A Whole Day In Which To Do Nothing

Don't you just love that? Having a whole day to yourself which you can spend doing whatever you like, and then decide to do nothing at all? I'm home alone for a whole day and night for the first time in over six months, AND I'm ill so that means I don't have to do any chores! Sure, I did some laundry and vaccumed upstairs but that took me, what, fifteen minutes? The rest of the time I've been sitting right here, on the couch, reading interesting blogs and looking at the fjordscape outside with its lovely autumn colours and feeling a little miffed that I can't go outside in the sunshine. Because I'm ill, you see. With a cold. Colds can be great sometimes.

I read a book this summer called "Nu, jävlar!" in which one of the characters, a pregnant woman, gets a whole day to herself when her husband and kids go away. But because she has this wonderful long stretch of blank hours, she can't decide what to do with them, so she ends up doing the things she does every day anyway - clears up after the kids, scrubs the kitchen counter etc. One by one those precious hours trail away, relentlessly, until suddenly the day is gone. Something dramatic happens at the end, but I won't say what in case you want to read it later. 

I get that feeling every night. Almost without exception I end up on the couch with my laptop, reading through the same newspapers, the same social media pages, tweet once or twice, check my emails even though I've checked them a gazillion times allready that day, check out notalwaysright.com and a couple of Cheezburger-pages. It gets tedious.

But not when I'm ill! You see, usually, I'm fit to do a whole lot of other things that are more important or useful than sitting on the couch, and then I have a bad conscience for not doing them. So I'm not really enjoying sitting there, I always feel slightly uncomfortable. And a part of my brain always plans to go do something grown-up, so I don't settle myself properly on the couch, and I sit in a rather uncomfortable position and the whole laptop-session becomes a "I'm just going to check [insert website] ...". And then it's half past ten and I have to go to bed.

But now that I'm ill, I can relax and waste time knowing that I'm actually convalescing. It's brilliant. Unless I get a fever. Which sucks. But until then, excuse me while I fetch some chocolate from the cupboard and convalesce some more.

Here's my entry for today's Naked Noseless Day at webcomicx-x.com.

It's one of the characters of Reveland, Vigdis, being all naked and noseless in a Manet-sort of style.
Have a nice Saturday, the day of the week when procrastination is mandatory!

This Is What I Do For A Living

Right, so I thought I might have a little show-and-tell today. I make comics, which are then printed in various papers and magazines here in Norway. My longest-running comic to date is Reveland, which translates as "fox land/country" which just sounds lame. "Reveland" also sounds lame, but that's what it was called back when I was twelve and made the first comic about Superfox who saved pretty girls from drowning and suchlike, and I never got around to changing it and now I reckon it's too late.

In the year 2000 I entered a comics contest with an extremely naïve rendition of my fox universe, but then, I was eighteen and an art student and all ironic and clever and things. I never heard from the jury. Three years later, though, I entered again, and this time I was runner-up. That was encouraging, so of course I put my comic in a drawer and didn't look at it again until 2007 (thanks to my chiropractor, who is a great believer in following your dreams and listening to the universe and things) when I got it printed in my local newspaper. Four years later, I'm making four different comics on a regular basis. I quit my day job in January 2009. I worked in a gardening center, but I'll save that story for later.

Here's an example of my comic Reveland:

(I know, that joke is SO old. But it had very little text so it didn't take me long to translate it. I'm super busy you know. That is why I'm writing a blog entry instead of actually working)

I'm also proud to say NONE of my comics have ever been refused for print. Except one, because it was so obscure that the editor didn't understand the joke. It was about that milkshake-song and all the boys to the yard and I made that Scotland Yard, which in the comic was a stick at the Scottish official yard-measure themepark where you could get chilled milk beverages, and --- okay, I guess I understand why they refused that one.

Did I mention I have a baby? He's six months old today. Hooray!