Archive for September, 2013

Quick where-I’ve-been post!

Hey! Well, I don’t talk much about my non-work life any longer, but I wanted to write a little bit about where I’ve been! I know my blog often goes untouched for a while, but that’s usually because I’ve just been too busy, or am unable to update on what I’m doing for whatever reason. This time, I’ve been off with my shoulder injury :(

I’ve had shoulder problems for a long time, since I was 19, and in uni studying comics. It got worse and worse, though levelled off for a while, until this year, when for the first very very very busy six months, I started to lose movement in it even more and then it just dropped into unbearable pain. Because there was no actual sudden injury involved, it was likely to be repetitive strain. I’ve been to various doctors on an off for years, but I got brushed off a lot and not taken seriously… and I’d just work through the pain and waited to see what would happen with it. Not good! But we’re supposed to trust doctors, so, I would just believe what some of them said – that it would just go away. Well, 9 years of it not going away later, I’m back at the physiotherapist again, to have a concerted push before trying anything more drastic with it!

The issue is… tissue! All my soft tissues in my shoulder are completely fucked! There is rotator cuff damage. And I’ve developed a kinda gross quirk where my humerus pops out of the top of my shoulder… because there’s literally nothing holding it in. I have holes and gaps where my ligaments and muscles are supposed to be. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be any actual major tears, and no bone damage.

Anyhew, I really like this physio I’ve been assigned, so I really trust him this time. I hope we’re able to fix my shoulder together! He said expect results in a couple months, so, I should be back at work around end of November/beginning December (it’s been a bit of a work-related nightmare and I don’t wanna bore you with whining about that!)

Some people will have awful postures and terrible work habits and never suffer any consequences… but some people will really suffer. When mine got bad at uni, I’d been working on a flat surface, leaning over my work, sitting on a fairly shitty chair. I expect that, combined with the very long work hours, is what caused it in the first place. I would genuinely like to see posture education, safe work practise, exercises and so on introduced into any type of art/design course! I don’t think I know a full-time comic-book creator (with a few years of practise behind them) who doesn’t suffer from some type of chronic pain :( It’s very important to learn how to treat your body if you’re gonna crunch it into funny positions for hours on end — and that includes just holding a pencil! Prevention is better than cure, because, sometimes, there is no cure.

That’s a bit of a moody note to end on, I’m sorry! In other news, the animation Paul and I were handling is now live in its display area, and hopefully we can talk about it soon! (Contractually the people commissioning it are going to talk it up first, so, we gotta wait for them!)

That’s all! I can’t type for long at the moment ^^; (This is unedited and rushed, so probably sounds worse than usual! Sorry! Just still very tender in the tissues!!!)