Nov 17, 01:27 PM · American Dreams
I’ve been house-hunting for my wife these last few weeks. For me, it has been a truly dreadful experience. Not because I don’t want a house, far from it. I am frightened by the enormous purchase. It boils down to me being a tight wad. I’m not the guy that will stiff the waitress a tip or leave their friends with the bill, though. If I go out, I pay appropriately and tip generously (usually around 20%). However, after being laid off a couple times in the downturn, I have gotten to be very worrisome about overextending ourselves. Those were times I don’t want to ever go back to.
However, living in ball-numbing fear isn’t really living, either. So, I’m going through with this whole process, excited about not paying rent out anymore possibly (hell, we may just decide that there aren’t any homes we are interested in and just stay in an apartment a few more years), and ready for the committment of home ownership.
But wait, there’s more.
Why stop at the great American dream of owning a home? Why not go full-on-nutso and own a business? That’s just plain crazy talk!
Actually, it isn’t. As I’ve written earlier, the need to get Golden Boy out to the public is strong within me, so it looks like I’ll be going into self-publishing, releasing my own work as a graphic novel. Having been around many businesses, I’m having a hard time finding how publishers make any money at all, especially comic book publishers. The alternative to this course of action, however, would be to solicit help from an existing publisher, and in this market, I’m having a hard time believing that anyone would take a chance on my book and printing it in full color. Yes, you read that right, full color. I originally just wanted this to be an eBook, remember, and as such, wanted to exploit that medium as much as possible, hence full color.
Most of last week was spent reflecting on what to do next, what was the next logical step for Golden Boy after I’ve spent so much of my life after work creating it? This is it. I’ve spoken with some other creators who are doing the same thing and jumping into this feet first, and I have to say, I am excited about it too. Right up until I get to the cost of printing this thing.
So you see, I’m truly battling my fear on two fronts. I feel good about this resolution, and even though I will be going into a tremendous amount of debt, I will work as many jobs as I have to. This has always been my dream, on so many different levels – owning a home, running a small business out of it, and creating comics. I don’t know how long I’ll be a publisher, this may just last until I get the book out, then I’ll fold, or maybe I get a taste for it and do this at night (like I’ve said before, I have a good day job that I’d be lax to give up).