2024-W41 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• I think I’m on the mend from what happened three weeks ago. I read somewhere recently that the lag time for events can be two weeks. That is, what we experience today will linger and affect us for fourteen days. What I ended up doing after that massive self-journaling last week until this past Thursday, from September 30th - October 10th (8,389 words), was to start pivoting and making adjustments at work. Creating clearer boundaries and hard stops, and more importantly, changing my attitude about this whole endeavor. I ended up with ten rules. The first four rules are about my public behavior and persona (which includes private communities, social media, and strangers). These will now all be implemented due to the January Incident. Rules 5,6, and 8 are about the hard stops and boundaries I need to set up again. I recently passed my six month anniversary at the new job. It will always be chaotic as it’s an agency, but I think I need to take back some of my own time back. Rules 7,9, and 10 are about the craft. 9 was more of an action item. 7 and 10 will be new habits. I’ve adjusted my habitica account, I’ve bought an index card filing system to create an analogue zettelkasten, and I still need to purchase a large poster stickie to memorialize the ten rules.
• There’s a good chance BECKY is bust for now. It might slide into the backlog. I think I need to remove more pressure and create an environment for play. I’ve also completely readjusted the prjs page. Anything that was half-baked, barely-started, ill-conceived from the MRK SSC sessions earlier this year are now scrapped. Until I have a clear THB, it’s just not making it to “the board”. This was part of the new initiative after creating the ten rules.
• Had my monthly group session with Sandra Tayler’s “Structuring Life for Supporting Creativity”. Heard two things I really needed to hear that was creating a lot of uncertainty, self-doubt, and insecurity. A large part of it was feeling guilty, or less-than about taking up space from a privileged position. Another was that wanting is an illogical emotion.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹

This is a the reduced project board. It has zero updates, and it may change again. I’m also getting rid of the time-tracking. I need to keep adjusting, readjusting, and tweaking. Any tool that doesn’t serve me can be dropped. There is no forced adherenece to anything here.

Four Thousand Weeks

Late night conversation with my wife about the massive self-journaling stuff.

