Blog 4-1-16 – The Good and the Bad

Hello again. I’m Austin Smith from the Dragon Funnies (dragonfunnies.com), Art Supply Critic (artsupplycritic.com), and Dragon Co. (dragoncompany.org) Blogs. And I have finally and unfortunately reached the point where work, social obligations, sickness, and just life in general have rendered me unable to keep up with maintaining my web endeavors. Over the past few weeks I have failed entirely to keep the deadlines I have set for myself on all three of these Blogs. And with more than 3 years of not missing more than a day that is a huge blow to me.

I will not give up on posting to these sites. And in fact I can see the crest of the mountain where I can go back to the normal maintenance of them. It is disheartening for me to still have this problem even after I have streamlined so much of my content. But it is still just a hobby for me, and it is a hobby I will have to “leave” on this side of the mountain and come back for once I have brought everything else to the top.

The real announcement here is, I will be suspending my posting schedule in April. That doesn’t mean things won’t be posted. It just means there will be no schedule. I will finish what I can when I can and then review my situation in May. If everything goes as planned (and things, contrary to how it seems, tend to go as planned, just not on schedule), I will catch up through all of these days by the time I am done. So the amount of content in the end will be the same, but will be posted in bursts rather than daily.

Until that is done there is quite a bit still on the site to enjoy, and I will still be showing my art and books in a gallery here in Alpine Texas from April 1st to 10th. There will be a lot of photos and maybe a few videos from that. And I will be working on a way to get some of the really cool new stuff I made for the show out and available on my site.

-Austin.

On Deadlines

Too much bluffing will make you show it,

Too much pressure will make you blow it.

-Guy Clark

By: Austin Smith

I love Blogging, and writing in general, and doing things. I’ve never turned and said to a person ” Man, you know what I hate. Doing stuff!”. But I’m also terrible at getting stuff done. I have so much to do and never end up doing it all. Like yesterday, I had three goals, and I got them all done… in the two hours before midnight.

That’s what I’m going to talk about, deadlines. People just do better with deadlines. And the ability to force yourself to meet a deadline is an awesome skill. Like right now, I’m forcing myself to get something done on friday before eight. Friday was my choice, eight was my friends’ choice. It’s not like I have to get anything done, but I want to. I could just not go out and do stuff, but then I would have no friends.* I could also just forget about it all together, but then I would let myself down.

Deadlines help us get things done, they give us a feeling of necessity. I have not seen one person do worse with a deadline then without. Sometimes I haven’t seen them do better, but that’s because they suck. And it doesn’t need to be a fast and hard deadline either. Some people work better under pressure and prefer that, but others crack. The deadline doesn’t have to be the end, though. I could stop now and still have “met” my deadline. It isn’t necessary to put all the pressure on, just some, just enough to make you get it done. Telling someone that they have to finish something or someone’s going to die doesn’t help, and I can guarantee you that if you told one of the novelist crowd to write a book in a week or the world would end they couldn’t do it.

A lot of people will say that you need time to create the masterpieces that your ideas were meant to be, and if you can write ” War and Peace” fine by me, but from my experience the best ideas come when you need an idea. Sometimes they are forced and bad, but sometimes you can overwork something to death, too. The deadline never has to be the end of something, just ask George Lucas. Everything you do will get the time you owe it.

 

* Not that I have any anyway.