This image is a little different from the stuff you usually see me post. It's a fat load of writing. The paper is 140# Strathmore cold pressed watercolor paper. It's got a nice texture, handles a variety of media well, and survives abuse. It's also thick enough that alcohol inks don't soak through too easily. IN this case I've covered the ENTIRE left hand page with one of those fat red marks-a-lot poster markers with a inch wide nib. The page smelled incredibly bad for days. I don't recomend this treatment if you don't like the small of sharpies.

After that I used a variety of pens to write on the surface. I also applied watercolors over the top. On the right hand page I wrote the word red with the poster marker and then used rubbing alcohol to blend the edges. After that I added yellow watercolor and then wrote.

These are simple pages but were fun and effective.

Are you interested in doing a guest blog post for Technique Tuesday or a Thursday Review? Hit me up with an email (leslie.herger@gmail.com) pitching your post and I’ll get back to you ASAP letting you know if I think it’ll fit. (Hint keep it AJ related and avoid pink…) My goal is to have one guest Technique Tuesday post per month and maybe the same with the reviews. For reviews I’d love to have someone who has a book I haven’t read or a product I don’t use review it for the blog. Again send me an email and I’ll get back to you.

Funerals are not easy for anyone involved; family, friends and acquaintances are all grieving in their own manner. I’ve decided that when I go I want to be cremated with a small ceremony for my family and friends. It would be against everything I believe (or don’t) in to have a pastor, reverend or rabbi saying a prayer over my body. I’d like my family and friends to get together in one of my favorite places and have few drinks and tell stories, maybe cry a bit. Then I’d like my family to scatter my ashes over a few of my other favorite places. The headstone can rest at the family farm at the cemetery on the hill.

Going to a funeral should rightly make you realize your own mortality and consider, carefully, how you are leading your own life. On the ride home Christie and I discussed our options. Things straight people take for granted we have to weigh and get a lawyer involved so that our opinions are made clear, legally, for anyone who may question them. Massachusetts has, for now, gay marriage but we have not yet married and should that law fall to the religious right wing we’ll still need to be sure our will and wishes are in order. The prospects of not having all this in order are frightening and clear. I’d have to fight to keep my house, fight to keep our assets and in general do a lot of junk that most people take for granted.

So while my heart is heavy for my friend and her family my mind is racing considering the aspects of what we need to do in case something tragic happens to us. I hope to not have another dear friend cry in my arms and sob the words “I just don’t know what I’m going to do without him/her.”  

You can get the new issue of the zine at this link!

The zine will be up tomorrw(Saturday) evening. I had a funeral to go to today that was not expected.

After my post about self doubt I sat down with my notebook and pen and wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote hard honest words and it felt good. Today, I did the same I sat and I wrote more difficult honest words. Reading the false prophet garbage that guy was spewing made me realize I want to take this book to a different place, I want it to have more meaning than “Buy my book and you too can make art full time!” or “Buy my book and make my style of art journal.” That’s not what this is about. It’s about my pitfalls, the dumb shit I’ve done, the dark stuff as well as the bright sunshine of what is good.

The last 2 installments I’ve written, close to another 5000 words, have been about forgiveness and how I’ve given myself permission to forgive and love. It’s funny, some of us walk through life and that’s normal behavior for others of us (me included) we have to learn that forgiveness and love are real and powerful things, they aren’t tools. Well, they are but not in the way I once thought.

As I write this stuff I feel like I’m making it more real, in my head it’s been floating mumbo jumbo, a sort of loose collection of thoughts and beliefs. Things I’ve written about in my journals and felt too self conscious to share. Now I’m writing it down, still self conscious, but I think I’m sharing this more for me than for the potential readers. Writing this has been as healing as it was when I first had the half baked thoughts way back when. I’m sure not all of my thoughts are new, but they are about as real as it gets. My words are honest and raw. Some of it is hard to put to paper, and will be hard to transcribe to the computer. I’m dedicated to it.

I read a lot, maybe not the stuff I should read like more Jeanette Winterson and other good novels, but stuff like the recent blog posts by various and assorted entrepreneurial types. You know the guys that say things like “I make a six figure income, and let me teach you how. You can do it if you buy my book for only 2 payments of $29.99!” I get sucked in by the “Rah! Rah! Rah!” tone of their blogs and the implied chant of “You can dooooo it!”

I end up printing a copy of what they claim is their most recent book, but its really a 30 page introduction to their book that ends with 5 pages of why I should buy their book. The entire 30 page diatribe is about what the book will contain. Things like I will learn “How to find out if your passion can make ends meet” and “How to be a career changer.” The text is invariably filled with buzzwords stolen from other entrepreneurial writers, most who are many times better than the one who’s text I’m currently reading. Additionally they will mention, repeatedly that you can “leverage social media to do your marketing.” Throughout the whole thing I groan at the schlocky writing, the Rah! Rah! Rah! tone, the blatant theft of other people’s ideas, and the insane over use of buzzwords.

Yet I read along, because YES! I want to leave my DayJob, and if this guy who can’t edit his own writing (15 pages with 10 typos, not to mention the glaring errors in grammar) and lifts ideas from others can do it, well, damn it, so can I!

It also brings to the forefront of my mind that as I sit here and tap away on my keyboard traps that I do not want to fall into in my book. I don’t want that Rah! Rah! Rah! tone in my book nor do I want to seem to shout “You can dooooo it!”  Shit, I’m still half way there. I still have my DayJob, the closer I get to asking for that sabbatical the more frightened I get of not having a tether to reality, a paycheck, and health insurance.

I think that what these entrepreneurial books (if you can even call a 30 page pdf a book) lack is that real sense of fear. I feel like I’m leaving a blood trail for the next predator to come along; and pretty soon the bank will take my house, Nissan will come after my car, and the state will fine me for not having health insurance. While none of these are likely to come to pass, the fact remains that these are the worries that I have, and I’m sure they are the worries that others have as well. I’m not going to tell you that these are worries I’m able to squash down, these live in the forefront of my mind, constant nagging and painful.

In my mind I also have a choir of people singing, “You can’t make this work.” “You will fail.” “You will be miserable.” That’s real folks. That’s the reality of what is going on in my head. I worry, it’s what we type A personalities do.  Add to that the unknown of job prospects for my significant other and well, it’s a recipe for anxiety.

With all that being said there is a lot of positive going on too. I’ve got a lot of ideas for classes, things to do with AJ Ning, we’re working hard on the zine; and then I’ve got this whole book idea. I’ve got all this positive going on and the chorus still goes on in my head and my inner critic still tells me that I suck.

The whole point of this emo post is that I hope that I keep the book real, add parts where I write about my crushing self doubt, my appalling lack of clarity, and my inability to move forward. All that is what is real, not just the “Rah! Rah! Rah!” and the “You can dooooo it!”