Thoughts at Midnight
I’m staying up late on a weeknight, on purpose.
Trying to figure out how to juggle an increasingly-serious relationship, a full-time job, and the writing and software development I want to do has been giving me fits lately. I don’t want to give any of it up, either, so I’m turning to one of my idols for the grim meathook realities of the situation.
Despite that last line, no, I’m not talking about Hunter Thompson, though he was pretty fabulous.
The people I idolize these days are people who do their own thing - who make a living creating something they care about. Independent software developers, webcomic creators, indie musicians selling MP3s on the web. The man I’m talking about tonight is Dave Kellett. Dave is one of the authors of How To Make Webcomics, and he gets to draw a comic strip every day for his bread and butter. As described on an episode of the HtMW authors’ podcast (available here, at webcomics.com), Dave did his strip for eight years while rocking a full-time day job at Mattel before the strip reached the point - due to popularity and its creator’s business acumen - that it could support him by itself.
So how did Dave, married, with a day job and a commute that was no doubt several times longer than mine (he lives in Los Angeles), produce a strip a day for eight years? Determination, and less sleep than is perhaps recommended. He found the most-productive time to put into his art came after friends and family went to bed, and tackled the strip late at night before going to bed and getting up bright and early the next morning to go to work.
I’m starting to think that, if I want to get as much done as I want to, I’m going to have to embrace my natural tendency to stay up late and turn it to doing something productive.
So tonight I started writing at ten or so, and finished a short story I’d been neglecting for a few weeks. Then, I’ll admit, I dawdled by adding all my computer games to Delicious Library, before settling in and writing this post. What can I say? I wanted to wait until midnight to proclaim my new commitment.
So, work life, personal life, and now this life. Being a wordsmith for a living isn’t going to happen without sacrifice. It’s not surprising to me that sleep is the first thing I’d drag trembling onto the altar.