Gallery: 2019 Daily Sketches 121-150
Another thirty of last year’s Daily Half Hour Sketches, now in one handy gallery.
Story Seed #52
A Stone in the River
Most crime fighters and/or superheroes are reactive. Mostly they take action after a crime has been committed either to bring villains to justice or, on the more antihero side, get revenge for the victims. There are a few stories of characters or organizations that stop crimes before they occur, they catch criminals before they can become criminals, they punish the guilty before they can be guilty of a crime. Usually the organizations manage this by either having members with precognitive abilities or computers with the same abilities. Eunice Stone can’t see the future. She simply knows how to read people. If she spends enough time around someone she’ll be able to predict how that person is likely to react in any situation.
She doesn’t see good or bad people. Eunice sees life as a game. She sees human beings as mostly unaware entities trapped in massive systems, reacting to outside stimuli and stuck in lives that, too often, spiral further out of control. So, as a child, Eunice set out, not to fix the systems – she knew that was too big a task – but to redirect the people who are trapped in them. A suggestion here. A secret favor there. Redirecting an angry man’s attention at someone who deserves his wrath rather than the family he’s been taking it out on. Showing the unrepentant thief better targets than his neighbors.
Eunice becomes a fixer. The smarter and more aware people around her, both criminals and legitimate businesspeople, notice what she does and try to enlist her in improving their situations. And she does. Mostly to the advantage of everyone in a situation. She makes connections. She points out solutions. She goes around her clients selfish desires and finds points them at satisfying ends. Eunice knows that there is always a win win scenario.
And for those who refuse to play her way? Those who can only win by making someone lose? Eunice will take them out of the game.
Recommendation
The Kickstarter for Growing Up / Overnight ends on the 30th. Please support this project! Thank you!
Local News
Life at the Post Office has been tiring. Last week was my Long Week, six days in a row, every day with overtime. There are a lot of carriers on vacation at the moment so a lot of routes need coverage. I volunteer for a desired route at the beginning of my shift in order to avoid being mandated to carry a route I don’t particularly like. This will make for a larger paycheck but currently I’m only noticing a more tired body.
I’ve read the news about the Postmaster General’s sabotage of USPS. I haven’t noticed any unique new problems. Upper management is doing more micromanaging but they do that every few months anyway so, if I hadn’t been hearing about the new PMG, I’d just assume regular management stupidity. Being a letter carrier is a job. I’m past the point of feeling any particular loyalty to a job. Jobs don’t love the people who do them and upper management in most businesses will make decisions that poorly affect the people who have to follow the new directives. If upper management consulted the workers before implementing a new procedure that would be unusual.
So I do my best to put my emotional and creative energy into activities where I can have some fun and some control. This last week Sarah has been good at reminding me to get some drawing in after work, regardless of how tired I am. Just 15 minutes can improve my mood.
In the mornings I generally do computer work. Photoshop. Writing here. I have now have two online stores. One at Zazzle. Another at Redbubble.
The first week that I was putting together my Zazzle store I made a lot of products. Unfortunately they didn’t all become publically available quickly. My first 29 items appeared promptly enough. Then, from Saturday to Thursday, nothing loaded. I looked at the Zazzle forums and checked with customer service and got that slow load times during busy periods could be expected. By Wednesday I was feeling a bit itchy so I decided to check out the other POD sites that I’d seen recommended.
I started setting up a store at Redbubble. I’d only set up a profile but not loaded any art when Zazzle’s public links resolved and the 50 products I’d been waiting on became available. So I continued making stuff at Zazzle. I decided to just make one or two things a day. Partly so that they’d load in a timely fashion and partly so I would spend some time figuring out best marketing practices. And I got a commission to do illustrations for an RPG supplement about pirates.
Redbubble is persistent though. I got emails reminding me to finish setting up my store. So, what the hell, I figured I might as well have two stores, one Zazzler, one Redbubbler. Zazzle had been recommended as a general, less focussed site, Redbubble as an artist focused site. There’s definitely a difference between them.
With Zazzle, you choose a product – a cup, a t-shirt, a puzzle – upload an image and match it to the product. With Redbubble you start by uploading an image and the site helpfully puts it on EVERYTHING. For a few of their products that means you have to do some repositioning to make the image look good. Most of the time the fit is great. Zazzle seems to be the best platform for smaller images, the sort of things that I’ve been putting on cups and mugs. Redbubble seems to be a better platform for larger, more complicated images. So those are good reasons to maintain two stores.
Zazzle provides code that lets me post individual items or collections to this website or other social media sites. That’s cool.
Redbubble lets me put a sample store onto this website. Check it out –
Thank you for dropping by. I hope that your week provides you with more happy moments than otherwise. Look out for each other. See you next week!
