Birth of Venus

For those of you keeping score, Guardian just took out THREE of The Rebirth in about 10 seconds, with one confirmed kill thus far. These are SUPER-villains though so expect them to start putting up a better fight!

IS IT WORTH IT?

Any of you creative types out there must have asked yourself this question no less than a thousand times by now. You and your damned foolishly idealistic ideas, sacrificing your time, money, sleep, respect, social life and seven-kinds-of-what-have-you just to explore your dream. So tell me, is it worth it? If you haven’t asked yourself this then you’re either lying or you’ve already “made it” and then congratulations! (Truly I am happy for you… even though I might hate you just a little bit.) So I guess the real question here isn’t ‘IS it worth it’, but rather ‘AT WHAT POINT is it NOT worth it’ to continue along on this current road you now travel? At what point are you willing to concede your failure (or “lack of success”) and do some course-correcting in your life so that you can take that dream vacation or get that house or finally woo that woman of your dreams? At what point does one decide for oneself that enough is enough?

“A man’s got to know his limitations.” – “Dirty Harry” Calahan (Magnum Force)

The Pros always say that you need to constantly keep creating. If you’re not practicing your craft EACH AND EVERY SINGLE DAY then you’ll never make it! If you haven’t maxed out at least one credit card and are living off of Ramen to make your dream a reality then you’re nowhere near success! If you aren’t willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING for your passion then you need to give up and call it a day. I’ve seen enough episodes of Shark Tank to see somebody fooling themselves that they’ve got what it takes to make a successful business, only for the reality to come crashing down upon them. You can see it on their faces– That “oh shizz” moment when they realize that they’re done. Like good and done. (Perhaps we ought to call that “reality check TV”?) So when is that going to be YOU?

Or possibly ME?

At what point in this crazy world where millions are trying to cash in on their dreams, yet only the select few thousand  will succeed (I don’t have the stats. Just run with me here.) does one decide to stop throwing themselves head-first into that brick wall? I don’t ask this question to de-motivate y’all or bum you out or anything… I only want to put the idea into your head so that it percolates. Life is short. Don’t waste it on a bad idea that isn’t truly worth your time. Some might feel that way about Birth of Venus and to be honest, we’ve both questioned it more than enough times to know that even if it is an utter FAILURE, then at the very least we can be proud of the finished product at the end of the day. At least we’re putting everything that we’ve got (at this point in time) into this project to push it as far as we possibly can and if that simply isn’t good enough… then so be it. What I don’t want to have happen is to resent the sacrifices that I’m making to get my projects made. I think once that happens, I’m pretty much DONE.

I just finished coloring duties on Page 5 WELL PAST our Wednesday AM deadline– whittling away at it while tending to my sick infant daughter’s needs and pushing myself into the wee hours of the night YET AGAIN. And just like every time before, once I’ve saved the final file and loaded it onto our shared server to get lettered, my brain immediately starts preparing for the next page. And you know what? I’m genuinely EXCITED to get to it.

So, yeah… I don’t think I’m walking away from this any time soon!

JLD