I did a Facebook Live interview with my boss/client/pal Dan Sullivan this morning.

I didn’t wet myself or anything! In fact, it was a nice career check-in to talk about the teamwork Dan and I share, and to hopefully describe it in a way that makes this seem like more of a possibility for other entrepreneurs or artists.

The interview’s about half an hour long. Catch it now before Facebook gets shut down!

The past few weeks I’ve been feeling very low-energy. Was it a background, low-level cold? Is it just because it’s March and I’m sick of the endless bleak weather? Is it from being stuck in the house on my own? (Yes, I know I can put the dog in his crate, but every moment I’m away from the house and he’s in that thing feels like I’m abusing him. If only he didn’t wreck things, I could just leave him to have the run of the house.)

At any rate, my hubby gets back this evening. Much as I like my own company, and as much as I just want to work endlessly on my own projects, I’m really looking forward to having him back.

…Not that I seem to have got much done this month. It’s been a really busy time with work, so my energy’s been burnt-up by the time I’m finished that; none left to start something else in the evening.

I’m also wondering if this comic book idea I have is maybe too big to start out with. Perhaps I need to do a bunch of small things first, just to figure out how to handle layout and what my publishing style is. It’s disheartening not making progress toward a big goal like that — and maybe there isn’t room for such a big project right now. (“When will there be? With kids?” Yeah, yeah, I know. The inner voices are not kind, but neither do they help get anything done.)

I did update my wee logo-self: It occurred to me that I draw everyone else’s glasses as the frame around their eyes except me. It’s a weird little thing, but it was an inconsistency in my cartoon universe. Also, the proportions of my avatar-head weren’t reflective of how I’m drawing these days. I hated the cartoon that was on my home page, so at least I was able to replace that with the new logo-head until I can do something more there.

This is the stuff I think about.

The dog is standing next to me, staring up at me. Again. I really need a break from that. Craig will be home soon to tag-team with me and the dog, and next week I’m going to Toronto for work.

P.S. Doug loves the food I’m making him — phew! I can imagine getting bowls of real, cooked food has got to be better than facing kibble every day — though for the past while we’ve been mixing in… dead stuff from a tin. He liked that well enough, so I wasn’t sure he’d like the plant-based food. But he devours it!

I’m making fake meat and stew this afternoon in preparation for the week ahead. I’m kinda following a recipe, which calls for thyme and sage.

I don’t know which of these spices it is, but I always regret putting it into things: it smells like the lining of an antique suitcase.

Edit: My stew turned out okay. Doesn’t taste like a suitcase!

Here’s the recipe I kinda followed:
http://www.brandnewvegan.com/recipes/soups/vegetable-stew

The “wheat meat” recipe is from a book called Seitan and Beyond.

Here’s an image I drew for the next Coach book that isn’t going to make the cut. (But I’m happy with it and don’t want it to be lost.)

And here’s one where I got caught up in giving the character these overly detailed posters in his room…

…except in the final version you can’t even see them.

And here’s my fortnightly plan for the last little bit before Craig gets home:

Finally, here’s a picture of my folks and the birthday cakewreck. It makes me happy to see them smiling.

My Dad’s 83rd birthday was this weekend, which in itself is quite an achievement, I figure.

I was stuck about what to draw for his card — surely not another flat cartoon of him in his wheelchair — so I stopped for a moment and thought about some happy memory I could portray.

I immediately flashed back to a lake somewhere in Ontario, where Dad was pointing out fossils in the rocks. No matter the subject, when I was a kid I could ask him any question about the world and he always had the answer. I thought he was brilliant.

This, of course, was also the occasion for my next cakewreck — this time a chocolate cake with cocoa-avocado frosting (better than it sounds) and a peanut butter caramel drizzle (which didn’t thicken and just soaked in, but at least tasted good).

What we didn’t eat at dinner Saturday evening, I brought to the home yesterday, and we shared it with the staff. Everyone seemed to like it — so there’s another bit of food activism: “Vegan food isn’t lifeless, and is more than tofu.”

My Comics Club friend Tyler perfected the image with a few subtle finishing touches:

In related news, I’ve found a place that sells supplements for dogs (Vecado) and provides recipes for making your own dog food. (The commercial bags of kibble are way too expensive — like two to three times the price of regular food).

I’ve also got a dehydrator and am trying to work out how best to make sweet potato chews (I mummified the life out of the last batch; Doug wouldn’t eat them).

So I hope to finally transition Doug to being a plant-based doggo. Despite bone-headed comment sections (“Dogs are carnivores! How do I know this? Because I’m insisting on the internet!”), dogs have been omnivores eating our scraps for about 30,000 years, and it seems Doug can get everything he needs with real food and the right supplements. He’ll also not be subjected to the same needless Standard American Diet diseases humans get — which are, apparently, what kills most dogs, too.

I’ve felt out of integrity about the food issue since we got Doug. Technically, I wouldn’t buy animal-derived food when I could help it, but that’s just abdicating responsibility.

Fingers crossed I can find a solution that isn’t too expensive, too much work, and that Doug will enjoy. Given how much he always wants our food, I figure he won’t miss the kibble.

Hopefully I can get this implemented before Craig gets home so there’s a routine and he won’t have to figure out what to do with this stuff.

And, finally, I reworked my website last night, since switching to Apple stuff meant I lost access to the Windows program I used before to create my site. Hopefully everything still works, and naturally I want to redo bits — like the front page.

My lovely Edinburgh friend Wendy and I are working through this snowy day, tackling side-by-side the blocks in our personal passion projects.

For me, today was going to be about working on the script for my comic, but the depth and honesty of my conversations with Wendy made me see that the reason I wasn’t working on the story is that I hated the way my drawing looked after the first panel.

She suggested that I practice drawing the characters over and over. So I did, and I slowed down to do better roughs than the too-rough, too-loose ones I’d done for those pages.

I worked on that, and — breakthrough! Now what I see on-screen matches the feel of what I did on paper. This is new territory, and I need practice; I can’t just jump to product.

Wendy and I have also been down in the mines of Clip Studio Paint, the program I use to do all my digital drawing. She’s figured out one quarter of it, I’ve figured out the other (half is still The Realm of Mysteries), so we’re able to geek out about all the specifics, but we’ve also shared gifts of really helpful shortcuts and solutions.

I just dashed out through the snow to the grocery store, and now we’re set to make coffee and tea, put our heads down, hide out, and bash through our projects.

I rarely repost anything, but this is just too close to home not to memorialize it somehow. I must have this conversation at least once a week.