29 January 1999: Subtle Stress

Friday, 29 January 1999:

Subtle Stress

There's nothing like an 'event' in my journal to bring my readers out of the woodwork - people I never knew were reading my journal start dropping me e-mail when I have a birthday, or car trouble, or - of course - yesterday's news.

I'm often not quite sure how (or if) I should respond to this e-mail, and I don't really have Diane Patterson's excuse of receiving too much e-mail to keep up with (well, sometimes I do, but not usually; I'm getting about 30-40 hits a day on my journal these days, which is a fair number but doesn't put me in "the big leagues" as far as journaller readership is concerned).

But, I always appreciate it! Really! I have some great readers.

Today was a relatively stressful day, but not for any particularly good reason. Or, rather, not for any immediate reason. I think at the end of the week, I was just exhausted, and the stress of making the big California decision, and starting to deal with the logistics of the impending move, just caught up to me. I was pretty wiped by mid-afternoon. Plus, I've been trying to hook up with my contact in Apple's staffing group, but she was insanely busy yesterday and was out sick today. This is not a tragic problem - there really isn't anything that can't wait until Monday - but my stress levels overreacted a little.

Fortunately, once I came home and sat down for a while and did some reading and petted the cats, I felt much better and put everything in perspective. Clearly, I just need to recuperate some this weekend.

Even though everything is going smoothly, I need to keep in mind that major life changes like this are fundamentally stressful, and I'm probably not going to come out the other end entirely calm. It will be work, and doubtless there will be some difficult times even outside the "flash point" of the actual moving date.

My reading right now is mainly The X-Men Companion, a couple of volumes published in 1982 by Fantagraphics Books focusing on the 1970s incarnation of the team, which in my opinion is far and away the best version. The books are mainly interviews with the people involved in creating the books, and make for fascinating reading for anyone who's a fan of them, providing insight into why the book took the twists and turns that it did, and plans the various creators had that never quite panned out.

If you can find them, they're not particularly expensive.

Meanwhile, I won another eBay auction today, picking up a Marvel Masterworks volume (a Spider-Man one) which has shot way up in value in recent months (it's the rarest of the series). I got it for somewhat below the current going rate, but it's still a pretty pricey item. The only other auction I've won for as much money was for a set of eight items, which is a different thing altogether.

Still, I only have one more such volume on my want list, and one of the volumes which I'm kind of interested in but don't want to pay the premium prices for (the Daredevil one) is about to be reprinted. Although the new format for Marvel Masterworks is not as nice as the original format, I can live with it for this volume.

Oh, and the comics cataloguing continues. I got to the end of the I's tonight, which is very nearly the halfway point. Woo-hoo!

Michael Rawdon (Contact)