January 1, 2009:

Welcome to the new Year,

I had hoped to have the first chapter of the Character Design Handbook, the one concerning the intial Attributes, basic Abilities, Personality Traits, and such crap for the typical Medieval-Fantasy Character (all the shit binding on all Characters -- nothing to do with the Classes or Professions/Occupations and such) would have been completed by the end of December. That didn't happen. Every single weekend during the last month and a half left me thinking that it would be the weekend I I'd finish-up that Chapter. . I would say that it is about 90% done. I just need to tidy up a bit of the expressions (i.e. edit for clarity) and complete the section on NPCs (that'd take a bit more time, but I'm not overly concerned with it at the moment). However, I'd alwasy seem to find more problems and work that needed to be addressed. Nothing more annoying than to spend 8-12 hours editing... and onlly cover 3 or 4 pages in total. I OFFICIALLY HATE TO EDIT!

At any rate, the official release date of this work is likely to ascend toaround thespring of 2010 sometime. It is simply taking longer than I'd imagine. I did a bit of figuring and came to the conclusion (by wild-ass guesswork) that I'm spending about 3 hours per page, editing-time. I'm managing an average of 40 hours a week (mostly concentrated in the weekends) working on it (that isn't counting the time spent on school or other such nonsens). I guessing around another 1800 hours of editing time needs be completed for it to be at the "critical review" stage of development. At that rate, It'll take about another year of careful editing to finish up the first book. Then I'll become rich and famous and won't have to enduremy meaningful enslav...er, employment anymore. Right?

Currently, I'm suffering a bit of Writer's-Block and was unable to do much work the last couple weeks of December. Quite fustrating . Oh well, more time to focus on Web-sites, Housework (the dishes were really beginning to pile-up in the sink), and the every looming school work. It's interesting though; once I quit working, I could literally feel the creativity returning -- kinda like filling up on imaginative steam! Quite a slow process of accumulation; the simplest things will suddenly inspire all manner of thoughts. However, I started to go back to work too soon and could really sense the creativity and imagination slipping away.. It was all like trying to start a car on a cold morning; it just didn't want to get started anymore. So, I need to go fallow for a couple of weeks and let the creativity build up some more. That seems to be the routine. Two weeks or so of idleness followed by at least 2-3 months of intense labor.

I've been itching to do some actual drawing/illustrating lately. But the employment-job curently prohibits it. I wake up with a sense of being body-slammed onto my head. I get these mild, but annoying, headaches arising from the lack of quality sleep. I seem to get quantity, but it doesn't grant recouperation from the sleep-debt. Graveyard really kills the creativity and desire to do any real work. I tried to do a bit of drawing the other day, but the yawning became an impossible obstacle, and the head-ache wouldn't subside as it usually does (it seems to go away about an hour before I gots to go to work, go figure!). So I gave up, knowing full well that the effort would only produce scribbling-shit work!

Speaking of school work, I've been up-graded to an extra class this coming quarter (january-february); it had something to do with my Academic performance -- I have no fucking clue what they were talking about!). Anyways, I get an extra class (for a total of two) this coming quarter so as to propel me to my inevitable graduation in the Graphic Design/Digital Illustration field (yes, i Just made up that job title). Looking forward to it.

To make use of the down time, I've been hitting the books on Ilustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver pretty heavy the last couple of days, supplemented by heavy doses of the Help-files., I'm now completely confused; but, I have some greater idea of what I'm doing. No more random button-pushing for me... Been itching to get goind with Firworks/Flash. Of course. I just need more time and don't have it.