IT'S MOVING DAY

Geek Speaking of New Things

Looking for Geek Speak? Need the latest in what is happening with Ted and Wuffles? Want to see if I've posted a new strip based (albeit loosely) on my family life? I don't blame you. I'm a fan, too. But it's not here anymore. Oh no. Not here. It moved. In a long overdue upgrade to my comic hosting I am now posting Geek Speak on a fancy new website, on its own domain name. From this day forth you shall find Geek Speak Comics at this link: www.geekspeakcomic.com

I will still post here occasionally, but it will be reserved for posts that are more personal in nature, or when I want to post a gallery of recent sketches. 

I have enjoyed posting on Blogger. This is where I got my start, and in many ways it feels like home, but my needs have long since outgrown the ability of Blogger to meet them. It is a bittersweet thing to change, but it's also an exciting new phase, and a big step. I'm going to leave it there before I rewrite my high school commencement speech. 

Geek Speaking About Anxiety Views

Geek Speak: Definitely NOT a Therapy Dog

Ahhhhh...it feels good to post a comic strip again. You just never get tired of that fresh comic strip smell. Clearly Ted's brother is not making a new friend. Will they be freinemies, or will we enter comic strip thunderdome? Only time will tell. This strip is an example of one that changed considerably from the original script I wrote for it, to what I'm calling the finished strip above (there are things in it I could fix, but it's taken me too long to finish this as it is). The punch at the end was a lot longer, Francis saying "who's a pretty doggie..." is something that occurred to me as I was putting in the dialog and balloons. I think the result is better than my original design. Sometimes things work out that way. 

I will be doing one more of these strips, and then things will be changing. For most of my posts and all of my comic strips after the last one in this series, I'll be moving to a new location on the web. More details soon, but this is a much needed, and long overdue change. 

Page-views, I Has Them

My tens of followers have generated a lot of page views. I'm actually fairly impressed. I post with less regularity than Phil Jackson who posts the usually brilliant and often hilarious Sequential Art. Yet I still seem to get people landing on my page. This makes me happy.

The Anxiety Monster

In the last six months I have been to see doctors more than I have at any time in the last six years. It started back in April, with a feeling of having a racing heartbeat while waiting on a plane to fly home from Austin. While I was sitting there, feeling like my heart was hammering somewhere in the vicinity of my left eye it occurred to me that my phone comes with a health app, and that it might have a way for me to determine just how fast my heart was pounding. Sure enough the Samsung health app has a heart rate tracker, and I was able to measure my beats per minute. While I sat there on the tarmac waiting for my plane to be ready to taxi my beats per minute were coming in at 118. Thanks, Samsung.

I started to freak out. Was this normal? What should my beats per minute be while I'm just sitting doing nothing? Should I be worried? These questions were whirling through my head while I had the dangerous combination of time to kill and access to the Internet via a mobile device. One Google search and I found numerous articles on the ideal resting heart rate for an adult male in his late thirties, and numerous more on tachycardia (fast heart). Now certain there was something terribly wrong (thanks, Google) I checked my heart rate again (thanks again Samsung) and, big shock here, my heart rate had jumped up to over 120 beats per minute. That's roughly where it should be after moderate exercise. Now certain I was dying, it was time for the plane to take off. Mercifully, I was able to settle down enough to sleep for a good chunk of the flight.

When I got home the sense of something wrong didn't leave me. It gnawed at me, and one night sent me down a path that would have me visiting doctors every other week for the better part of four months. After work one night I was sitting with my kids and watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I got that feeling of my heart pounding again, and I used my handy-dandy Samsung App to check my heart rate (...thanks...Samsung). Sure enough it was registering over 100 beats per minute. What's more, I had a tingly numb feeling between my shoulder blades. Certain this meant I was somewhere on the grim reaper's to-do list I kissed my wife, hugged my kids, and made my way to the emergency room. I would spend the next several hours there while they ran blood tests, an EKG, took X-rays and monitored me, all while listening to people who were in genuine crisis, and generally feeling crummy. My heart rate came back down to reasonable territory (80-ish beats per minute) while I was waiting to be seen behind a long queue of people in various states of fucked up.

