Final Laps

This was a pen and ink illustration I did a few years ago but it seemed to fit the theme!

My mother used to say, “If you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say it all!” Words to live by, and I’ve tried to expand it to include “interesting”, “intelligent”, “informed” or “funny”, and then broadened the whole prescription to include most of what comes out of one’s mouth. It makes me a poor choice for a cocktail party companion as it puts severe limits on mindless banter.

As I start on the last bits of Big City Otto I’ve sort of dried up regarding what to be writing about in this blog. Nothing seems to resonate, and unlike my illustration work, I’m actually feeling a bit blocked. My partner Esperança attributes it to the whole project drawing to a close and she may be right. Or maybe I’ve talked it all out.

Last summer, in the early days of starting this blogging project it was the opposite, with ideas for posts stumbling over each other in their hurry to barge their way to the front of the queue. And I’m sure more things will come along in the future, as the book winds its slow way through the production stages to finally emerge sometime late next summer as a published work. But for now, things are just quietly winding down.

So that’s it. I just wanted to give the heads up to anyone following my adventures (both of you!) or those who may stumble on this blog in the interim, that it might be a wee bit quiet here. Eventually it will all probably be rolled up and put on some sort of more official “Bill Slavin” page as a link that the present URL directs you to. (That’s presuming I actually join the 21^st Century and make myself a web page.)

In the meantime, I hope that what you’ve found here has been at least a little bit interesting, and possibly informative, and, dare I say, funny. And, in the spirit of the season and true to my mother’s wise words, short on naughty and long on nice.

Happy Holidays!