(Image yoinked from Irasutoya again.)
A member in the Cartoonist Cooperative asked me about my daily schedule recently- I’m always in favor of dispelling as many mysteries in ~artist life~ as possible, so I figured I’d post it here for posterity. I have a very workman-like relationship with a lot of my comics, so a schedule with the intent of hitting deadlines consistently is a must. There was a deadline that I missed earlier this year for reasons outside of my control and it really screwed me over for multiple months after- to some people this may look like a lack of flexibility, but to me, it’s more of a cautionary tale.
Weekdays
Usually they go something like this:
- Wake up around 10am- my partner is better at waking up early and making breakfast, so generally I roll out of bed and eat food immediately. We usually read comics over coffee and this is when I get caught up with my webcomics and webmanga. I don’t like reading physical books in the morning because I know I am clumsy and will absolutely get coffee on something.
- I should also note- I have chronic migraines, and one of the most consistent triggers is being forced to wake up before my body is ready. When I had in-office jobs I would mainline pain relievers to deal with my week long migraines. Does this count as a disability? I suppose it does, especially since this comes with light and noise sensitivity.
- From 11am to noon we do dishes, get dressed, and I take care of various animal-related tasks. Refilling our cat’s treat puzzle (he is old and bored), feeding the two fish tanks their various foods, doing general clean up, that kind of thing. Sometimes I do a sudoku or play tetris for a bit. I cherish a good puttering-around.
- Noon to about 2pm is admin work. Sending emails, answering DMs, scheduling invoices, etc etc… The boring part of being a self employed artist that no one really talks about. If I finish early then I can squeeze in some time for the Co-op! I spent about an hour sending out marketplace payments from this year’s Nib & Ink Festival today, even.
- After that is lunch- we switch places and I usually end up handling this meal. It tends to take about an hour since we spend 10 min deciding what the hell we want, 30 min cooking, then 20 min eating while catching up on some weekly anime or other short show (I tell people that we don’t really watch a ton of anime, we just eat a lot of lunch). A lot of the recipes in the Poorcraft Cookbook were tested during these times.
- We could probably be more efficient by making a food schedule and pre-cooking things, but again: I cherish a puttering-around. I don’t take the time I get during the day to cook with my partner for granted!
- ~3pm to 10pm is when I finally get to start drawing! If that day is a drawing day, anyway. There’s a wide variety of other nonsense to handle- some weeks I don’t draw much at all.
- I like taking voice meetings during this time since I can draw and participate. Just get me a shirt that says Big Multitasker Enjoyer Here or something.
- I also do graphic design work and shop management for Iron Circus Comics on the side- if you’ve enjoyed any of their little social media ads or design of the crowdfunds from the past year-ish… That’s me, baby.
- Writing and thumbnailing don’t fall under ‘drawing’ for me, but that’s when this happens too.
- Things like website updates, scheduling social media/comic/subscriber updates, putting together PDFs, brushing up on industry knowledge… I try to cram that all in here when I can.
- I don’t like working too late, so 10 to midnight-ish is just hanging out with my partner, doing hobbies if there’s energy, that kind of thing. Sometimes she plays a videogame (my own personal LPer…) and I dick around on my thinkpad (like now! Wow!).
- …The –ish is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It’s more like 1am.
- Sometimes I end up working late anyway, but I try to make sure it’s only things I explicitly want to work on if this is the case. If you’ve seen me post Ultraviolents pages at 11pm… No you didn’t.
- Another addendum to this is that I now run a late night mixer in the Co-op for our more Euro/Asian country members, so every other week I actually start that at 10pm. Oops! That isn’t really work, though.
Weekends
- I try to do as little as possible relating to working on the weekends. That doesn’t mean I just loaf around all day, but that is a default activity.
- Extra Co-op work happens on the weekends, when needed. Monthly meetings, bug squashing, that kind of thing! I don’t mind it, though.
- When my local aquarists club is in session (they’re on summer break now) we meet every second Saturday. I am extremely bummed that I can’t be around for the fall session. I haven’t missed a single meeting since I joined… š
You may notice that I do also only work M-F; I’ve learned over the years that having a schedule for art with multi-day breaks is pretty important for me both mental-health-wise and physical-health-wise. If I absolutely have to work on the weekends I try to keep it to as little as possible and never more than one weekend in a row. Emergencies happen! But I know from so many years of working 24/7/365 that I can’t do that to myself. Old subscribers probably remember the multiple month hiatus I had when I hurt my wrist. I’d prefer to prevent that.
But sometimes a weekday ends up being a day for chores anyway, so then I’ll work on a weekend day- I like having that level of flexibility so it isn’t a huge problem for me! That’s really the big benefit here- flexibility. Flexibility for disability, for work, and for interests. I don’t own a house or have a 401k, but I’m satisfied with being able to set my days like this.
…Okay that felt very navel-gaze-y so the next Blaugust post is absolutely going to have to be about something else.