Book Reading

• STILL NO NOVEL READING
• I caved and get DCUI on Friday night and started reading Geoff John’s Green Lantern (2005) run. OMG. It actually makes sense. I can actually follow the story. It’s not a bunch of insider deep cuts, deep lore that leaves you lost, characters that have significant meaning but aren’t explained at all. This is all in reaction to the Green Lantern Civil Corp Special (2024) I pulled this past Wednesday. I was just. so. fucking. lost. the. entire. time. What is going on? Who’s doing what now? It wasn’t until I read it a second time that I was like… OK, there are three subplots here and you’re hopping from one to another and you’re not really explaining why. The next day, I read Ultimate Spider-Man #4 again… and I noticed something. Hickman and Checchetto will do an establishing shot, or a close-up shot of an object, in order to show you that the SCENE HAS CHANGED. What’s more – Checchetto will ALSO use a DIFFERENT COLOR PALETTE. And as I read the Green Lantern Civil Corp Special (2024) a second time, I was like… NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING. Furthermore, the silouette composition of the team is average build white dude, average build white dude, average build white dude, average build black guy, and Kilowog. That is VERY VERY CONFUSING. ON TOP OF THAT, they all have the same powers. They don’t have key identifiers. And I thought about the original X-Men: goggles, ice, wings, hairy big dude, redhead, wheelchair… and you IMMEDIATELY can tell them apart even though five of them are wearing yellow costumes. Green Lantern and the Corp, in short, is NOT EASY to get into, and I can see why this franchise has suffered from getting mass appeal. I mean, also, they keep pushing the holy trinity, but also, also, nobody wants to read about space cops post BLM (Defund the Lanterns). But even then, even then… omg, Guy Gardner is so problematic. Hal Jordan is a boring straitlaced goody two-shoes, who makes bad jokes. They’re all just so BORING. They’re polished good guys. AND YET AND YET… I can’t stop reading Green Lantern, and despite dropping the 2024 series, I’m tempted to pick it back up. I don’t know why. Is it because I’m rooting for the underdog? The superhero at DC that doesn’t get as much love as the Trinity? Or is it because I know nothing about this part of the DCU and my natural hunger, curiosity, and inclination to the less-known is kicking in here? I don’t know. But I will read all of Geoff John’s run and I will read the 2005 Corps run as well.
• Started Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) on Sunday. Read all of it… and I was like… well, fuck. Now I have to catch up. And so on Wednesday, I bought issues 7-9. Dammit. Why is this working for me? It’s not just the new spin. It’s the fact that it is DOMESTIC DRAMA. It’s about Peter and MJ in a wholesome marriage with a family. It’s about Ben and JJ as buddies. It’s an alternate universe where Harry and Peter are friends. And it’s not just conflict, conflict, conflict… but Peter getting a normal life… and I don’t know why – given that I’ve hated every Spider-Man comic I’ve read this year so far (prolly because I don’t care for Venom, nor Carnage, nor Symbiote stuff) – but THIS JUST WORKS FOR ME.
• Started Jack Kirby’s New Gods (1971). It’s fun! In the, oh, ain’t that quaint way, sure, but also it is so WILDLY IMAGINATIVE and out there.
• This week’s pulls: Poison Ivy – something else I need to catch up on, because G. Willow Wilson is amazing. X-Force, Phoenix, and Exceptional X-Men were all wonderful and waiting for a second read at the office. Seance DID NOT work for me. It was just an abrupt change in pace and the art was not polished. You could argue that the scratching and rough lines is stylistic, but after reading Hyde Street last week for horror, this just didn’t work for me. Sorry. And finally Absolute Batman, the event of the year. Sold out two printings. Third one coming in late November. So much hype that even I fell for it and paid an extra $2 for a foil cover version by Jim Lee. Dammit. First impressions? It’s good. I like it. But I wont’s say more until I do a second read.
• But the stand out for me this past week has got to be Paknadel’s Sentinels. Bad guy mercenaries. I like the military jargon. I like the cybernetic implants, the nanotech, the body horror of The Graft (still get goosebumps thinking about it). I like the corporate boardroom jockeying between Trask and members. I like Ellis and her hatred. I like Trask’s flawed story about hunting wolves between two villages. This just clicked for me in all the ways. And it’s also exactly why I think this will not reach mass appeal. Not only is it about cops, it’s about cops doing bad things for bad people… who, have a HISTORY OF COMMITTING GENOCIDE AGAINST MUTATNS. If Green Lantern is second tier at DC… what tier do Sentinels rank at Marvel? But that is exactly why I like it. It’s a story about the bad guys. And very few people wants to read this stuff, especially in their comics, which leads me to my final insight this week…
• AGENCY. The more I read comics again and the more I’m exposed to the SFF community and the people who populate it, the more I grow older and bump up against walls that I didn’t before (or perhaps as a younger person, had the delusion I could overcome any and all of it)… the more I realize how so much fiction is about watching HEROES WITH AGENCY. That’s really what it is. Life is difficult. Most people on the planet have very little to no agency in their lives. The majority of people are minorities in fact, disabled, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited. The few who control the world are, well, few. So when we escape into stories, what are we doing, we are, for a moment, self-inserting into heroes who DO HAVE AGENCY and can affect change, and can actually beat the bad guys and win, and restore order. My kids somehow got me to watch the entirety of the first season of Parkour Civilization (2023) last night. Three episodes in, I realized… OMFG, I am watching a lit-RPG here. That’s what this is. The belief that mentors will give you clues and gifts, the belief that if you practice hard enough, you’ll keep levelling up. The belief that one person can affect change and make a difference. This is what we sell the audience. This is what the audience wants. This is what we all want. Because most of us… don’t have that much agency. So much of our lives is defined by the environment, family, and starter packs we’re born into. Some get better skills and natural abilities. Some get screwed. Some are born white, wealthy, and male with good health and good looks.

Comic Book Issues Tracking

Archive of all EOW reports here