Since that night in May I have been to see a cardiologist, my primary, a nurse-practitioner who works in my primary's office, my primary again, and am now seeing a physical therapist. I have been prescribed some really exotic drugs for GERD (acid reflux) and had an ultrasound that determined I have some infiltrating fat on my pancreas, but nothing to be alarmed about. Even so, I will occasionally find myself sitting at my desk at work feeling like my heart is pounding against my chest, which I continue to measure with the Samsung health app on my phone (fuck you, Samsung). I'll feel like my breath is coming just a little too short, and get to feeling amped up and distracted for no good reason.

People who know me well, or have known me for a long time, will probably not find this surprising in the least, but I have been forced to confront the idea that I have issues with anxiety. Even as I write this the notion feels fundamentally just so stupid. My job can be stressful, sure, but it's a mundane kind of stress. It's "so-and-so executive is asking pointed questions about something on a report that can be interpreted a certain way if you turn it upside down and squint" kind of stress. I'm not facing armed combatants, pulling people over who might shoot me, or saving lives. If I screw something up at work, children won't starve on the other side of the world. Even so, it gets to me.

When I stopped at some point to think about it, it occurred to me this is not an isolated event. Around the time my daughter was born I remember feeling like I was having chest pain. I went to urgent care to get checked out, then followed up with my primary. An EKG in both cases revealed nothing. Years before that, around my thirtieth birthday, was the same story. I felt like I was having chest pain so I made an appointment to see my doctor. On that occasion, too an EKG failed to turn anything up, but he referred me to a cardiologist just to be safe. They put me on a treadmill and checked out my heart and declared me, in these words, "ready for the marathon. See you again in fifteen years" Years before THAT, long before I had moved out of Greeley to live in Denver, never mind moving to California, I went to urgent care with "chest pain." On that occasion the doctor checked me out, then talked to me about anxiety, and wrote out a prescription for a very mild anti-anxiety medication, and left it up to me to fill it or not.

As you have probably guessed, I didn't fill it. I didn't like the idea of managing my emotional condition through chemistry. I still don't. Now, however, I'm thinking if I had filled that prescription, and taken the extra step of going to therapy, I might have saved myself a world of grief. While I can't think of specific examples from before college, I'm sure there must have been times that the people who cared about me wished they could have talked me back from standing on a figurative ledge. Times I was convinced the world was ending because I didn't get the right grade on a piece of homework, or I was particularly uptight about a test that I was sure would ruin my future, or, as was often the case, I was so tied up in knots over a girl I liked that I didn't act at all out of fear of humiliation.

Now, as I near forty, and I have stress factors in my life that I've never had before, and I have not dealt with the underlying condition, I find myself sometimes sitting at my desk wound up, jumping from one thing to another, terrified of letting anything go without my touching it every day lest I lose my job. In my mind unemployment raises the specter of family protective services coming to take my kids and place them into the nightmarish hellscape that is foster care. I get so amped up, in fact, that I often can't stay at my desk and focus, and I'm forced to get up and go walk until I can get my emotions under control and start to think clearly again.

After months of doctor's visits the only consensus we've arrived at is that I have an issue with anxiety. To let things go as they are is not sustainable. I have to face the anxiety monster and, if not overcome it, at least fight it to a standstill. To do that might mean giving in and accepting a prescription for anti-anxiety medications. For now I'm working on exercising, enjoying my hobbies, and finding ways to quiet my mind. Talking about it openly is one step. For those who read this far, thanks for hanging in there. 

Geek Speaking About Anxiety Views

Geek Speak: Definitely NOT a Therapy Dog

Ahhhhh...it feels good to post a comic strip again. You just never get tired of that fresh comic strip smell. Clearly Ted's brother is not making a new friend. Will they be freinemies, or will we enter comic strip thunderdome? Only time will tell. This strip is an example of one that changed considerably from the original script I wrote for it, to what I'm calling the finished strip above (there are things in it I could fix, but it's taken me too long to finish this as it is). The punch at the end was a lot longer, Francis saying "who's a pretty doggie..." is something that occurred to me as I was putting in the dialog and balloons. I think the result is better than my original design. Sometimes things work out that way. 

