[Mental Piracy] Problem: The World is a Vampire and It’s Eating You Alive

“Just when you thought, it was safe to think, in comes mental piracy, and no,
what I’m looking for cannot be sold to me.”
— Incubus, When It Comes

I hadn’t move for over an hour. I might as well have been nailed to the floor. But when my phone rang for the twelfth time, I managed to roll myself over and check the notification.

Nausea washed over me. It was my ex-college professor, Kathy.

Oh god, I thought, just leave me alone.

We were working for the same client and I was supposed to have a book full of illustrations done…the only problem being I hadn’t done any real work on them for weeks. I was royally fucked.

Inspiration Devours

A month before, one of my web design clients had come to me wondering if I could do some illustrations for an event planning book she wanted to update.

At that point, I was still operating under the say yes to everything and figure it how to do it later mentality — a (retrospectively) shitty piece of advice some agency rep had given me in college.

I had never done an illustration project before, let alone a whole book of them, but I needed the money…