Everything you want is on the other side of fear. That’s an adage that’s been bopping around my head recently. I’m not sure fear is in the way of everything. I often want cookies and fear rarely holds me back from those. But I get the truth of that statement.
One of my biggest fears is time. I never seem to have enough to do all of the things I want. I get caught up in thinking of which thing I want to focus on. Whatever I choose comes at the cost of every other thing and I find myself paralyzed with indecision. What if I choose wrong? Choose nothing or choose something. I will never have time for everything.
I recently heard someone talk about how you can’t make a wrong choice about life. Meaning that you only get to live with the choice you make. You can either have kids or not. You can go to school A or school B. The comparison is only in your head because you can only live the one experience and the other is made up. What if it was better? What if it was worse? It doesn’t exist.
I want to make the most of the time I have. Not making a choice, doing nothing is a waste of time.
YouTube has been on my mind for quite awhile. It’s definitely a place on the internet where kids spend time, unlike say Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter. I love the idea of making videos but OMG it’s a ton of work and time. I should be making comics. Not to mention, what would I even make a video about? And so many other excuses on why I shouldn’t make videos.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Youtube though. It felt like something I should focus on but every time, I would think of all the reasons I shouldn’t. Everything you want is on the other side of fear.
What if I got past my fears? What if I got everything I wanted? I realized if I was that scared of making videos, it was a sign I should be doing it.
So I bit the bullet and made my first one. Is it great? Hahaha! It’s not. But there are things about it I like and that will inform the next one. And the subsequent one will incrementally improve and I’ll figure it out as I go. But the most important thing is that I did go. And I’m one step closer.
Favorite Thing I Drew This Month
I started drawing some Trevor Astra pages. This is the pencils from one of the pages. So not done but it’s been fun actually drawing these characters in a comic instead of just character designs and sketchbook stuff.
Favorite Thing I Didn’t Draw
Family Style and Mexikid both are books from creators I did 3 Question interviews with. And both won an Eisner last month! If you don’t know, the Eisners are the most prestigious award in comics. Kind of the equivalent of the comic book Oscars.
So a huge congratulations to Thien Pham for Best Graphic Memoir. And to Pedro Martin for Best Publication for Kids.
What I’m Reading
Lots of books this month. The bottom row are checkouts from the library. Doing some research for an early reader graphic novel. I asked Sophia to pick me up some Dogman type stuff. I think she made an excellent selection.
The top row are purchases which includes Bethanie Murguia’s just released Wagnificent.
Family Stuff
Sophia went to England for a week to go to a friend’s Wedding. I managed to survive the week of solo parenting. More importantly, the kids survived.
For the 4th of July, we grilled out. Los Angeles is notorious for the epic illegal fireworks displays. So we just went out front and watched the show from the surrounding neighborhoods.
River turned 4 this month. He had a dinosaur themed water party with lots of friends. It was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to not doing it again for another year.
Thanks for reading. See you next time.
-Josh
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