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Good lord, was that a chore. Someone once said “When you’re 95% done, you’re halfway there.” Dude knew what he was talking about. But it’s done. Finally up and available. Click, buy, etc. If you don’t want a silly overpriced physical copy, or if you have embraced the digital apocalypse, imma have a super cheap ibook version up in a few days weeks whenever I get around to it. Gotta go feed The Spawn.

This is exactly what it feels like to change a diaper.

Only if you screw it up, instead of getting crushed by a boulder, you’re peed on.

Born at 1:12pm on April 26, 2012. It’s been a little over 15 hours since she came.

I’m fairly certain I’ll never sleep again.

Seems like a fair trade.

My wife is resting in a hospital bed across the room, and I should probably be doing the same. Then again, this is the last day of my life as a not-parent. I feel like I should say something about it.

I won’t ever be the person I am tonight again. My priorities, my focus, my entire approach to life will change once my daughter is born.

What’ I’m saying is, this is sort of a Big Deal.

If she’s born tomorrow, that actual date won’t hold much importance to her. Beyond using it as proof of identity, I don’t attach any real emotional significance to what happened on June 20, 1983. June 20, 1996 was pretty great. And 2004 was epic. But it never occurred to me until tonight what that birth date must mean to my parents. To me, it’s cake and presents. To them, it’s the day their son was born.

That’s really pretty awesome, in the original sense of the word.

If the first chapter of my life was growing up, and the second was independence and marriage, tomorrow or the day after will clearly begin the third chapter. So, here we go. I expect the next post will be the one introducing my daughter.

End Chapter 2.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t pushed the “Owl Book” more, it’s because I’ve discovered it is fucking expensive to print color. It’s looking like this 24-page book is going to cost something like $15. That’s ridiculous, but it’s a whole other order of magnitude on the ridiculous scale when you realize my last book was 100 pages and sold for $10. What the hell do they make color ink out of anyway? Baby harp seals?

With shipping, it cost me an absurd amount to get my proof copy from Blurb. Something like $22, after coupons. The printing is gorgeous, and the quality is amazing, but I can’t even sell that to people “at cost” with a straight face. I found a way to shave at least $3 off the base price with Lulu, but for some reason their book upload process shits the bed when faced with CMYK files, and all my colors turned neon.

As interesting as my new book about a radioactive owl was, it’s not quite what I had in mind. As was evidenced by my stream of consciousness tweets.

Don’t worry, the neighbors don’t even have a cat. (any more)

So I converted everything, and now I’m going to sit here wondering what the hell the colors in this book will actually be when it shows up on my doorstep in a week. And then, if it looks as good as it should, I’ll put up a site and pimp this owl properly*.

If you people didn’t keep liking this stupid shit I do, I wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble.

Thanks for that.

*I am totally going to start a gameshow called Pimp this Owl Properly. Who’s with me?

So, how about them timely updates? Eh? EH?

Sorry everyone. I mean if any of you are still here. Since I haven’t bothered to do even a Friday Feature in like, a month.

Much of this is due to the insanity that is my life right now. The sad thing is that insanity makes for good reading, and so the blog should be bloggier than ever. Chock full of blogginess. It should be blogglutony up in here.

But things are happening at the speed of life these days, a velocity with is entirely outside of my control no matter what the odometer reads. And I feel it’s more important to live the experiences I’m having rather than spending time recording them. In a world of social media this is perhaps a revolutionary act. If so, hand me a torch, and point me towards the occupation.

At the end of last year, I started to get really burned out on the blog. I didn’t like the quality of the posts I was putting up, and I often found myself up until midnight trying to dash out a post just to meet my own arbitrary deadline. That seems dumb. Bad enough I submit the internet to my narcissistic ramblings, they should at least be well-written ones.

So it’s time to switch things up. This is still my home on the web, but blogging itself is no longer my creative focus. I want to do stuff that scares me slightly, and this format is too familiar. A few years ago I read this post on Wil Wheaton’s blog, and it mildly changed my life. I published my first book. Now I’ve published my second one. There are other firsts and seconds of things in the works that I won’t tell you about right now. But they’re coming. And right now, they’re way more interesting to me than making fun of myself in long-copy format.

