It’s another dose of slice-of-life, for what it’s worth. Every morning lately has been like this – trying to fix some broken old thing before it gets too hot and miserable to be outside. I usually don’t make it, and I won’t today either. I might as well replace the caliper boots on this bracket as well. They aren’t torn yet, but they are 22 years old. So that’s more time down the rabbit hole.

I made a mistake last week and ordered the rotors and pads for the 2 piston caliper instead of this single piston caliper, so that’s more time and money down the rabbit hole. I’m kicking myself a little for that one, but, no one bats a thousand. I couldn’t guess how many parts I’ve ordered over the years. This is the first time I’ve completely screwed the pooch. I’ve got the right parts now, so I should be able to get this done today.

Yesterday I watched a video about anime fans duking it out over the question of how many female protoganists there are in anime, which reminded me that, at some point, I’m likely to lose a significant percentage of the readers I have (however small that number is); and it would happen if I was this kind of person, or that kind of person, or the other kind of person. So I will try to break it to everyone gently – this isn’t a picture of my Prius in the service bay of a Toyota dealership. It’s a 22 year old Chevy 4X4 truck that has to go off-road, not for entertainment, but because I will freeze to death in the winter if I don’t cut firewood. I will still be cold, but I’ll live, and the water pipes won’t freeze up and burst.

And now I’d better get back on that brake job.

Thanks to the people who have been liking the comic lately (hopefully bots can’t do that yet), and to the person who bought OM-MINUS, Alpha and Beta. You are the first person to ever buy an album from me.

There are almost three OM-MINUS albums now. I’ll post more about that later.

I’ve been mulling this problem I have with funding my existence through my senior year of college. I’m not the kind of guy who can accept defeat. I can’t go back into a factory as a college drop out, with only one year left to go. I may not be able to force a factory to hire me as an engineer, or an intern. Perhaps I can drop down to being a part-time student, and do temp work for a while. It’s not the solution I want, but it’s not quitting.

What would have been fantastic is if the comic had continued to grow, and the site traffic had represented real interest; but site traffic plummeted after the 17th, and is now in double digits instead of quadruple digits. Before the Great Spike Event, traffic was even throughout the month. I was hoping the drop off only meant most readers had already been by the site, but that pattern would have shown up in previous months, and it isn’t there. So the slump appears to be a return to the real level of interest in the comic – which is not much.

I didn’t let myself get too excited when traffic started spiking, but still, it’s quite a hit to the ego.

If I had my way, the comic would replace my part time job while I finish college. I’d pencil the pages, and let the AI ink and color them. Magically, the comic would grow until it could be my full time job when I graduate, and I’d never step in a factory again. I’ve got the next chapter sketched out in my head. I’m going to hate it if I can’t get those ideas out there, and if what little audience I’ve built up is lost to inactivity. I’ve got no good solutions though.

I’ve come to one of those difficult inflection points in life. This should be a particularly triumphant moment where I’ve finished my engineering internship and am returning to college for my senior year, with the decision to leave my former employer fully and overwhelmingly justified. Consider this for a moment – the factory, at first, wasn’t going to humor my interest in moving from production to engineering at all. I was getting no response, the human resources woman clearly thought I was crazy and wasn’t even going to talk to me about it. She only responded when I put in my two weeks notice in and said I’m going to college to be an engineer, buh-bye. I was the only one in the company, besides two other people who needed to be on other jobs, who could operate a certain machine, so my leaving was a problem that got the plant manager’s attention. He tried to talk me into staying, but on their standard “take a class a semester and work your regular 12 hr day schedule” program. After 8 years of having every minute of every day spoken for, at 58 years old, I’d finally be able to get off the factory floor.

Compare that to the way things should have went down – get off the factory floor after two weeks, in less than a year (because I already had two years of college done) be working as an engineer (albeit, an intern); be a full-time engineer in two years. Not a bad move, huh?

But, I think the elephant in the room here is my age, and my work history as a freelance artist. If you’ve read this far, you probably think I have some value as an artist, and, at times, it’s been good to me. But, on a resume I guess I look like an “old failure” to the average HR person.

I had real good interactions with a couple companies at career day. I caught some good breaks there, the kind you would dream would happen. One of my classes toured two factories. At the end of the tours, there was an opportunity to hand off a resume. One factory was pitching a quality control job they were just opening up. I was the only one with resumes.

Not a single factory contacted me.

In one particularly difficult class, the Professor did after-exam reviews online. I was the only one who showed up. Ever. Apparently I was the best student in the class, at least at the time of the 2nd exam review.

Since I’ve been back to college, I’ve gotten an A in every class and have an overall A average.

Not a single factory contacted me.

I thought about working production over the summer, but I needed to hold onto the online job because its the only thing I can fit around a college schedule. That should have been o.k., but as that job went from start-up to sort-of established, it became harder and harder to make money with it. So I tried to add another one. When I passed their test, they had another test. But they messed that up and I’d have to take it again. I might, but they may be going away in a few days so that doesn’t feel like a good use of time.

Which means I’ve got to find another job, because the financial hits just keep on coming. I was fortunate to be able to fix my car and truck myself. That could have easily went over a thousand if I had to take them to a professional mechanic. But, my water heater needs to be replaced and I’m not going to get a break on that.

So now I’m at a point where, despite having a very successful junior year in college, I’m probably going to have to drop out again; and the end result is that I went backwards instead of forwards, and badly.

Well, I’ve got to go mow the lawn. That’s enough for one post, I’ll follow up later.

I’m trying to figure out how I can continue the comic, because I’d really rather be doing this than anything else. It’s getting late in life for me, and I don’t want to use the rest of it working for someone else. My art has withered on the vine for long enough.

It looks like July is going to close out around 13,500 unique visitors. Even if Awstats is exaggerating by 150%, that is still 5000 readers. There is not much fan feedback to confirm that is real interest though, but it doesn’t seem like something I should drop either. I’ve got some ideas for continuing this story. I need to get a scanner, maybe this process will be faster if I do the line art in pencil and use AI to ink and color it. Then we’d get colored pages. Sorry if that bothers people, but I doubt I’ll be able to make this a full time job just yet, and maybe not ever.

I’d almost forgotten why I wrote Yaoi Hokkaido –

Look at this quadraped robot go –