I sold my camera on eBay and bought a wee pocketable one for taking spontaneous drawing-reference photos. As my friend Margaux says, “The best camera is the one you have with you.”

I’d been contemplating buying a smartphone, but, thankfully, am not in a position to enter into a contract (i.e. leaving far before 24 months would be up). And, really, when I thought about it, all I wanted was a camera on my person. I don’t want to be any more connected, and I don’t want to drop a bag of money on something I don’t really need. The iPad works just fine as a mobile office. The lack of precise pen input is annoying, but the new Jot Touch pen works decently — for colouring; I still could never draw with it.

So, because I had a camera with me, I’ve been able to catch a few things I noticed around town…

The creatures that live around Wick are strange. We’ve noticed slugs crawling up the front of the house at night, like they’re following a line to some destination:

You can’t see them here, but the slaters (AKA potato bugs, wood lice) crawl up there with them. It’s like a party for all the beasties nobody likes.

And the birds pick moss out of the gutters. I have no idea why. They’re just disposing of it, like it offends them. Maybe bugs live underneath.

I got an e-mail from my client this morning outlining a whole book he’d written that he wants me to illustrate. This came out of the blue for me, but his timing was excellent: I’ve been feeling a creative itch lately, so this is a dream project. He’s going to get the Marketing team to clear my schedule for the rest of the month so I can work on it.

Yesterday, my schedule was light, so I took the day to answer all my e-mails and line up my projects, then… I kind of lost the plot. Even though I keep all these lists of things I want to do, sometimes when I’ve actually got some spare time, the pressure is too much and just drives me crazy.

How handy, then, to have this come along — a creative outlet without the stress of feeling I have to express every serious and funny thing that’s ever occurred to me, all at once.

The book I worked on with Dan earlier this year isn’t out yet — November is the latest launch date I’ve heard — and now we’ve got this other one starting up. I touched up a few of those illustrations the other day and was struck by the evolution in my cartooning style since then. It’s probably imperceptible to anyone else, but I see it. So here I was expecting I might have to go back in and revise some of those drawings, but Dan’s already onto the next project. I like that: Just get it out there rather than tinkering with it forever.

Weirdly, this book may leapfrog the other and come out first. Whatever, I’m grateful this is happening!

I’m nearly halfway toward my 100-hours-of-drawing goal. I keep hitting these plateaux of thinking “Ugh, I have so much to learn. My stuff is shite,” yet still loving having this power to capture my experience on the page. Something about that feels magical, important, and deeply satisfying.

I’ve been reading volumes and volumes of James Kochalka’s American Elf, which I dismissed when I first saw it, but now think is a work of towering genius. In these daily comics, Kochalka forever captures such tiny quotidian details, really elevating comics to a kind of poetic meditation, as well as a powerful reminder to just bloody have fun in life. That this, here, really is what I want to do when I grow up.

We went with the family to the Commonwealth Games on Saturday. Glasgow was busy, but the zillions of Games volunteers and staff not only made everything go smoothly, they went about it in a really warm and familial way. I’ve heard of some logistical problems, and we had an issue with one of our tickets (it seemed to be double-booked), but generally everything was really well thought-out. I can’t imagine what it takes to pull something off on that scale.

Getting tickets was a lottery in which you take whatever’s offered. We got the women’s weightlifting competition. I’m not a sports person in general, and this event was totally off my radar, so the last thing I expected was to be completely riveted through the whole show.

They call these “the friendly games”, and that was certainly true throughout this particular event. No matter who was on the stage, the whole crowd rooted for them to lift the weight successfully. Just seeing another human being try so hard at something, you can’t help but identify with them, and their nationality is immaterial.

The young English woman who won gold was cute and charming, and the Welsh woman — 35, a full 15 years older than the youngest competitor — was a crowd-pleasing personality who reminded me of k.d. lang. The silver went to a woman from Nigeria who, unfortunately, wore a very pissy expression throughout the medal ceremony (much as we’d seen the Scottish men’s swimming “poster boy” do when he only got silver to his teammate’s surprise gold win).

I just tried to do some sketches of the event, which didn’t come out very well — but hey, that’s what makes it practice, right?