I will be doing one more of these strips, and then things will be changing. For most of my posts and all of my comic strips after the last one in this series, I'll be moving to a new location on the web. More details soon, but this is a much needed, and long overdue change. 

Page-views, I Has Them

My tens of followers have generated a lot of page views. I'm actually fairly impressed. I post with less regularity than Phil Jackson who posts the usually brilliant and often hilarious Sequential Art. Yet I still seem to get people landing on my page. This makes me happy.

The Anxiety Monster

In the last six months I have been to see doctors more than I have at any time in the last six years. It started back in April, with a feeling of having a racing heartbeat while waiting on a plane to fly home from Austin. While I was sitting there, feeling like my heart was hammering somewhere in the vicinity of my left eye it occurred to me that my phone comes with a health app, and that it might have a way for me to determine just how fast my heart was pounding. Sure enough the Samsung health app has a heart rate tracker, and I was able to measure my beats per minute. While I sat there on the tarmac waiting for my plane to be ready to taxi my beats per minute were coming in at 118. Thanks, Samsung.

I started to freak out. Was this normal? What should my beats per minute be while I'm just sitting doing nothing? Should I be worried? These questions were whirling through my head while I had the dangerous combination of time to kill and access to the Internet via a mobile device. One Google search and I found numerous articles on the ideal resting heart rate for an adult male in his late thirties, and numerous more on tachycardia (fast heart). Now certain there was something terribly wrong (thanks, Google) I checked my heart rate again (thanks again Samsung) and, big shock here, my heart rate had jumped up to over 120 beats per minute. That's roughly where it should be after moderate exercise. Now certain I was dying, it was time for the plane to take off. Mercifully, I was able to settle down enough to sleep for a good chunk of the flight.

When I got home the sense of something wrong didn't leave me. It gnawed at me, and one night sent me down a path that would have me visiting doctors every other week for the better part of four months. After work one night I was sitting with my kids and watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I got that feeling of my heart pounding again, and I used my handy-dandy Samsung App to check my heart rate (...thanks...Samsung). Sure enough it was registering over 100 beats per minute. What's more, I had a tingly numb feeling between my shoulder blades. Certain this meant I was somewhere on the grim reaper's to-do list I kissed my wife, hugged my kids, and made my way to the emergency room. I would spend the next several hours there while they ran blood tests, an EKG, took X-rays and monitored me, all while listening to people who were in genuine crisis, and generally feeling crummy. My heart rate came back down to reasonable territory (80-ish beats per minute) while I was waiting to be seen behind a long queue of people in various states of fucked up.

Since that night in May I have been to see a cardiologist, my primary, a nurse-practitioner who works in my primary's office, my primary again, and am now seeing a physical therapist. I have been prescribed some really exotic drugs for GERD (acid reflux) and had an ultrasound that determined I have some infiltrating fat on my pancreas, but nothing to be alarmed about. Even so, I will occasionally find myself sitting at my desk at work feeling like my heart is pounding against my chest, which I continue to measure with the Samsung health app on my phone (fuck you, Samsung). I'll feel like my breath is coming just a little too short, and get to feeling amped up and distracted for no good reason.

People who know me well, or have known me for a long time, will probably not find this surprising in the least, but I have been forced to confront the idea that I have issues with anxiety. Even as I write this the notion feels fundamentally just so stupid. My job can be stressful, sure, but it's a mundane kind of stress. It's "so-and-so executive is asking pointed questions about something on a report that can be interpreted a certain way if you turn it upside down and squint" kind of stress. I'm not facing armed combatants, pulling people over who might shoot me, or saving lives. If I screw something up at work, children won't starve on the other side of the world. Even so, it gets to me.

When I stopped at some point to think about it, it occurred to me this is not an isolated event. Around the time my daughter was born I remember feeling like I was having chest pain. I went to urgent care to get checked out, then followed up with my primary. An EKG in both cases revealed nothing. Years before that, around my thirtieth birthday, was the same story. I felt like I was having chest pain so I made an appointment to see my doctor. On that occasion, too an EKG failed to turn anything up, but he referred me to a cardiologist just to be safe. They put me on a treadmill and checked out my heart and declared me, in these words, "ready for the marathon. See you again in fifteen years" Years before THAT, long before I had moved out of Greeley to live in Denver, never mind moving to California, I went to urgent care with "chest pain." On that occasion the doctor checked me out, then talked to me about anxiety, and wrote out a prescription for a very mild anti-anxiety medication, and left it up to me to fill it or not.

