Hell Has Found Me

Great news everyone! Webmonkey Ben has added in the RSS feed and it’s up and running and fully functional! There should be a link in the address bar of your browser, and another one below the comic, along with all the other social sites we’re on!!

I told you all to expect this rant on friday, and it turned out a little bigger than I expected. I’m sorry it took so long, but I really felt I needed to hit the right tone.

I’ve been doing this comic for nearly a year now, and I’ve been following along in discussions and criticisms all over the internet. In following comics like PvP, Starslip, VG Cats, Sinfest and others, I see the vast disparity between cartoonists who set goals and cartoonists who make commitments.

Goals are something we want to do. They are wishes made manifest, something we believe to be attainable. We seem to believe that it’s ok to fail at a goal, that it’s understandable if we don’t achieve a goal, and that we are automatically forgiven when (not if) we do fail. In a way, goals represent your best self. They show what you want to do, how you want things to be. Without goals we generally don’t advance ourselves. We become sedentary, stagnant. Setting goals is obviously important, and equally important is the ability to set goals that can be attained. However, it seems that people forget that goals can also be general targets. You can get close to a goal, nearly achieve a goal, and that can be considered a success.

Commitments on the other hand, well, those are different. A commitment is a pact, an agreement between yourself and the person you’re committing to. I think the world would be a better place if we put more faith in people’s word. This goes hand in hand with recognizing failure when someone doesn’t follow through, and holding them accountable. We can’t simply fail at a commitment and place the blame elsewhere.

It’s important to really understand the difference between making a goal and keeping a commitment. A good portion of it involves really understanding what we’re capable of, knowing what is a stretch. We have to be self-aware enough to know where our time goes, what our workflow looks like, how long things take.

When I started this comic last April, my idea was to get started with 3 days a week and a weekly voting incentive. I thought that after a year, I’d be able to up the schedule to 5 days a week and the incentive image. Then I got the idea of turning the incentives into PDQ comics. Then later, I really started working on my art portfolio, then going to cons, later still, joining the Katgirl’s Art-a-thon, so on and so forth. I got ideas to do specials, to throw in additional comics, and just have fun with it. Best of all, I AM having fun with it. I’m also getting my comics done, and posted. However, I find myself committing the sin that so many other cartoonists commit: reaching a little too far, doing a little too much.

So now we come to the crux of the matter. I need marshal my time, control my schedule. I need to continue to move forward with living my life as opposed to trying to simply improve my life. This year, I’m going to buy a house. It’s a shocking step for me, one I hadn’t expected to do any time soon, but as it turns out, it seems that now is the time for me to do it. So, with that in mind, I’m going to reiterate my commitments, define my goals, and I’m going to stick to them.

My commitments:

Three days a week, you can come here and read a new HHFM comic.

My goals:

Occasionally, I’ll add in a special HHFM or an extra or throw in some kind of extra.

Once a week, on Mondays, there will be a new PDQ/voting incentive up. If it’s not there, I’m sorry, and I’ll post a note when there’s a new one.

Update the news post as often as I can, preferably no less than once or twice a week.

Post a piece of art: sketch, drawing, photo, whatever to the Art-a-thon 5 days a week

Post a piece of art to my DeviantArt account once a week.

Continue other projects and keep you appraised of them.

Go to as many cons as possible, and announce them when they’re coming up.

2009 will be an exciting year for me, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you. It’s going to be tough, and it’s going to involve a lot of work, but I promise you, HHFM is here, and going to remain here for some time to come.

…unless a meteor falls out of the sky and lands on my head.

Remember to VOTE!