Summary: “…it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” <br> Rocky Balboa’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JAHAFvcr2o" target="_blank">inspirational speech</a> to his son in the 2006 installment into the Rocky franchise is definitely the inspiration for this show. There’re a lot of projects I work on right. Art, design, and educational experiences I am currently slaving away over. I spend a lot of time, and incur a good deal of mental anguish, trying to figure out what the “right” thing to do is as a day job. When Rocky talks about taking hits, in my context that is all about my own personal demons regarding my design process. My own shadow/devil on my shoulder telling me I’m wasting my time.<br> Last month, I’ll be honest, I almost considered #ComicFuel a waste of my time. Three episodes in and I was ready to give up.<br> I almost didn’t finish episode 3. Even during the process of doing it, I didn’t want to finish it. I did finish, barely, and then I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to do another episode the same way again (if I did another episode). So I called Adam and asked him to record a quick episode where we powered through a ton of questions. It turned into a longer episode.<br> As I sat down with <a href="http://www.adamngreenfield.com/" target="_blank">Adam Greenfield </a>this week to record the fourth episode of #ComicFuel I was reminded why I do this. Sure, this episode is WAY too long ( cough-2hoursand14minutes-cough ), but who cares? I got to sit down with my friend and answer some student questions and talk about how to practice art. In my ideal retirement scenario I would spend every day doing this.<br> I was reminded that MakingComics.com is the purely “good” thing that I have in my life. For me this is the one sacred space in this whole universe where everything we do is just good. We aren’t always active, or on time with our products, and they aren’t always produced with the kind of quality I’d like – but at their core they are good. We’ve made decision after decision to not turn this into a project that will go anywhere (i.e we are staying here for good). It isn’t a startup business – it is a public service. That is what makes it “good”. It hasn’t been tainted by the threats of being economically unviable – because it isn’t.<br> I thought I was done after my 2 hour session with Adam. Then…<br> <br> <br> …I said to myself – I’m not going to do Audio Fuel this month. Monday I mixed the two hour long episode and then I saw a tweet to me that I missed:<br> <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/patrickyurick">@patrickyurick</a> haven’t listened yet to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ComicFuel?src=hash">#ComicFuel</a> 3 but can I just say thank you in advance?<br> — Heavy Load Comic (@HeavyLoadStory) <a href="https://twitter.com/HeavyLoadStory/status/753109058538901504">July 13, 2016</a><br> <br> So I responded:<br> <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/HeavyLoadStory">@HeavyLoadStory</a> Did you listen to it? Ep4 drops Friday
