NPWIL 101

NPWIL episode 101: the beginning

So what’s been going on with me?

After finishing Opplopolis, I returned to my painting career to find that it had completely foundered. Anyone can be an artist, but to be a professional artist you have to constantly “put yourself out there.” I had not been “out there” in nearly a year at that point. Worse, when you don’t live “there,” getting yourself “out there” can be a pretty expensive enterprise. I needed to make some money, so I entered the world of retail management.

Now, we’re all old as the hills here, and I’m sure all of you have left the world of retail behind long ago, so sorry for opening old wounds in those of you who know what I’m talking about. Without going into too much detail, after a series of misadventures, I found myself the general manager of one of the two corporately-owned bookstores in a small college town. I was also the only manager. Just me and a bunch of college kids. When the store was open, I was on edge, and even when the store was closed, air currents would set the alarm off almost every other night. It was like one of those experiments where they prove that IQ is affected by stress by making people take tests with constant loud noises going off at uneven intervals. I could feel myself getting stupider.

Still, I hung in there. Hunted for an assistant manager right up into December when we got too busy for interviews. Two out of three of my keyholders got sick for the full two weeks before Christmas, which meant I was there open to close almost every day. As it turned out, I managed a book store, so, the day after Christmas, I got word that the company was shutting us down.

The subsequent going-out-of-business sale was a nightmare rarely seen in the world of retail (sort of like three weeks of Black Fridays), but it was made more tolerable by having an end date. And then it was over. I was left with… not much, but I had paid off my debts and I had a small severance package. I was ready to start again.

Only, my brain was fried. I had so many things I wanted to do, but I was gripped with extreme executive dysfunction. All that time being overwhelmed by things I had to react to made it impossible to initiate things due to the innate fear of being pulled away.

I’m telling you all of this to explain that I did not plan on making a sequel (prequel) to NPWIL. This is not one of the projects I was looking forward to. I wanted to do something new and weird. The thing is, I’m trying to recover myself right now, and what I need is something structured and familiar. Even so, making just this episode was a struggle. I rewrote this a dozen times — redrew practically every panel multiple times changing next to nothing. I’ve got a long way to go before I get back to where I was. This is an expository episode, though, and my hope is that in the coming weeks (this is a Monday thing now) the characters will wake up again and start to make things a little easier.