State of the me: 2015/2016!

2015 has been the year of the possible dream!

Here's a quick review:

Back in 2013/2014 I was feeling a little blue because I wanted to focus more on creative projects, but I despaired of ever having time. Or, more accurately, I didn't have an idea that inspired me enough to make time for it.

Then, in the Summer of 2014 -- a few days before setting off on vacation -- I had an idea for a story. I worked out a few scenes in my head, and as soon as I boarded the train, I started writing. Then, during our entire three-week visit to Paris (in between all of the shopping, sight-seeing, and friend-visiting), I wrote out the complete outline, and hammered out the script that I wanted to draw as a comic book.

That may not sound like a very fun vacation, but in fact it was pretty awesome. Whenever we go on vacation, all the kids want to do is go to toy stores anyway. This time, while wandering around visiting the parks and museums, I had my little notebook in hand, and was jotting down all of my various ideas. I remember one beautiful day in particular when my mother-in-law took my kids for the day, and I spent the day wandering around Paris -- just me and my little notebook -- ducking into cafés for coffee or beer when it drizzled, constructing the framework of ideas for my story.

(Note: the trip was actually for a Math conference, so most of my time was spent hanging out in Paris with the kids while my husband was doing Math with his colleagues.)

I wanted more than anything else for this story to become a comic book. But the problem is that I wasn't sure my artistic skill level was equal to the task. Just have a look at the illustrations to my novel. Each illustration was typically a full-day's work, and even then they weren't so great. But I sure had fun doing them! I decided to try anyway, as you can see from last year's "state of the me."

Well, another year has passed, and now it is starting to look like the possible dream! As you can see from some earlier posts, I've gotten to the point of being able to draw some fairly decent pages. So I set a goal to have 10 pages done by the end of Christmas break, and I succeeded in drawing 11! At the rate I'm going, I think it is realistic to expect that I will have all 45 pages of the first book done within two years -- at a level of quality that I will be proud of.

This makes me very happy. I love my story, and this is the sort of thing I've always dreamed of doing.

I haven't dropped all of my other life goals -- I have some upgrades planned for my websites, etc. and I'm still swimming on my usual goals -- but for the moment, I'm mostly basking in the pleasure of working on this project.