Hey guys, welcome back!
Thanks for being patient with us during the break. Truth be told I was insanely burnt out when I finally decided to take time off, it was mainly a combo of MS symptoms, frustration with my limitations and depression that was pushing me down. It’s not easy to make a comic and be as slow as I am (on the internet of all places), too often I was comparing myself to more productive, healthy creators and I know that is a ridiculously stupid thing to do, we all have our own challenges in life, I just needed to take a clearer look at mine.
One of the biggest things I did for my mental health was delete twitter from my phone, not my account mind you, just the app. Having it at my fingertips was an amusing time suck at the best of times and a depressing, discourse filled, stress inducing headache the vast majority of the time. Limiting my use to the desktop has deterred me from the endless scrolling that comes with looking at social media on my phone and I don’t think I’m ever going back at this point. I realize that may impact how many people I can reach as social media seems to be the only thing that matters on the internet in this day and age (cue old man yells at cloud photo here). I just want to make a comic, I’m not interested in building a false persona to sell my brand as a creator, that’s not who I am and trying to force myself into that box was just depressing and stressing me out.
All that being said, the break has really helped me figure out what I want for the future of this comic and myself as a creator. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked as I was very sick most of July and August, but luckily, early this month I’ve started a new medication that actually seems to be helping. It’s obviously not a cure but it’s helping me with my cognitive issues and getting a good night’s sleep which is crucial for managing fatigue. I’ve also made some lifestyle changes that seem to be helping as well (the usual suspects like eating healthy and exercising). All this has really helped me, I’m really hoping this means that I will be able to keep to an update schedule and build up a decent buffer for once, but only time will tell. 😛
Thanks again for your continued support. I’m looking forward to sharing what’s to come. For now, you can check out a painting I did of the surface of Titan over at TopWebComics. This is just one of the many environments that I plan on painting for the redraw of the comic. Vote to check it out. 😀