For the past 3 years I had written my letters as personal blog posts – it used to be in comics form for the public. Will it ever return to that old format? Who knows?
2022 was a bit of a strange adventure.
I didn’t get to check off most of the resolutions – mostly because I got hit with very bad Seasonal Affective Disorder, in the middle of my Freelance Hell. A lot of cool things happened regardless: Alexander Comic getting award nominations (and winning an award in the form of a brick) and an exhibition feature, TCM Vol II and My Aunt is a Monster released, The God of Arepo popped.
A lot of 2022 was building the foundation for my 30s: applying and getting acceptance for my Masters, another two years in Melbourne, looking physically more like myself, new book pitches, killing my workaholicism, surmounting my social anxiety/public speaking nerves, wrapping up this late-twenties era.
I still haven’t finished that work – this is going to be ongoing until I finally hit the big three zero. Half of it involves a slightly vertical pivoting of my comics career, which I have hinted a few times in previous blog posts. I want to move towards organising, teaching, mentorship, critique. I would like to pursue writing about comics: I have two major projects for this.
The other half is about dissociating making comics from making income. For the past 5 years I have been incredibly grateful and lucky to be able to create comics full-time, but now I just want to earn the income elsewhere, while still doing comics. I am realising there’s only so few books left in me to contribute to traditional publishing (I only have My Aunt is a Monster as a series maybe and a couple of YA pitches) – yet I have tons of unmarketable, untraditional, probably unmonetisable stories. I need time for these, especially for The World in Deeper Inspection, which means I have to find alternative work elsewhere.
Which is all fine, because I am also realising that I need to do something else that doesn’t trap me inside the walls of my home all year.
The Masters is meant to bridge that transition, and to formalise what I am already doing for the dayjob. I am also hoping to meet more scholars and practioners of not just comics but across disciplines. That’s my thing.
I am wary of speaking more, given the jinx. I consider art and life in progress (not at a stage where I am sure it will eventuate) as sacred, as things meant to be private and witnessed by myself, so I often don’t talk about or document these (which is why I haven’t spoken much about Alexander Book 2: it’s still in that ghost stage).
On the personal side, I am catching up on the thousands of things I want to be, to please both my past and future selves. I returned to tap-dancing (an old love) by taking sean-nos lessons. I took care of my hair texture better via a modified Curly Girl Method, and now my hair is healthier than ever. After many years of not caring at all, I started caring a little bit about my physical appearance. Just enough to ensure I cultivate the mind inside to show on the outside – in addition to embracing the fact that my entire physicality belongs to the side of darkness and character, not sweetness and prettiness.
I will probably blog more, since my career goals involve blogging to some degree. So yes. Hello. Welcome to my blog. I am writing more?????????
Happy 2023 everyone.
