Do Over!

I'm always in the habit of redoing done things. I wouldn't call myself a perfectionist since those are the sort of people never satisfied because 'perfect' is too subjective to reach. Instead, I'm more of a tweaker, though not of the addiction variety. Although, is it far from an addiction? Probably not. Only less self-harm and no chemical degradation. Caffeine is just a bonus but I've gone without it...

Of course, I think about my current series. How could I not, as it still unfolds and needs so much interweaving as I bring it together? But, though my first series is done, I revisit the idea of 'alternative covers'; not because I intend to change them, but because I like to visualize yet another scene to immortalize in drawing. I see Rienna meeting SeaStar for the first time, a girl terrified she is drowning until she's eye to eye with a mystical being with unfathomable beauty that strikes instant and visceral curiosity. I see Rienna at the literal end of her rope, being pulled towards the playful warrior who is stealing her heart. I see meetings and endings, people and creatures sniffing each other out and villains revealing their vulnerabilities. You want to feel sorry for them but they do such stupid things to compensate for the corners they paint themselves in.

Even if people never take the time to read my words, I want to show the visual set still. I think about picking up drawing again. I've barely touched my drawing tablets in the past few months. I've been working, paying bills, stealing moments to write or craft, but drawing went neglected. I've listened to music and whenever I do, I start to paint in my head pictures I might do or simply let them be enjoyed and be lost in those moments. 

This is the romance I'll have with my passions for the rest of my life. I know there is very little than can sway me from finding those things and trying to bring them to a medium they can be shared in. To take what is made, in some form, and make it again, to realize it as something else. I can see the obscure characters taking spotlights and becoming the stars before they are content to burn low, bathe in the afterglow of their adventures. Still, I see them gathered by fires, telling others, even using different names to disguise that they are talking about themselves.

Yes, there are plenty of new ideas, ideas I haven't released yet but slowly find their way into stories and pictures. There are days when dreams become substance and substance becomes possibility. There are days when I doubt I've done something well, but then I actually pick up what I've done, look at it again, and fall in love once more. Not just experiencing pride for what I've done, but experiencing some things for the first time, things that fell away from my memory and get to be experienced differently.

Once my job at Sports Page is done, there will be a confusing period where I realize just how big the list is. This is where I'll need to refile my priorities before I can get to chipping away at all that was started and is in various stages of being finished. There will be two young girls who reassemble our broken world. There will be a detective in an underwater city, trying to find the mysterious causes of deaths in a city that was designed to be a flawless utopia. There will be an UnQuadrilogy where a fantasy world must find the long buried mystery of Four Gods. There will be a comic about a childhood psychologist and the alien that falls into her life. There are years and struggles ahead, to be filled with frustration and fantasy, but for now, there are things to be done to secure those years for the work needing to be done. Supplies to be stocked, equipment to be bought, days to be worked.

And unlike the march of time, there is no doing-over, so what must be done is to live a life that will leave me with no regrets. I don't worry about an afterlife, but I don't want to stop at any one point in my life and think 'I should've done that.' No, I plan this day and every other for what I can accomplish to never see that day.

That is a life I aspire to fulfill.