I like that too, and I’m sure it will still happen. In fact, once the kid comes next week, I bet it will happen a lot. But forcing it to happen every Monday? No longer the goal.

The new goal is to keep creating stuff that excites me. And to make sure that the posts I write here are worthy of being read by you all.

PS- Did you read that part about me becoming a father in a week? If anyone needs me I’ll be over in the corner hyperventilating into a paper bag.

It’s interesting that the busier I am, the less time I waste spend talking about what I’m doing. I mean, I finished my second book over a week ago, and I’m just posting about it now. (I just dropped that shit like it was nothing, didn’t I? That’s how we experienced authors roll, bitches.)

The proof copy did just come in this evening, so that’s part of my excuse. I had it as an iBook on The Wife’s iPad as soon as the pages were done, but there’s something special about holding a physical copy. I don’t even know if I’m going to make the physical one available for purchase (all the color options I’m finding are laughably expensive) but I’m glad I have one for myself. Maybe I’ll do a limited run or something.

Why’d I do this, you ask? Because the only thing I could think of that would screw with people’s heads more than being “the guy who wrote the dick book” was to be “the guy who wrote the dick book and a children’s book.” Also, it was because I felt the need to do something really special for my unborn daughter, something that we could share even before I knew what she was like. But don’t tell people that. It’ll totally ruin my street cred.

So, maybe I’m a slightly more legitimate not-at-all-legitimate author now. That’s two books. Neither of which have what you’d call plot, exactly. And they’re surprisingly heavy on illustration for a guy who dropped out of graphic design in college, and claims to be a professional writer. But still, they’re books. I’m pretty proud of them.

Like I said, I’m not sure what the sales options will be like for this one. I see a few very minor tweaks I’d like to make to the physical version, and there’s been a surprising amount of talk regarding board-books and plush Little Owls. There’ll definitely be an iBook version out, but I need to make those tweaks first.

In advertising, the only time you work 9-5 is if it’s a twenty hour day.

I don’t drink coffee. I’ve never touched a Red Bull, Rockstar, or 5-hour. Once, in college, I tried half a Mountain Dew at 4am. I wound up running laps around campus for 20 minutes before passing out. In no way did this help me finish my figure drawing homework.

I have my own method for working through fatigue. It’s to work through fatigue. Just don’t think about it. Just keep going. Focus on the task ahead, not on how you feel. Keep on keeping on.

In other words, I treat marathon work sessions the way most people treat marathons. Find a rhythm. Keep moving. Don’t think about it.

After a decade of operating this way, it’s second nature. I rarely notice how tired I am, or the dull ache behind my eyes, or how even my skin hurts.

Unless someone reminds me.

“You look kinda tired.” That single sentence breaks the zen-like trance I’m reaching for. It brings the reality of the past 24 hours, the past weeks, the past months crashing down around me. I’m suddenly reminded that I would very much like nothing more than to pass out. This is, to put it mildly, inconvenient.

My life is currently akin to unicycling down the steep side of a volcano while juggling chainsaws and balancing a jenga tower on my head. It shouldn’t even be possible to begin with but it’s working so for heaven’s sake don’t say anything. It’s like pitching a perfect game. Don’t jinx that shit.

“Aren’t you tired?” people ask me. And suddenly I’ve left the unicycle 20 yards behind, I’m missing all the chainsaws and possibly a limb, there’s not a jenga block to be seen, and here comes the lava.

Of course I’m tired. I’m exhausted. Aren’t you? Isn’t everyone? But I’ve got it under control if you would just, for the love of all that’s holy and the Adobe Creative Suite, not mention it.

Now hand me that chainsaw. I’ve got to get back on this unicycle before the jenga tower falls off my head again.

Really, I’m not. I am, however, working on 4 side projects (one of which is nearing completion, which is super exciting), doing a significant amount of overtime at work (some of which is also nearing completion, which is also super exciting), and frantically attempting to make life ready for my offspring (which is also nearing completion, and OH MY GD I WILL NEVER BE READY FOR THIS.)

Also in that time, I think I’m supposed to do my taxes. This is gonna hurt.

This is exactly what it looks like when I play. See?

Well, the motion-blurs and flames don’t really show up in that shot, but you get the idea.