The Comic Book Journey Part 3: Dealing With Our First Challenge
Time zones suck. Welcome to my rant
It’s 7:35am on a Friday. We were supposed to be meeting at 7:30 and I’m just waking up now. My bad.
No, I’m not late for a work meeting or a doctor’s appointment. I’m supposed to be discussing a comic book character that only exists in our imagination.
Yeah I know that’s something that can be delayed, but hey we’re trying to create here!
So after weeks of exciting discussions, WhatsApp messages, phone calls and actually getting some honest to god work done on our comic book universe, we just hit a brick wall. A Hulk-sized wall, if you will.
It’s not just that me and Bentzy (my co-conspirator in the Surgeverse) are separated by “a” time zone, we’re separated by eight. And if time itself wasn’t enough of an issue, I’m now going back into an office every day and commuting and I’m exhausted. #adulting
I know this all sounds a bit whiny and yes I know this is a first world problem, but you know what? Tough. This series is entitled “Comic Book Journey”. It’s not “Comic Book Walk in the Park”, it’s a journey and things like that have ups and downs.
I’ll tell you why the time zone issue is really becoming a problem, though. It’s because now that I’m knee-deep in the aforementioned #adulting, it’s really difficult to dedicate significant time to a hobby. Especially one that’s a little childish/immature/nerdy/unnecessary/etc. like creating a comic book. There are just so many reasons to push it off. Things like family time, sleep, our jobs, household duties and on and on.
Not only that, and I won’t speak for Bentzy here, but I’m not exactly the best self-starter on the planet. It took me years to be able to actually get some actual work done when I’m working from home and starting my own entrepreneurial efforts haven’t always panned out.
I’m constantly trying to find motivation to complete projects and excel at work, and even for an endeavour that’s as interesting and exciting to me as CREATING A COMIC BOOK UNIVERSE (I mean, how cool does that sound??) it’s not that easy.
So that’s the problem. There aren’t enough hours in the day and even fewer where two people who are eight hours apart can actually connect. So, what’s the solution?
I spend a lot of time on Instagram. I save a lot of posts into distinctive folders in my “Saved” section when I come across things that I like, want to make sure I remember or just want to save for later. One of those folders is called “Motivation”. It’s for quotes mostly but also for general badassery that I like to use as motivation when the need arises.
One of the most recent things I’ve saved in that folder was an incredible quote that I’ve repeated to myself and my wife multiple times seen I first came across it.
You need three hobbies:
One to keep you creative
One to keep you in shape
One to make you money
I like my job, I really enjoy sports and going to the gym and trust me I have tons of creative interests. Like, TONS. But I never really thought about taking a hobby and using it to cultivate my creativity.
I really took this to heart. You wouldn’t be reading this right now if it wasn’t for that Instagram post. Sure it would be fun to talk about our created superhero universe every once in a while or send each other some page from a comic book saying something like “hey wouldn’t it be awesome if Surge did this?”, but that’s not enough. That’s like sending someone gym memes and expecting to get stronger.
So I took up the challenge of writing this publication on an ongoing basis. The challenge isn’t documenting our path to creating our book, nor is it actually writing these posts. The challenge is to tell people about this publication, creating an Instagram account for it and not giving up on it once it’s already out there in the world.
I have no doubt that Bentzy and I will face a lot more challenges and issues on this journey but it’s the way that we approach them as opposed to trying to avoid them that will help us succeed.
When we started talking seriously about creating the Surgeverse and I first created this publication, I thought the goal was to publish a comic book. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still what we’re aiming for, but I’ve come to realize the goal is actually to develop and nourish a hobby that will keep creative for the foreseeable future.
I think if I keep that as the real goal, it’ll help push things along where we do actually achieve that initial goal of publication. And you know what the best part is? Like I said before, this is all a hobby. No one is pressuring us to hand it in or provide progress reports. Unless of course the readership for this publication skyrockets (please?), no one is holding us accountable for our work. That’s why focusing on maintaining a creativity hobby is actually the focus for me.
A lifetime full of creativity and effort surrounding comic books that’s actually good for me and my emotional well-being? Where do I sign?
