I taught my first class in eight years tonight. I'm teaching a web design class through the county's adult education, and I'm developing the course from scratch. I've been nervous all day, asking myself: What if I lock up? What if the students are all difficult? What if none of them understand English?

It was a joy. The students were attentive, the room was up-to-date, and I was on my game for almost all night.

I'd forgotten how much I love to teach. My blood quickens when I do. When I came home, I sat down at my kitchen table and had milk and cookies, and realized I was almost trembling. Not from fear; from excitement. From love. From enjoyment. I love doing this.

Last night, I finished reading Boris Akunin's The Winter Queen. I greatly enjoyed its rollicking mystery/adventure vibe and wry black comedy, until the last two pages. The ending was bleak, dark, melancholy, and completely unexpected.

I still like the book, and want to read others in the series (The Winter Queen is the first). But that ending wiped away about 80% of my goodwill.

A shame. I wonder if the writer intended that reaction.

Last week, I realized that I have enough money. I'm saving, I'm eating well, and I'm paying my bills.

I'd been planning to get another tenant for my spare bedroom. But with that realization, I asked myself, Why deal with that? Why not use what I've been given?

So I converted the spare bedroom into a studio. My bedroom—stuffed as it was with two desks and a bed—is now a comfortable private retreat. The new studio has my computer, my writing desk, a drafting table, and a synthesizer. I can now be massively creative in an ideal space.

This strikes me as an improvement.

In one sense, I accomplished nothing today. I just did my duties at AWANA, then went to my parents, ate dinner, and chatted. Then I came home, took a bath, and wrote this.

Let me reframe that, though. I attended AWANA, where I encouraged and advised a bunch of boys. I showed them a clip of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and had twenty boys spellbound as I pointed at the screen and said, "That is love." I then drove to my parents' house, where I invested in my relationship with them. I came home, drew a bath, and lay in the steaming water reviewing my life.

So, in one sense, I did many things of lasting worth today. I'm content.

I'm back from an all-nighter. I work with ten- to twelve-year-old boys in a church program, and on Friday night attended an annual lock-in in which about seventy boys eat pizza, drink lots of soda, and run around a massive church shooting Nerf darts at each other. It's great fun, and it went off swimmingly.

I played as Neo from The Matrix. I wore all black clothes, plus a trenchcoat and sunglasses, and I carried a Nerf javelin that I've modified into a longsword. Judging by the squeals of the kids when they saw me coming, I was terrifying.

At times like this, I do love this work.

This past Christmas, since I spent less than usual on presents, I made and gave out a lot of cookies. So I spent much of the week before Christmas driving to my friends' homes and delivering cookies.

A surprising thing happened. Without fail, my friends would invite me in, and we'd sit down at the kitchen table and chat. We'd shoot the breeze about Christmas, and movies we'd seen, and the miscellaneous stuff going on in our lives. It was the kind of front-porch conversation I crave with people. And, in some cases, we'd talk for hours.

This is definitely something I want to do every year.

Tonight, after work, I ate thick slices of seven-grain bread, alternating with wedges of cheddar and Morbier cheeses, and sipped a small glass of 2004 Red Truck wine. I took twenty minutes, alone, just me and the meal.

It was glorious. Why not enjoy and fully experience every meal? I could have wolfed it all down in five minutes; would I have died happier?

(And I highly recommend Red Truck if you want a full-bodied, classic red wine.)

As I knocked the sodden mass of tea leaves out of the strainer this morning, I realized I had unconsciously done so to the rhythm of "Shave and a Haircut." I must be feeling better.

Meanwhile, Saalon writes:

Creative people - writers, painters, musicians - put a lot of work into their early projects. There's a fire and a passion that goes into them that's easy to find. You've been carrying that passion around your entire life, so it just forces those first stories onto you. Then you get that out, put it on a page, and a danger arises. The danger that the next project you choose will be...well, arbitrary.

True. Beyond that, if an artist writes her first story at age twenty-five, then that story has spent the past ten to fifteen years building in her head. The next story will have a much shorter gestation period. New stories will feel less powerful.

But that's okay. Real artists (those who actually produce art) know the importance of daily work. The Muse will bless your work, provided you do it.

In The War of Art, Pressfield describes his first novel, and the nearby friend that he'd sit with every day to discuss problems with and generally be encouraged by. When Pressfield finally finished his novel, he walked to his friend's house and told him. "Good for you," his friend said, not looking up from his paper. "Start the next one tomorrow."

Still sick, but managed to get in four hours at the office. I fear that only worsened things, as I've felt exhausted since then. But I had to go in.

I spent the rest of the day laying in bed, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Whose Line Is It Anyway. Not my best day.

I hate being sick. I hate it because I want to do things, I want to even do relaxing things, but I don't even feel like relaxing. I feel like watching Oprah.

I felt a little sick today, so I skipped AWANA and watched some anime.

First, the fourth disc of Infinite Ryvius, a TV series about a bunch of teenage astronaut trainees who have to fend for themselves. The plot's superficially similar to Lord of the Flies, but these characters are more mature. It's less about savagery and more about the petty selfishness that quickly rises to the surface when immature people face crisis.

Then, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation III: Love is the Pulse of the Stars. It's the final film in a trilogy that re-tells one of the most depressing Gundam series. The animation is improved and the tone is lightened to create a more powerful, less nihilistic story. There's still a lot of death, but it's easier to take.

Saalon's here for the weekend. I'm struck again by the power of physical human connection. I feel closer to him after two hours of face-to-face interaction than after two months of phone calls and two years of email and IM.

At the seventh annual B1 chili cook-off today at work, I came in dead last amidst fierce competition. In consolation, I got a tennis racket, three balls, and a $15 iTunes gift card. It was immense fun, and a wonderful way to end my time there: eating, chatting, and laughing with my co-workers. Now I just have to hand off everything in the next two weeks.

I sketched the first panel of a short comic last night, after re-reading part of Pressfield's The War of Art and realizing that I'd be happier pursuing my dream of drawing comics than telling myself "not now."

Also, my new email address "brent@brentnewhall.com" appears to be working.

The provider hosting my old site died, so I'm starting fresh with this site.

This is good. This coincides with my Sunday decision to stop searching for another tenant, content myself with my perfectly sufficient salary, and renovate the second bedroom as an office. Plus, I'm starting the new job in February. It's a good time to change and simplify.