Hello 2026!

And.

Drat.

Man plans. God laughs.

I’d planned to start the year with a listing of my current projects and notes saying where I was in the process of completing them. Every week I’d post an update and maybe a little art. Unfortunately, on Sunday, December 28th, I did something that makes using my right arm really painful. I don’t really know what it was. My right shoulder had been giving me trouble for a couple of months but it had seemed minor. The hurt wasn’t constant. There were a few positions that I couldn’t sit or lie in because then the shoulder hurt. I could deliver mail. I could draw. The initial discomfort got less as the days went by. Then, on the 28th, I spent an hour propped up in bed with a few pillows talking to my brother on my cell phone. Things seemed fine until I finished the call and tried to do something else. Suddenly my right shoulder hurt. A lot.

I called in sick on Monday. I went to urgent care on Tuesday. I got prescriptions for pain killers and muscle relaxants. Since then I’ve seen another doctor, been to the Emergency Room and had a round of acupuncture. I couldn’t draw for a couple of weeks. Sitting at my desk and typing was too uncomfortable for me to do anything with this site/newsletter. Pretty much anything that required using my right arm became something to be avoided. Embarrassingly, that meant that y’all who are subscribers got unfinished drafts of newsletters that I had prescheduled for publication. Sorry about that. I’ve taken down those posts. Revised and updated versions will appear over the next few weeks.

The acupuncture seems to have helped somewhat. As do the meds. Not enough for me to feel comfortable going to back delivering mail but enough that I’m able to type this. I’ve been able to work on art. A little. I’m waiting on my insurance company agreeing with my doctors that an MRI is necessary. My doctors would like one of those so they can better determine what my damage is and, therefore, how best to treat it.

I’d originally intended to post updates on Thursdays because the first newsletter was going to post on January 1st, a Thursday, and I wanted the posts to come out predictably. Today being Monday I’m now going to post on Mondays.

So …

Let’s see if we can get this mess organized, shall we?

I’ve got a bunch of projects “in progress”. There’s a part of me that wants to list every project that I’ve started, thought about or have in some stage of partial completion. But the more projects I have listed, the harder it will be to see that I’ve made progress on any of them. So, this morning, I’m just listing the projects that I’m actively working on rather than all the projects I want to have finished in this lifetime. And I’m giving myself a bit of a boundary – I won’t add a “new” project to my list until one of the current projects is finished.

This week I’m just listing the list. I’ll document progress next week. (Hopefully.)

Goblin Alpha Seven (comic) – 40 pages
John Bell’s Oz Book (illustrations)
Mighty Nizz: Getting Dressed (comic) – 18 pages
Mighty Nizz: Tarot Deck (tarot deck) – 78 cards
Skookworks Webstore – 248 designs
Observations (comic) – 8 pages
Sunk Cost Elegy (comic) – 120 pages
The Surrilana Depths (comic) – (200 pages)
Daughter of Spiders (illustrated short story series) – number of stories, word count and number of illustrations to be determined.

Yikes.

Happy New Year!