Posts Tagged by Jeremy

You may recall that I gave myself what any casual observer would probably note is nothing at all resembling “an ambitious goal” of finishing an eight-page Jeremy story over a six-week period. The penalty, if I failed, was that I would donate five hundred smackers to the worst of the presidential candidates running right now, the one whose personal and political positions most opposed my own.

Well, here it is, the middle of April, and I blew the deadline badly. I can most likely blame it on my typically poor time management skills and the limited amount of time I have available for personal work on any given night, and likewise I can lay part of the blame on needing to wrap up a number of freelance gigs which had been nipping at my heels for up-to-as-long-as the attempts to finish this Jeremy story have been around. Then there was a two-week illness and an out-of-state funeral …

Whatever the case, I blew the deadline, which means I had to pay the price. The thing is … I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I certainly couldn’t afford to part with five hundred bucks out of nowhere but, more than that, I just couldn’t rationalize giving money to either of the worst candidates. I could not give money to Rick Santorum, folks. I can’t believe anyone ever could.

So here’s what I did instead: I donated a hundred dollars to a water charity. And I’m putting aside another hundred to donate to one of my pal Ben’s bi-ennial participations in a MS Society charity bike ride. As for therest, I’m setting aside the remaining three hundred for Kickstarters, Indiegogos and other charities – I’ll take suggestions.

As for Jeremy, I’m just going to keep plugging away. I still have a mountain of other freelance I need to get through – albatrosses around my neck, every one – but my goal for the rest of this month is to work out a schedule where I can spend at least half an hour every night working on nothing but Jeremy. We’ll see. More than anything, I’d like to get back into producing more Jeremy stories, and my goal is to produce at least six pages every month – it’s a lofty goal right now, but let’s see what the rest of the year brings.

It’s been years since I last produced a strip for my comic Jeremy (Just Turned Nine)*, although I’ve had a couple of stories in assorted stages of completion for … well, years.

My plan is always to secretly finish these stories, then suddenly launch them on the world and be all “YO! Jeremy, y’all!” and bask in the surprise, glory and adulation.

But, lacking an incentive to publish these – not being under a deadline or an obligation or anything – I put them aside, month after month.
The thing is, I want to return to Jeremy – it’s the closest thing I have to a passion, in terms of personal projects. It’s the closest thing I have to good, maybe the best thing I’ve done. But, I lack drive and motivation, so I suck up the hours I could be spending working on it or I put it away and forget about it.

So, what I need to do is give myself a deadline, and a public deadline at that, with consequences. So, with that said, I will release a new Jeremy story in March, and if I fail to do that, I will let you punch me in the face at Emerald City Comic Con.

Actually, no, that’s stupid, but what I will do is this: If I fail to produce a new Jeremy strip before the end of March, I will donate $500 to the election campaign of one of the more horrible Republican candidates. I can’t decide if Santorum or Gingrinch is the worst, it’ll be one of them.

Let me be clear; I don’t have the money to throw away like that, plus Santorum is a ferret-faced oil slick and Gingrinch is a small, wobbly monster. SO it will cause me real pain – twice – to fail to come through on this challenge.

So. Yes. New Jeremy by the end of March or I render unto Caesar. I probably should have just done a Kickstarter.

(*PS: I know almost none of you know who or what Jeremy is anyway; here’s the link to both Jeremy books, including the very cheap eBook editions, and some of the old strips online)