As you have probably guessed, I didn't fill it. I didn't like the idea of managing my emotional condition through chemistry. I still don't. Now, however, I'm thinking if I had filled that prescription, and taken the extra step of going to therapy, I might have saved myself a world of grief. While I can't think of specific examples from before college, I'm sure there must have been times that the people who cared about me wished they could have talked me back from standing on a figurative ledge. Times I was convinced the world was ending because I didn't get the right grade on a piece of homework, or I was particularly uptight about a test that I was sure would ruin my future, or, as was often the case, I was so tied up in knots over a girl I liked that I didn't act at all out of fear of humiliation.

Now, as I near forty, and I have stress factors in my life that I've never had before, and I have not dealt with the underlying condition, I find myself sometimes sitting at my desk wound up, jumping from one thing to another, terrified of letting anything go without my touching it every day lest I lose my job. In my mind unemployment raises the specter of family protective services coming to take my kids and place them into the nightmarish hellscape that is foster care. I get so amped up, in fact, that I often can't stay at my desk and focus, and I'm forced to get up and go walk until I can get my emotions under control and start to think clearly again.

After months of doctor's visits the only consensus we've arrived at is that I have an issue with anxiety. To let things go as they are is not sustainable. I have to face the anxiety monster and, if not overcome it, at least fight it to a standstill. To do that might mean giving in and accepting a prescription for anti-anxiety medications. For now I'm working on exercising, enjoying my hobbies, and finding ways to quiet my mind. Talking about it openly is one step. For those who read this far, thanks for hanging in there. 

Return of Normal Guy

Return of the Blog Post!

So, this post has been a long time in coming. I looked back at my most recent post to see just how lax I've been in trying to create content for my tens of readers, and I was a little taken aback by how much time has passed. It really doesn't feel like it's been since May, but it has. It's been a busy three months, while at the same time I feel as though I've really done very little at all. Either way, here are some of the highlights.

Doctors, doctors, everywhere, and not a thing to treat

Let's not be alarmest, but I have been to see doctors more in the last six months than the last six years combined. I have more visits coming up, unfortunately, but hopefully getting to the end of this semi-regularly occurring health freak-out. The outcome from all of this, so far there is nothing wrong with me. An ultrasound found a little infiltrating fat on my pancreas, but that's a benign condition, and there's been more than a little talk about GERD (acid reflux disease). Mostly the talk has been about managing my anxiety, but otherwise I'm in good health. Like I said, more on this in a later post. I will be providing a comic to go with it. 

Fathers day happened

Went out on Father's Day to see Captain America: Civil War and loved it. When I got home the family had made a bunch of cards and hidden them around the house for me to find. Later that night we had one of the three steak dinners I get each year. It was a great day. 

My wife and I turned sixteen all over again...

...just without all the teenage mutant ninja drama and other bullshit that goes with actually being sixteen. 

On July fifteenth my wife and I celebrated sixteen years of marriage. The time flies. It really does. I am lucky that for the last sixteen years (nineteen if you count the three years we dated) I have had someone very special with me on the out of control, full throttle, runaway train that is life. It is with Mildly Sensational that I do something really important, and that I might not do otherwise. It's with her that I can be still. It's with her that I slow down enough to actually make memories. She grounds me, even as she, and the family we've made, give me purpose. 

I am not always the best at staying still. Even if it looks like I'm being quiet and still, I'm thinking about things I need to be doing, that I want to be doing, that I should be doing and that will probably cause me grief at some point in the foreseeable future, and it goes on like that. It is with Mildly Sensational that I can let some of that go, that I can start to undo some of the knots I've tied myself into during the day. She brings me peace, and with her I'm truly home. 

Thank you, Mildly Sensational, for being my home. I love you.

Lots of Little Art Dumps

While I don't have a completed comic strip ready to share, that does not mean I haven't been busily toiling over my sketchbook, painstaking producing achingly beautiful works of art for you, my handfuls of readers (hi, Mom!). Or, if I'm being less dramatic, here are some of my drawings presented in smaller art dumps while I get some comics put together. 

