

And done! It'll appear sometime after midnight at the Unfettered by Talent site!

Whew! Now, for home, some tea, and some Western Role Playin' Writin'! Yeeeeee-hah!

So, I'm finally heading home, to write and relax.

Naturally, it's started to snow.

New England sucks, sometimes.