My Journey Through Work Ethic (How I Overcame False Expectations)

This week marked an important milestone in production on Adamsville. I passed the actual haflway point on the book. I sort of took some time to reminisce on this moment. I jokingly posted on Twitter that I was a bit teary eyed. It sounds corny, but it was true. A lot has come and gone over the last five years since this book first crept into mind. The biggest thing of which I think, if I am being honest, has been an attitude of maturity.

When I first began the process of making a proposal for this book, I had all sorts of impatient tendencies and bad expectations. My wife had just given birth to our first daughter and I spent days and nights toiling longing to be home and hoping some magic bullet would just come into the young artistic hands of my pencil and breathe a career into me. When my packet for submission for literary agents went out into the world and I waited for months looking for a reply from them to tell me whether they wanted my book, I lost sleep over it. I spent my whole day wondering and wondering and wondering. It was a perpetual stream of infatuation with a career that I longed to have since I was in third grade and discovered I could make comics for myself. In many ways I had fooled myself into thinking I was ready for this step.

And then my feelings were validated, so it seemed, when I landed an agent. This was in early 2009. That year was a crash course in how the publishing industry works.  I visited NYC to see my dad and got to meet my agent.  I chummed it up about the industry.  I learned a ton about what goes into this and really was brought back down to earth. Ultimately the proposal didnt go through and I didn’t find a publisher. I had never been more passionate about a project in my life. I love these characters and this world so much and having to reconsider my whole path was hard.

It’s a difficult thing when you care so much about a particular thing in your life and it’s as fickle as work can be. You ultimatley have no control over the outcome of the success of your project. It’s a hard reality. It’s an even harder reality to realize that comics just don’t make a ton of money and if you have a family and home, paying bills comes first. So when reality and your passions mix… well it can ultimately devastating.

Or is it?

I took some time to really reassess my goals last year when I quit my webcomic Kevin and the Light of Destiny when I came to grips with the truth that it wasn’t going to be a realistic project I could finish in a reasonable amount of time. So I took my time and focused on what I wanted in life.

I’ve been blessed with great friends and colleagues in comics, most of whom are people I am a huge fan of who take their time to offer their words of encouragement. Josh Ulrich, Stephen McCranie, Christopher Wharton, Kazu Kibuishi, Amy Kibuishi, Mike Maihack and Wes Molebash were all sort of front and center and a sounding board as I wrestled through things. Mostly I hope I didn’t come across as too much of a whiner. But they were all really helpful in reminding me to work hard and love what you do.

Bobby Chiu, one of the most positive artists out there, is fond of saying that hard work trumps talent. I sort of got sad when I realized that I spent, like, FOUR YEARS, talking about, and dreaming about and pretending to be something I wasn’t: this graphic novelist… Who has never really finished a graphic novel. Kind of sad. You know, I’m also a Christian and one of the most popular things Christians like to talk about, is God’s will for you life. You know… What is my destiny type stuff. And I believe in that. I believe in it a lot, because I don’t believe my life is an accident or we are all flying through space and God just flung the universe into existence without any care for us. My life, your life, has a purpose. The downside to this though in our thinking is this idea that destiny just finds us. Magically. You won’t find that. The only admonition in the Bible regarding work, is god blesses hard work. Kind of earth shattering. I know. Seems simple enough.

But I give this story because I had to go through a radical shift in my mind. It was HARD! HARD! There is no easy way through this. You have to work for your meal. It is a very rare person who just inherits this great career from next to no hard work. And their longevity is questionalble.

So the moto around the house hasn’t been that I hope my book sells and ticker tape parades begin. My moto has been finish the book. FINSH. THE. BOOK. That I can control. That I can do. That I can be excited about. And I will work to earn my meal.

So what have you been wanting but not putting forth the effort on? What can you do about your dreams?