Here's one that is fairly timely. Suicide Squad opened recently and re-introduced Harley to people who have been fans of the character for more than twenty years. While Margot Robbie looks great as Harley Quinn...she just isn't my Harley. Is it fair to her, or fair to what sounds like a great performance as a villain turned anti-hero in what otherwise sounds like a terrible movie? No. It's not fair to Ms. Robbie, but my Harley will always be Harley from Batman: the Animated Series. For the record, yes, I'm aware that, in the series, Harley wore a full body costume including the hat. I've drawn the full costume before. I took a bit of license drawing her this time. 

For the next nugget in my art dump, I bring you Shiro from the excellent Netflix series Voltron: Legendary Defender. The re-imagined Voltron manages to hit all the right nostalgia buttons, while turning in something that really improves on the original. Disagree with me? If you're nearing forty and reading this, go back and watch any cartoon from the eighties that you loved. I would be surprised if you made it through more than one or two episodes before you had to watch something else. They don't stand up, and, for the most part, they could all use an update. Voltron hits all the right notes blending action, comedy, and drama with genuine kid-level cartoon slapstick. Although I drew Shiro before anyone else, I think Hunk is my favorite character. The actor providing the voice nails it. 

I am, for the most part, an Image and Marvel comics fan. I never really got into DC characters, mostly because Marvel characters are all human, at some level. DC's roster of characters is a who's - who of insufferable Mary Sues. For the most part it turns me off to their comics. The exception to that appears to be Green Lantern. Don't get me wrong, Hal Jordan is an insufferable douche, but there's something really compelling about a character who goes out into the universe to defend innocent billions who will never know about his sacrifice, and his only weapon is the power of will channeled through a ring. I was on board with that, and then they introduced the blue lanterns and rings powered by HOPE, and I couldn't stay away. It was fun here to imagine Elsa as a blue lantern. Here is a character for whom hope would be a survival trait. She has to have hope to imagine a better tomorrow for herself and her kingdom. I'll be doing Anna as a star sapphire at some point. 

Lastly, I can't resist closing with a one-off joke comic. I drew this after doing a late night doodle of a Spider-Man cosplayer. I really like Spider-Man. It's not my favorite comic of all time (that distinction belongs to The Savage Dragon), but it's right up there. At almost forty, however, I think my days of jumping on the table in an ill-fitting Spidey mask and thwipping are almost over. If nothing else, it's something my kids could imitate, and we have a hard enough time telling them to stay off the coffee table as it is. 

Geek Speaking of Random Sketch Dumping

Geek Speak: Wuffles is one-eighth French poodle

It took me a long time to finish this comic. In the time between my last strip and this I have been to multiple birthdays for five-year-olds, a birthday for a thirty-nine year old (mine), and on a work trip to Austin, Texas. I have indeed been busy. In that time I have learned two things:

1. February to May is far too long to be away.
2. I really miss drawing comics

It's not as though my drawing hand has been lonely and neglected. It has been firmly wrapped around a hard wooden pencil and stroking away. It just hasn't been to produce comic strips. There was probably a better way to say that. Moving on. I think there may be one or two more strips in this run just to establish the relationship between Ted and Wuffles, then I'm going to do some one-offs, then maybe return to Sam, Mark, and Steve for a little bit before coming back to Ted and Wuffles. We'll see. For those who are following me, please know that I haven't given up. My focus has been elsewhere for a little bit, but I'm trying to get back in the swing of things now. 

Besides, if I don't keep posting comic strips, how am I supposed to get into Comic Con next year? Priorities. One must have priorities. 

Random Thoughts

Adult coloring books are awesome. By that I mean coloring books for grown ups not badly drawn sex acts for perverts to fill in with crayons. I bought one full of intricate animal and floral designs for my wife for Christmas, then recently bought two copies of the Doctor Who adult coloring book, so both of us could enjoy it. I may write more on this later, but for now, let's leave it at "coloring books for grown ups are awesome."

A Big Satisfying Sketch Dump

While I haven't been as dedicated to drawing comic strips as I would like, I have still been drawing. In fact I had to switch to a new sketchbook at some point between my last post and this. Here are a few of my favorites. 