I fell into the Uncanny Valley here, not quite drawing realistically, not quite cartooning. Drawing specific people is a bitch. I keep finding myself doing it, but it’s not really my thing. And the page wrinkled early on while I was erasing. Ah well…

The ceremony warmed up as it went along — or, rather, got less frenetic and became more grand. They added in a UNICEF appeal, which felt like a cheeky bit of enlightened hijacking, since these spectacles can often feel like a vast sum of public money being burnt every couple of years.

Still, though, I felt uncomfortable about the tired old “skinny brown African children” appeal being trotted out — partly because it’s condescending, partly because there are children here in Scotland whose families are forced to go to food banks, and partly because, as I’m sure so many other people feel, I’m burnt out on the “Let’s solve this forever” appeal, then everything reverts to banking and debts and war — as typified by the presence of Her Majesty the military figure and her arms-dealing government.

My biggest concern, wincing then relaxing in turns throughout this show (“Please don’t be awful! Oh, thank God that part was only half-awful. Hey, that bit was beautiful!”) was that people would draw a line from this presentation to the Scottish Independence referendum in September, as if a weak, twee, or clumsy bit of sports-theatre had anything to do with whether or not we’re fit to — or deserve to — run a more just country for ourselves.

This is not entirely true: I used to sit at Table 4.

My lettering pen has a nasty tendency to let loose a blob of carbon ink from time to time. I’m hoping a new pen body will fix that, ‘cause using a white pen after the fact doesn’t really fix it, and it just gets worse when I put a wash over it.

God, I enjoy doing this. Can this be what I do when I grow up?

I included the second page of yesterday’s diary comix after all (which is the first comic here).

Friday was a difficult day — I went kind of stir-crazy at home, which carried over into Saturday. All is well, though. The first comic was no big deal, but could be misunderstood, so maybe doesn’t belong here (not that I have criteria for deciding that, or even why I post things here in the first place).

This sketchbook is nearly full, and I want to publish it. This living memoir stuff is tricky, though, since it implicates other people. If it were just me, I’d spill my guts everywhere; I just don’t care. But not everyone feels that way…

I worked on a big article for Strategic Coach yesterday, one that sprawled around and included a lot of different ideas — just barely pulling them together in the end. As I outlined and researched it, it grew arms and legs, and it wasn’t really on-point for what they talk about.

That was exhausting. It did, however, make me realize that I have a pretty good batting average for them: just about everything works out. Except this piece; I wrote to my project manager/editor and suggested we kill it.

So, to make it up to them, I pitched a comic strip series based on a conversation I had with Dan, the Coach’s owner, recently. I think it’s good, makes a clear, relevant point, and is concise, so hopefully they’ll go with that, and I’ll get to draw, too — which I’ve been doing lots of lately. Something about that is really bringing back those old summer vacations.

Funny how different eras in your life can feel like they’re closer to the present. The 1970s are definitely echoing right now. It’s nice, and it reminds me to enjoy the summer.

We drove down to the Central Belt for the weekend, visiting with Craig’s relatives who are over from Canada, and attending his niece’s fourth birthday party.

I drove much of the way down, then to and from our various destinations (like the Scottish Game Fair at Scone Palace  — the biggest collection of tweed and dogs I’ve ever seen). So I’ve finally broken through the last barrier: driving around the South, including the multi-lane roundabouts and the motorway.

The weekend really felt like summer. Maybe it’s because we had Canadian visitors, so I was conscious of being here, in Scotland, like it was a big vacation — because I knew it was for our visitors.

I’m back to work, though the relatives will be reaching us up here this coming weekend, so the summer holiday goes on. There’s a nice dynamic to this family: the kids are really well-behaved, but still very much their own people, full of energy. With just a word, the parents can reign it in, yet it doesn’t feel at all oppressive; it’s just a working relationship — loving and friendly, but still providing the structure to help the kids get on in the world later on by being appropriate and likeable. That’s the kind of parent I’d want to be.

Getting back to drawing practice this morning, I was a bit stumped. I drew some random things I wanted to work on (clouds and trees, a boat entering Wick Harbour), but there’s something lifeless about drawings I do just for the exercise of it.

I’m forever collecting work and ideas to inspire me, but when it comes time to draw I can get stuck. It’s oppressive, this idea, “Produce!” So I stopped, asked myself what I felt like doing, and…

It’s so much fun, being that kid in grown-up form, having the freedom and the skills to do whatever I want to. The trick is getting clear about what that is.