Tomorrow will be two months since I have blogged here. I do wonder if sharing news of my progress in my goals and current activities is worth writing about, but then I remember the reason why I call this blog IsShouKenMei. I want to encourage myself, as well as others who might be struggling to keep a tight grip on their aspirations. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sometimes forget why they decided to keep their blog around.

This week has been different for me in a few, but significant ways. For the past two weeks, I was severely overcome with stress and a lacking capacity to focus on anything regarding my job or my personal projects. This week has been a complete 180 for me, until last night when I realized how far behind my partner and I were on producing Dance of Heart (Kokoro No Dansu) and how little had been done since I initiated convention preparations in mid January. Though I was designing and writing yet another progress update e-mail to Murat, I was overcome with another bout of stress. I had a hard time falling asleep last night because of it.

After work today, I knew that I had to keep what little momentum I had from yesterday, keep my head leveled, and attempt to do more work on what I had started. However, every time I thought about all the responsibility I had placed on my shoulders – producing at least one working website before June, digitally producing the webcomic, keeping both myself and Murat on track as the leader, etc. – I wanted to break down. Delegating the priorities of a duo creative group, while attempting to do your own part is thrilling and overwhelming at the same time; you know everything that needs to, should be, and could potentially happen.

Just when I thought there was no way to calm myself down, I clicked a link while reading the latest rant on Megatokyo that led me to an amateur Visual Novel project called Katawa Shoujo (lit. Disability Girl). The site design is very simplistic, but does the job in effectively sharing content with basic conventional navigation…but I digress. This project made me remember all the people who I have ever shown Dance of Heart to. Every one of them – manga and non-manga readers alike (also Japanese & American) – only had positive reactions to the storyline that I had crafted and Murat’s awesome artwork of my darling characters. These people believed in the potential of this creative work done by amateurs, if only for that moment in time.

As I reflected on that, a smile came to my face and my stress died down significantly. All this time, I’ve considered my efforts to be self-driven with no one anticipating or believing in what Murat and I could do. No one saying, “You can do it. Keep going.” Remembering those people must be what it’s like to have someone by your side that’s completely on the outside of the process cheering you on every step of the way. Aside from my Murat himself, my entire life has been absent of that kind of moral support, which is probably why I didn’t think of this until now.

If I keep my eyes firm on the potential that so many have confirmed to me and not on the heavy load I carry, then the sky is the limit. I look forward to blogging more on the progress I have made in my absence and what is to come.