The idea behind this one was to imagine what happens to Belle after the end of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It's hard to imagine that her desire for adventure just goes away after the end of the movie, and in 16th century France it's hard to imagine anyone more adventurous than the Musketeers. Since she is a Disney princess, would that technically make her a "Mouseketeer?" 

Sometime in mid-February I attended the excellent "Valley Drink and Draw" hosted by the one and only Gallery Girls. The theme of the evening was a tribute to the late David Bowie, and two models dressed as his most iconic characters, from Aladdin Sane to Ziggy Stardust. 

Some early character designs for a project I started working on with Runs Long Talking. I had to set this aside during March and April, partly because most of my drawing time was spent working on illustrations for a business presentation I gave in Austin. Now that I'm through the big business meeting and done with one or two other things I plan to get back to working on this. 

I drew this one because...well...who doesn't love BB-8? Seriously. Can you think of anyone?

Before February or March I had been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed II. There is something weirdly gratifying about playing a video game where a character can climbs to the top of tall buildings, leaps off, and survives by landing in hay bales, or carts full of flowers. It is a strangely liberating thing to do, and one reason why I come back to these games. 

Geek Speaking of Iron Brain Fortresses

Geek Speak: Too Funny

I was having trouble condensing this into three panels. After several fraught frustrating fruitless hours spent writing, deleting, re-writing, editing, scrapping, and weeping softly in a corner I gave up and just made it four panels. The difficulty there is in how to do it without making it tiny. On this one I did better than some previous attempts, but it's still not quite there. My apologies to your eyes, and give your optometrist a big hug from me.

When I originally thought of this exchange my intention was to go back to the scene of the ill-fated rescue of Wuffles' original owner. In that scene I imagined an ambulance and two paramedics with a stretch already covered in a black body bag talking about the best way to scrape the old woman off the wall. While they're talking she pulls one hand free from the bricks that were shattered by her impact. They stop talking. She pull the other hand free, pushes herself away from the wall, dusts herself off, tells the paramedics to close their mouths before flies get in there, then asks if anyone has seen her dog. The last panel would be some big dramatic special effects text saying something like "Thus Began the Amazing Adventures of The Iron Granny!" or something equally sophomoric.

It's been so long now since those original strips that going back and resurrecting granny doesn't feel like it works. So we'll leave her fate without the closure it deserves as we move on with the adventures of Ted, Wuffles, Frances (Captain Dum Dum), Sam, Mark, Steve, Cowboy, Hipster, Normal Guy and the rest.

Cognitive Retreats

Every so often, if I can find a space of time that isn't filled with work of one kind or another I like to close my eyes and try to clear my thoughts. At the very least I like to shut my eyes, empty my mind of whatever has been occupying it, and just let my mind wander over whatever just pops in there. The Stay Puff'd marshmallow man has yet to make an appearance, but I know it's juts a matter of time. In a riff on the most recent Sherlock Holmes I think of this as going to my "mind sanctuary." Everyone has one. I just gave mine a name. Because my inner thirteen year old is irresistible, apparently. 

My mind sanctuary has evolved over time. When I started trying to build a mental quiet place I painstakingly imagined a mountain forest next to a stream with a gentle waterfall. No pounding torrents of water, just a gentle fall producing a soothing, consistent sound of water pouring over rocks into more water. The effort of trying to maintain the image in my head, complete with smells, the feel of the wind, the sound of the water, and the movement of the trees, was way too much effort and really defeated the original purpose. Kind of like trying to find a quiet room to take a nap, then drowning out office noise by moving in a bunch of speakers, picking a metal station on Pandora and blasting it at a volume usually reserved for concert venues.

In the last couple of weeks I've gone the opposite direction. I've created a mental fortress of solitude that is a plain white floor, walls, and ceiling. It has worked wonders. It is substantially easier for me to fall asleep in my mind sanctuary, and when I get a moment to, for lack of a better word, meditate I find myself walking away feeling revitalized. Everyone should have their own version of a mental fortress of solitude they can retreat into for a few minutes. Seriously, try it, it costs nothing, and I'd bet my dear Aunt Suzy's pet badger that you feel better after.