[Not] Writing a Comic in 24 Hours

    Yes, the title sounds like a clickbait YouTube video, I know,  but there is a good reason for it! I am in the middle of taking my last humanities class at GCE, a pause for me crying, and it's all about the human power to endure. As such, the class is called Endurance. In the class, we have gone through and thought about different types of endurance we have or could, well, endure! We thought about what we have had to bear through our 5 senses. Thinking of the best and worst sounds, tastes, textures, and feelings we've experienced. 

    To prepare for our AP (Action Project) we also watched and read about various persistent people go through their own journeys of endurance. We watched a TED Talk given by magician and illusionist, David Blaine, who strived to hold the record for the longest time holding their breath underwater. We finished reading Elie Wiesel's book, Night, as well. Arriving at the most heartwrenching and heavy sections of the book. And lastly, we watched the film Maidentrip, about 16-year-old sailor Laura Dekker. All of these journeys went through a lot of impasses, trial and error, and failure, topics we learned more about while researching katabasis.

    Katabasis is the name given to the idea of the "descent to the underworld". It means a decent -figurative, literal, or both- into the hardest part of one's journey. It is very similar to the hero's journey format we learned about Sophomore year in Stories.

    With all of this research and new knowledge in our tool belt, we embark on our next journey. This AP is about, you guessed it, endurance! We were to choose a task that we had to do for 12 hours, now you probably know me by now and would know that I wouldn't stop at 12 (evident in the title), I went all the way to 24 hours. For my day-long challenge, I chose to finally create a comic that has been brewing in my mind for 2 years, one about my game HUSKS' characters and the universe. 

    This trip is one of mistakes, trial and error, a lot of back pain, and rekindling my love for storytelling. My guiding question throughout these 24 hours is; Is creating worth it? Keeping in mind my personal mission statement: My mission in life, what makes me feel the most fulfilled, is creating things that make people react. Especially when the reaction falls under; represented, seen, understood, loved. I want to create for the people who don’t have anything made for them. So, my question is putting my mission under scrutiny, is it worth it to create? Is it worth enduring whatever problems and failures I will encounter to continue creating?

Let's find out, come one let's go, watch the video!

Okay, so I didn't complete the goal, but let's be honest, it was a crazy goal to begin with. I am but one person who is still in school full-time, however, this was an incredible learning and growing experience for me. I know more about my creative process, how much I can do if I simply will myself to, and how much I truly love creating and storytelling. So, yeah, I think creating is more than worth it. 

(My 32-page doc says so)

GGS. True Pain Is When you Realize You're Only 1/3 of The Way Done. 2021.

If you hate videos, I made a digital journal entry ever so often on this journey that gives you the gist of what I said in the video!

If you actually want to read or purchase the comic stay tuned, it'll be here soon! Thank you so much for sticking with me, much love,

Mena.