I've only got the four pages of cover art to finish to complete the illustrations on this issue.  I plan on going out to breakfast to celebrate tomorrow morning.  

I went to the Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta last night.  At one point in the evening, I thought I saw the other party.  I call the person I attribute an alleged internet presence I supposedly have that I did not consent to "the other party."  Anyhoo, I think I had a sighting of this other party last night at the Corn Lovers Fiesta.

I have absolutely zero desire to reach out to this person and try to make things right with them in that particular manner.  Instead, I will simply reiterate my previously stated position on this whole affair and say that I will forgive this person to the extent that I will not attempt to retaliate against them for the wrongs they may or may not have done unto me.

I see actually reaching out to them as an attempt to prove what a great guy I am, and by extension, I see reaching out in such a manner as an attempt to gain some material thing from this person.  Material things I might hope to gain from reaching out to them might include access to art gallery shows or gigs for my musical act.

The one thing I can definitely gain from unilaterally forgiving them their trespasses against me and having that forgiveness take the form of promising myself I will not attempt to retaliate against them; the one thing I can gain from that course of action I already possess.  That one thing I already possess comes on the form of a sense of inner peace and quiet about this horrible, evil deed I accuse the person of perpetrating against me.  The inner peace and quiet I experience, daily, stems from the path I take of no attempts to retaliate against this person or any person I associate with her.  In essence, I've already gained all I can realistically hope  to gain from any act of forgiveness from me towards this person, and I don't have any need to reach out to them.

Let me make this one point clear.  I consider a concerted effort on my part to refrain from even shooting this person a dirty look or making a cutting remark around them a huge component of my overall position of forgiveness towards them.  That's because attempting to refrain from retaliation on even that level helps me gain a greater sense of inner peace and overall well-being about the particulars of this whole atrocious affair.  The whole idea that I can stop this back and forth between myself and this person, even if it's just me on my end stopping my part in it; that really helps me a lot.

Which brings me to my concluding point.  What if this person continues on their path of attempting to get back at me? Well, there's just no pleasing some people, is there.  All the more reason to not even attempt to reach out to them in some sort of great-guy way.

I also shot and posted two videos for my YouTube 2 channel.  There's a link to my YouTube 2 channel on the menu bar of this page.

I asked someone in my world about that former cashier last Sunday.  I let on that I felt as if I might be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to her.  This person kind of chimed in with a "yeah" when I say something like, "I might be barking up the wrong tree." I'm probably barking up the wrong tree.

My only job right now in my relationship with women involves a concerted effort on my part to refrain from casting about for new love interest to take that former cashier's place.  I don't need a new love interest.  Not only that, assigning the role of love interest to someone in my world can stir up a lot of unnecessary trouble that we can all do without (redundant).

I've been working on music and art:  Check out my new YouTube channel under YouTube 2 on the menu bar of this page.  I have a couple of songs about that former cashier who I might still go on and on about for the next while.  Here's the latest pages from my next book.

In my last post I talked about how I'm the one constant in all of my fixations on girls and women over the years.  And so I feel that way about that former cashier.  When I started obsessing on a girl in high school at the age of fifteen, the dynamic in play became painfully obvious to me.  I KNEW there was no way she could feel the same way for me that I felt for her.  That sent me into a total tailspin.  Looking back at EVERY SINGLE fixation I had on a girl or woman since then, I've come to realize that the same disparity in the level of feeling between us defined EVERY SINGLE one of them.

And so I've come to realize that  this same dynamic was, and still may be, in effect between myself and this former cashier at that grocery store I still patronize.  As I developed as a man over the years, I found that I could touch a woman's heart in how I expressed my feelings for her.  I learned to do this in a sustainable way starting with Sara in 1988.  I may or may not have touched that former cashier's heart to the point where she now has a desire to express something to me.  I can't say I know the answer to that.  I haven't seen her in a month and a half.

I'm not about to make the claim that I somehow have touched her heart.  The last time I made that claim, in about July of this year, I wound up feeling like a real asshole.  Looking at some of the women in my world I associated with her, it seemed as if I'd missed the mark on that one.  Now, I don't know. It might be something worth looking into.   If she decides to not show up anymore, I hope she sees me in a kinder light than she appeared to see me in the past.

I don't think I make the projectile vomiting image clear enough in the final panel.  There's so much I still have to learn about comic art.  I've got a bunch on instruction books.  I checked a bunch more out from the library over these past couple of months.   The ones specifically about comics talk about how the reader is supposed to almost forget that they are reading a comic and get so absorbed in the storytelling that the artifice of constructing these pages just melts away for the reader.

Day to day routine has, once again, taken over from all of the preoccupation with my own narratives that purport to tell of catching serial killers and thwarting rapists and so on.  This here story is one of those, but today, September 7, 2024, I'm not so preoccupied with this stuff.  

I open up and close again this stuff when I do these books.  If one believes that art is inherently redemptive in the practice of it for the artist, then maybe this is the kind of art that may or may not be good for me to do.  I don't believe that making art, in and of itself, will invariably save the art maker, and I don't think it should.

What helps me more involves managing my personal problems, such as my addictive personality, outside of the realm of art making.  I think I managed my illness as it concerned that former cashier I still go on and on about pretty well.  I don't think she ever had much of an interest in me, but it wasn't because of anything I did towards her.  I think my behavior towards her stands up as exemplary.

That's important to me, because, whether I look back at a fixation I had on a girl at fifteen, or nineteen, or twenty-two, there remains one constant in all of them: me.  I can't make someone such as that former cashier like me as much as I like her, but I can work on my end of it over, and over, and over again when I find myself in such a situation.  That's why I've said, many times, that God is giving me plenty, but plenty, of chances to get my deal with women such as that former cashier right.

I hope to finish illustrating this book by October 25 of this year.  I have no problem giving away the store as far as content of future books I someday expect people to pay money for.  I will only print up one hundred copies of issue 4.  My online audience is so small that I anticipate I will run into people at conventions and out in the world who are not at all familiar with my work, and I can sell to them.

I thought about what it might be like to actually go on a date with that former cashier after I played out last night.  I imagined "offering criticism" from me towards her as one of the primary activities I actually wanted to participate in on our first date,  Then I thought, that doesn't sound like any date I would want to be on, whether I was the one being criticized or the one so helpfully offering up the criticism.

What I actually try to do when I attempt to get to know someone better, and a date is a good way to do that; what I try to do on a date or even an approach for a potential date is assess whether or not the person I have an interest in can meet some minimal requirements for further inquiry from me.  When I approached the former cashier for a date in October of 2021, I felt as if I did my job in meeting minimal requirements for an approach of that nature, but that she failed to meet minimal requirements in responding to my overture, so I cut her loose.

So yeah, I still feel that same way about our whole deal.  If I'm to be brutally honest about her lack on interest in me altogether, I'd say I did the right thing in letting her go in January of 2022.  Nothing about her since then has me convinced that she ever had enough of an interest in me to warrant any kind of further effort by me to get with her. 

This issue will only have thirty copies.  I intend this series of Richy Vegas Comics for a private audience.  I will post more images on this blog in the coming weeks, and probably phase out talk about that former cashier whom I've gone on and on about so much over  the years.  I feel as if my race is run concerning her.  I'm glad I can walk away at a point where no one, not me, not her, not anyone else, can point to any thing I've written here or point to any way I've behaved towards her in real life and say, "That's where he really went sideways with her and alienated her and those around them both."  I just feel like I'd rather post things like comics I'm working on here.

More ugliness visited on young Richy Vegas courtesy of YOUR human race.