May 2025

I didn't realize that the page with Victoria imagining herself as the queen of a pizza empire was the first one of May. My sense of time really is useless. I intend to make some sort of extra image but I had patreon open to take car of other things so I figured I'd drop the pages now and put up the other stuff tomorrow when I make it. The end of the month keeps sneaking up on me. It seems like time is moving faster and faster while I am just not as sharp as I once was. The fact that I kept this train running through all the nonsense of the last decade is really insane when I look back on it now. How did I find the time? I used to sit with the teen until she fell asleep for HOURS when she was first living with us. Then there was the two hospital stays and the fall out from that for, well, all the way till today really. Most of my leg healed more or less, but the end of my foot is still trying to get its act together. Then I watched grandpa for however long that was. Plus the times when I basically started going insane because of untreated sleep apnea. I'm sitting here wondering how the fuck I did any of this. Like, if you just read the comic you'd have no clue of all the insanity I was dealing with right up until the one time I actually made a comic about it.

This recent time when dad almost died really kicked me back to that anxious state of mind again, I think. Stuff that I haven't had happen in a long time as far as anxiety goes suddenly came back and it had been long enough that I basically forgot how I got through it the last time. I've been sitting here a few time this last month or so thinking "Yeah, this is how it used to be in my head." I didn't feel like that stuff needed a sequel.

When my anxiety first tipped over into being crippling I had constant intrusive thoughts. Not like hearing voices exactly, but something I could recognize as coming from my brain that was unbidden and I couldn't get a handle on. I got a really nice ipod (at the time) and played some kind of content, basically constantly, for a few years. Something so my brain couldn't get its footing and attack itself. Eventually it got to the point where I didn't have to have it on all the time anymore. I could more or less be "normal" in silence most of the time. I still have that ipod because I feel indebted to it in a way. It almost never gets used for anything but I keep it charged and sometimes I listen to a little bit of a podcast from 2015, or whatever. I can't hook it to a computer anymore because Itunes will wipe the memory since I don't have the library it was synced to anymore. Most of those podcasts are functionally lost media. Stuff from before John Oliver was famous and he had a crappy little political comedy show on BBC4 with Andy Zaltsman. It's crazy how many nights I fell asleep to his voice and now I can barely stand the sound of it. When I go to sleep is still the only time I can't be left in silence. Being alone in my head, when I'm too tired to maintain my mental walls, is still something I can't do.

Now I have youtube playlists and netflix comedy specials I disrupt my brain with until I fall asleep. But sometimes the internet goes out and I pull out my old buddy. Just laying there in the dark, transported back in time 15 years or so. I've actually made an effort to thank the people who created the content I went to sleep to over the years. The only two people who have ever replied are an Australian comedian named Matt Stewart, and an American comedian named Ryan Hamilton. Matt has actually spoken to me a couple of times. He's a very kind young man. Ryan got hit by a bus a few years ago so he's got his own struggles to deal with. It was nice that he found time to say you're welcome at all.

Somehow I made a comic in spite of all of this that seems like it was made by a more or less almost well adjusted human. Maybe it's better if I don't fully understand how I did any of this. Just doing it worked for this long, so maybe this can be the one aspect of my life I just never take the time to fully analyze.

Anyway, thanks to all of you who supported my work and continue to do so. In a very real sense I wouldn't be here if not for you. Several of you have told me that the comic saved your life at crucial moments, and to that I say one good turn deserves another. I'm grateful that you let me noodle around on earth for more years than I would have without you. Perhaps we can keep this cycle going for a while longer. XD