There are two wolves inside of you and they both want you to tighten that jiggly cupboard handle

Happy New Year! Yes, we're already half way through January, but I haven't wished you a Happy New Year yet, so I'm within my rights. I maintain that if I don't see or talk to you until December 31st, I'm still allowed to wish you an — admittedly belated — Happy New Year.

To my friends in LA and/or with family in LA, dealing with the fires: I barely know what to say, and I certainly don't know what to do. You are in my thoughts, and I desperately hope you have the resources you need. I'll be listening for good news alongside you.

I've been back at the drawing board for a week, inking more of Chapter Five (that's where we get our feral-looking friend above). Secret Reader patrons: look out for a post full of inked pages coming up later this week.

I posted on social media about the two things I was most proud of accomplishing in 2024:

• I put some bike lube in the squeaky hinges of our front closet.

• I installed a slow-close toilet lid for one of our toilets, so that now they both have slow-close lids.

This may sound like jokes and japes, or smartassery, and it is, a little bit, but it's also not.

 [ I also did some horse drawings back in August (above), which I like for their own sake but which also turned out to be extremely useful for drawing Chapter Five. ]

Those squeaky hinges bothered me for at least two years. The closet is on the other side of the wall from our kiddo's room. I go for night walks some times, and every time I opened the closet to get my shoes while he was asleep, I winced at the high-pitched squeal. It annoyed me every time. I lived like that for at least two years.

Do you know how long it took to lube those hinges? Maybe five minutes, tops. I did it while I still had my coat on, after I got in from preschool dropoff one day. That was back in the spring. The hinges have been silent ever since, and I mark that silence every. single. time.

 [ Oh man, I forgot I wrote those expansive retrospective posts — I took a deep dive into DD3 back in August. ]

The toilet seat was less of a daily problem, but every time I was operating on autopilot and let the old seat go, and it CLONKed down, I felt like a fool. With every other thing that's happening in the world, one man should not be asked to bear the mental burden of remembering which toilet set is and which toilet seat isn't going to sound like the tolling of Big Ben if it's not released properly.

 [ I finished Chapter Four in 2024! It was intense! ]

Maybe you're the type of person who is on top of all these little household things. I like to think that we're like that, and yet, here we are. There was another thing, back in our old apartment: we went without a little coping or transition piece beneath the front door for years, and when we did finally fix it, it took one trip to Home Depot and five minutes of work. To fix a small thing that wasn't ruining our lives but was a little source of disgruntlement every time I noticed it. Why do I let these things keep happening? Some weakness of character, I assume.

Anyway, if you need someone's encouragement to take care of That One Stupid Little Thing That Needs Taking-Care-Of, I'm here to urge you to do it. Will it be your proudest accomplishment of the year? Maybe! Or maybe not! But you will thank yourself on a daily basis. I have lots of big things to feel good about from last year: I'm so happy with how PDAP is turning out, and how the pages from Chapter Four came out, and how the story is looking for the rest of the book. Those were some big accomplishments that I'm proud of. But! I think about those door hinges — and I am grateful for that five minutes of bike lube — every! single! day!

 [ Above: subtle colour, good colour. A panel to be proud of! It's often the little ones that turn out best. ]

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU*

Over the holidays our family got absolutely rolled by Norovirus (like so many others, apparently). My partner got hers on Christmas morning, I got mine January 2nd, and Kiddo got his a few days later. Otherwise, it was a pretty good holidays, but we had a lot of unplanned-for Couch Time, and for better or worse the whole thing functioned as a system reboot. For one thing, I stopped drinking coffee. I had been drinking too much coffee. Now that we've all recovered, am I… secretly grateful? Perhaps?

This experience and my time off during the holidays me rethink my approach to work. I would like to allow the patron updates to become irregular. Last year, I had been making Patreon posts a priority for Thursdays, regardless of how the week was progressing. Friends, I suspect this regular cadence is not a make-or-break feature for you, so I'm going to put "regular updates" below "get pages done" on the priority list. I'm going to focus my available work hours first and foremost on getting pages done. I am guessing this aligns with your preferences, but please let me know if I'm mistaken. Ideally, the result is that you receive Patreon updates at unexpected times, but they have more of the good stuff you ostensibly signed up to see in the first place.

If you really are here for the reliable weekly updates, please do let me know!

*by which I mean the constitution of my gastrointestinal system.

 [ Oh yeah, I made concepts for the assortment of Barathron guards we'll meet in Chapter Six! Ha, look at that guy on the right. ]

CONFUSION TO ROBESPIERRE!

Later this week I'll be sharing a smattering of Chapter Five inks! Plus, motivated by a desire for greater understanding, a little cultural course-correction, and the increasing popularity of guillotine jokes in The Public Discourse, I've been immersing myself in the French Revolution. Check back in for a definitive answer to the question: "was it good? or was it bad?" I will soon be fully qualified to decide.

Until then,
I remain,
a slow-close toilet lid,

TC