It’s now officially a week until I leave the barbecue joint, and I already have an agenda in mind during the one or two weeks I’ll have off (I’ll still trawl for work, but it’s gonna be great to have some uninterrupted time to do fuck all).
First up, I can finally spend the proper time and divest my apartment of the mountains of extraneous crap that’s kept it a crowded, cramped repository of geekery and junk, and hopefully make some cash out if it by selling the stuff that I really don’t need to hang onto. I know I’ve said it before, but now I can really focus all my energy on it. I feel one’s environment tends to reflect the individual’s psychological state, so it’s time to clean things up and be able move about the place.
While I haven’t let my creative chops languish during my time at the barbecue joint, I have felt a certain void in my efforts at self-expression and I’m ready to sit down at the drawing board again (another reason for cleaning out the Vault!). I’ve had several stories and comics in development and I want to devote time to properly fleshing them out.
I’m going to get out of my apartment a lot more, open up again and embrace the outside world. The restaurant/bar biz tends to be painfully insular, what with the crazy hours, seeing the same regulars and locals every single day (and believe me, in some cases familiarity really does breed contempt) and the incestuous friendships/naughty encounters with others in the food service work force. Don’t get me wrong, illicit fun is always welcome, but it’s still firmly placed within the restaurant circles, and that got old for me really quick.
Once my schedule starts to jibe with the rest of the waking world once more, I intend to chase women with a new focus, and if I don’t necessarily get down to the skin-to-skin as soon as I’d like, I’ll hang out with my female friends and bathe in their indomitable “womanness,” absorbing all of that estrogenic positivity that I have sorely missed for the better part of the past two years.
And as for other social matters, I’m going to solidly reconnect with my family of friends, and spend as much time getting to know my sister as possible. It’s been a real kick in my ass to remember that I’m cared about by people other than the cast of characters at the barbecue joint…
I plan to attend the San Diego Comicon this summer, a massive festival of outright geekery that is not cheap by any means, but I’ve intended to go for the past ten years, and now it’s actually feasible. And after that I intend to haul my beige ass across the pond once more to England and visit an assortment of my favorite knuckleheads, gorge on fattening British food — which is in no way the culinary atrocity you’ve been lead to believe it is, especially the glory of sausage rolls — fill in some of the missing spots in my 2000 A.D. collection (particularly the issues featuring Grant Morrison and Steve Parkhouse’s screamingly-hilarious BIG DAVE), and spend time with the Jewish Warrior Princess. Good times all ‘round!
Seriously, I feel very good about my decision to move on, and my prediction that ’07 will be the year when I finally get it all together looks like it’s on its way to becoming an in the flesh reality.
2 comments:
Congratulations on making the Big Decision -- glad to hear that you're taking this as an opportunity to reconnect with friends and family AND your own work (too few people focus on their own hustle enough to really make it work).
Once you're free, let's grab a cheap dinner or beer or something -- doesn't even have to be barbecue!
I look forward to seeing you free of the myopic inbred Q-land confines! Good luck to you my dearest! See you when I return to NY, "on the outside", as they say in the joint.
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