Deadlines are an interesting phenomenon. I think there is a general understanding of why deadlines are necessary and even of how they can be useful for motivating efficient and dedicated work habits. The strange thing about deadlines is their tendency to run in packs.

I first noticed this aspect of deadlines when I was in school. I didn’t really think much of it at the time. The semester or school year had to end so that meant all my classes were going to end at the same time so all the deadlines happened at once. Pretty simple.

Now I am no longer in school. I’m working 3 jobs that really have nothing to do with each other. Deadlines still roam in packs. I wonder if it is a function old habits in scheduling deadlines left over from our school days, something seasonal in human behavior, or just my own ability in scheduling projects for myself? Fortunately I have picked up some methods for dealing with marauding packs of deadlines over the years. One of my favorites is to pick them off early and at long range.

It doesn’t always work out, but I am done with this month’s print early, and so I am proud to present it to you here:

Excitement is pending.  Unless you like prints of birds.  If you get excited about prints of birds, then excitement is now.  This one is from ten years ago.  Sometimes cleaning is neat.

This week I:

Finished reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.  (You should all read this some time.  Really.)

Finished reading Leviathan, but Scott Westerfield.  (A bit light, but fun!  Especially if you enjoy alternate history steampunk mad science. Keith Thompson’s illustrations may be worth the book on their own.)

Finished reading Weathercraft, by Jim Woodring.  (I’m pretty sure I didn’t quite understand this one. I may have to bone up on my mystical symbolism studies and try again later.  Gorgeous book though.)

In addition to all of the reading, I had a wonderful time at the Artstart 1st Annual Drawing Rally.  Artstart is a great program to encourage young artists and the event was a lot of fun, with a lot of talented artists there.  It looked like the event was reasonably successful, and I hope they do it again. Trying to make a finished drawing for immediate sale in 40 minutes or less was a fun challenge and there were some very nice drawings that came out of it.  It was especially pleasant to run into so many old friends at the event.

I am participating in another charity event next week, the Lagunitas Brewing Company and MAYi event this coming Tuesday, which will have food and live music and one of my prints and some Megamoth Studio merchandise as raffle prizes.  MAYi is a program to help “at risk” children learn positive life skills through martial arts and it is awesome.  All of the MAYi students I have met during my own martial arts training have been hugely inspiring.

I have been reading “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell.  I’d been meaning to read it for years, but never got around to it until my older brother gave me a copy for Christmas.  The book is pretty remarkable and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the purpose of stories and storytelling or in the study of religion, psychology or mythology.  If that sounds like a wide net, it is.

The book is one that will likely give a reader something different to take away from it when reading it at different times.  The thought I have been struck with is the notion of one of the weaknesses of religious institutions.  Religion and faith are meant to teach people important lessons about what it means to be alive and how we should approach the adventure of being, but sometimes the lesson is obscured by the vehicle by which it is delivered.

I know there are religious leaders in every faith that get it right, but the larger institutions in which the work become so obsessed with the minutiae of their individual narratives they lose track of what they were created to do in the first place.  It’s  like being given the most precious gift in the world, unwrapping it and then parading the wrapping paper around while the gift gathers dust in a closet.

Well, I guess I’m going to have to think about it all some more.

The March Print is here.  I call it, “There are things that drift away.”

I’ve been thinking about change recently. People find themselves wanting things to be different, from time to time. I think a lot of people spend time focusing on how much they wish a particular thing were different, be it a relationship, a job or pretty much anything, but people often get stuck on the desire for something to be different. People forget to think about what they want to change into. If someone wants to stop being one thing, they must become something else.

Also, if someone wants to become something else, they must stop being what they are.

In any case, this week’s drawing isn’t as polished as certain other recent efforts, but I like some of the lines. This is a drawing based on sources collaged together from a National Geographic from the 1980′s.