This post is really just an update on what has been happening around me and how the progress of my latest projects are going. Yes, I have are that is in the works. No, I don’t have a timeframe of when it will be done.
A lot has been happening in my world that leaves me little time to work on my actual art, yet at the same time I am still working on things that I truly love. I think it is a balance of work, life, love, and fun that truly gives a fulfilling life, and lately I have been favoring some over the others. The problem though is when things start to blend together, and those lines become blurred with what you are actually doing.
For example, as a software developer by trade I have been hard at work on Scrapy Cluster, which is an open source distributed web crawling platform developed under my current company’s wing. For the first iteration of it released in May of 2015, I had been working on and using it for almost 6 months in order to get it into a public release. This work was done primarily in direct support for our needs at the time.
Now as I continue to work on Scrapy Cluster, the needs of my company have shifted and I work full time on other products. Not wanting to give up on the project because I see so much more potential, I continue to work on it here and there whenever I can which consists of hours sometimes outside of work – for fun. I don’t see anyone else in the web scraping realm that is doing what SC can, so I work hard to continue to push and make a better product. SC 1.1 is leaps and bounds ahead of the initial release, but it still has a long way to go and a lot of my time is dedicated towards that effort.
The main project I have been working on over the past year has also been a decent commute away, leave by 7:30 or 8, get home around 6:30, and by the time you make dinner, say hello to the girlfriend, or just try to relax, it could be 8 or 9pm! What good is it to begin working on my drawing when I only have 30 mins or an hour? Why not relax and have a beer.
Luckily that project is mostly completed, but coming back home to my current company gives me even more responsibility – and I don’t remember a time anymore that I haven’t worked less than 40 hours in a week. IST Research is growing by leaps and bounds and I am extremely thankful to be apart of it, which makes me work even harder in order for us to succeed.
Did I also mention family, friends, vacations, cookouts, parties, birthdays, football games, vineyards, festivals, concerts, and who knows what else? I don’t remember a time in my life where I have been so damn busy, but sometimes I miss those lazy days where I could get up in the morning and have literally nothing to do – I could sit around and draw for a couple hours, play video games, not worry about work, go ride my skateboard around my apartment complex, and just do everything I wanted to do on my own schedule without a care in the world.
Luckily, the amazing people over at RaveNectar helped me add DYSWIS to their shirt collection, and I will be rocking it all this Fall. Makes me want to get back into the swing of things! Unfortunately, the drawing I started back in April collects dust, my playstation is used mostly for late night netflix, and my skateboard sits out on my porch rusting away outside. That drawing will get done at some point, I would say it will be the most complex piece I have done yet. The major coloring alone I projected only 20 hours worth of work, with another 20 for prep work before the coloring, and a final 10-15 hours once the major coloring is done. In reality that isn’t that much time, but takes a while when I only have one or 2 hours every couple weeks to work on it.
I guess this post may come off as a sombering reflection, but in reality there are so many new things I love and enjoy it really is just a reflection of how my life has progressed and changed. I would bet anyone reading this could say the same thing about themselves five years ago compared to today, about how their life has changed in this way or that. Maybe I’m wishing for more hours in a day, more days in a week, more weeks in a year, or more years in a lifetime. It’s a crazy world out there and I’m just trying to make my mark the best I can.
