Momentum

I must admit that I expected the results of my hiatus from drawing to be more drastic than they were. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not complaining because I didn't lose all of the ground I have worked so hard to gain. Still, on some level you could say that expectations were disappointed.

This is a bit of a hard feeling to define, but I think that I will go ahead and try anyways. We all want our lives to be epic. I mean, people in general want to feel that what they do is an accomplishment. That somehow they have overcome insurmountable odds to do something truly noteworthy. I am no exception to this rule. So I must confess that, not only do I find illustration to be challenging and at times brutally difficult, I want it to be challenging and brutally difficult. As a result of this, and also because I have experienced this in the past, I expected to have a lot of ground to make up when I picked up my pens again. And I didn't really.

So why be disappointed?

Well in part because I feel robbed of the epic struggle that I was sure was going to ensue, but also because I still did lose something, albeit less tangible, that I will still have to struggle to regain and it isn't an epic battle. It's more like overcoming the desire to hit the snooze one more time. Now I grant you that this isn't easy some mornings, but it also rarely brings the same satisfaction you get from the end of a long bear hunt.

Sitting with sweat dripping down your naked chest, covered in war paint and blood, you pull your hand made spear out of the stained, matted fur of the grizzly's throat and you feel the first shudders of the adrenaline high stealing your legs out from under you. You laugh, confident and reassured in your masculinity.

Instead of an epic struggle I have simply lost the momentum that takes so many small efforts of will to gain. It isn't that I have slid backward, I simply have to redo all the work that it took to go forward. Perhaps I should be happy that I have reached a milestone in my journey that marks a real, significant step towards professionalism in art, but right now I still want to hit that snooze button one more time.

(Languidly throws off the sheets.)

Sigh. Time to get to work.