Is anyone else bored by this yet? I’m guessing not entirely, because a lot of people I know who follow my exploits (boring as they may be) still haven’t glommed on to Detox Week yet or are actually ASKING for updates. Crazy, right? But we all know this is really just an excuse to get me to update this blog, which wasn’t happening in any way, shape or form before.

I didn’t feel too great yesterday morning. Just some, er, post-digestive stuff. I wonder if that rice I made was either undercooked or just didn’t agree with me. Either way, I felt a lot better over the weekend eating mostly-raw, so, well, we’re not going to try to do that rice again.

One of the things I realized last night (though it should have been obvious before) is that I’ve been spending about 300 percent more time in the kitchen than normal throughout this process. Making every meal by hand takes time! A lot of time! Time that, honestly, I don’t have. Seriously, we’re talking multiple hours a day, between the chopping, cooking, cleaning, storing, etc. No wonder we drove our mothers insane!

Of course, my time already is strained. The band is starting to get active again (met with potential new bassist last night again, had a pretty decent jam), more freelance work is looming, and full-on roll-out of Omega Comics Presents is beginning. Something has to suffer, and looking at how terribly my time has been consumed and how much I’m beginning to feel strangled by my own obligations (not to mention the lack of time I’ve been able to spend with Sara, which I’m sure has not thrilled her), I’m dropping down The Utopian updates to once weekly, on Wednesdays. It’s just too much for me to write, pencil, ink, color and letter two full comic pages every week even as I’m editing an anthology, writing, drawing and lettering eight pages for each issue of that and trying to actually hit my other work deadlines.

I’ve been so stressed about trying to “get ahead” in order to just get out of town for two or three days. And I don’t like that feeling. But I also can’t just, as Sara suggested last night, go on holiday with the webcomic. If I do, honestly, I’ll never pick it back up. The weekly obligation is what keeps me driven to the end goal. I don’t work well without deadlines. Like most work-for-hire creators, you can give me a deadline a month ahead and I’ll start and finish the article/illustration/story the night before the deadline. That’s just the way it is.

So yeah. I guess it’s that time of the day where I review what foods I consumed yesterday, huh? You know, when Detox Week is over, I might start keeping a food journal anyway, to really force myself to pay attention to everything I eat. Until then, here’s yesterday’s line-up:

• Breakfast: 1 banana, 1 cup “Dynamo” juice blend
• Morning snack: 1 apple pie Larabar
• Lunch: 1 bowl homemade vegetable stew (I think I’m definitely going to be making this once a week from now on)
• Afternoon snack: Approx. a handful of raw almonds & walnuts, plus 1 serving of dried, unsweetened pineapple rings
• Dinner: 1 can Amy’s Organic Lentil Vegetable Soup (also becoming a new staple)
• Evening snack: 1 piece raw “fudge” from Go Raw Cafe, plus two stalks celery with organic peanut butter