Not much to say about this, the next-to-last story page of Empowered vol. 1. Today, thought I’d try something a little different.

My workday schedule’s peculiar enough that I thought I might as well talk about it. So: I have some mild form of sleep disorder, in that I normally can only sleep roughly four or five hours overnight, which is what drives my schedule’s oddness. I get up in the morning somewhere in the range of 6:00-7:30 AM—I don’t use an alarm, as I have to accept whatever meager portion of sleep my body deigns to grant me overnight. I stagger downstairs and spend 20-30 minutes dosing up with my first caffeine of the day while usually working on Empowered webcomic stuff—either cropping and reformatting the original art’s jpegs, or inputting and scheduling pages into the webcomic’s software, or adding already-written commentaries to scheduled pages. (Every now and then, though, I take a day off from the webcomic and spend the slotted 20-30 minutes of caffeination just noodling around on Odin Sphere for the PS2 while listening to morning radio.) 

Then, I trundle over to the drawing table for the first work shift, the longest and most critical of my workday. This is when I work out the rough layouts and dialogue for one or two new Empowered pages, despite theoretically being sleep-deprived after the aforementioned 4-5 hours of overnight sleep. In fact, this early shift boasts my highest level of energy and creativity of the day, hours which I consciously try to devote solely to uninterrupted comics work. No checking email, no lengthy engagements with social media—though I do sometimes pop online long enough to occasionally post work-in-progress photos with my phone. After roughing out and writing the dialogue for an Empowered page (or two), I move on to the finished pencils as quickly as possible, and try to crank through a fair chunk of a page’s art before ending the first shift at roughly 12:00 PM, after roughly 4-6 hours of work. By this point, alas, my energy is flagging, and it’s time for my first nap of the day.

I go back to bed, snooze for an hour or so, and get back up roughly between 1:00-2:00 PM. Time for poor ol’ second shift, which is all about the interruptions, as opposed to the hopefully interruption-free first shift. I get a bit more caffeine on while answering email, a process which can take anywhere from only a few minutes to several g-d hours(!), if I have to write up lengthy proposals or correction lists or the time-consuming like. Then I try to squeeze in another few hours of drawing—3 or 4 at most—before shutting things down again, this time for the day’s exercise—lifting weights M/W/F, and/or cardio for a hour. The latter is spent on the treadmill while pecking out commentaries like this one, or on a wood-tick-intensive hike through the woods—either way, gotta rack up the ol’ FitBit’s required 10,000 steps. (Add on time for a shower, and I’m losing at least 1.5 hours per day to exercise—but it’s gotta be done, folks.) Then it’s time for supper, and—wait for it—yet another g-d nap after the meal.

On to the third shift, which starts with a final bit of caffeination (and Odin Sphere) somewhere between 7:30-9:00 PM. Energy level’s pretty damn low by this point, so the worktime range for this shift ranges wildly, anywhere from a mere hour or so to a maximum of 4-5 hours. The latter scenario only happens reliably during the hell-for-leather closing months of an Empowered volume, when I’m swept up in peak workflow for weeks—even months—straight and my work hours are pushing the limits of what my oft-ailing drawing hand can tolerate. At other, less-inspired times, I barely stagger through noodling away at another panel or typing out a few paragraphs of webcomic commentary before quitting early for the night. Regardless of inspiration and/or energy level, though, I’m incapable of truly creative endeavors during the third shift; I can only continue drawing an Empowered page already in progress, and get nowhere when trying to start anything truly new during this final stretch of the workday.

So, those are the base parameters of my daily work schedule, 7 days a week. For the next page’s commentary, I’ll assay a bit of analysis of that wonky, nap-intensive schedule and what I’ve learned from working this way for most of Empowered’s decade-long run.

-Adam Warren