July update from a sleepy bean (Patreon)

Hello everyone!! I hope you're doing well. As you know I took some time off to rest. The good news is I have been resting a lot! Boy, lotta sleeping. Much of it involuntary lol. 

The bad news is I didn't get back to where I was hoping to be "in time". A big part of this recalibration to my new limitations-- my new parameters of being -- is allowing things to happen in their own time. 

I just wanna say, those of you who still support someone even during the stormiest of weather are the absolute best kinda people. I am so so grateful for you all. 

Positive News

So hey I bought a condo?? This is one of the big things that had been SUPER stressing me out for awhile. I've been trying to buy a condo since about January. Probably you've heard about the Vancouver housing crisis and rising interest rates and blah blah ... it's probably very similar where you are! Sucks! Rent here is scary now, and I had some money from the sale of my last condo that I really wanted to go towards some housing security before the prices went back up into the stratosphere so I'd been hitting the pavement pretty hard. 

I put offers on multiple condos before the stars literally aligned for me to get a winning bid. I'm pretty happy, it'll do fine! A humble little place that will suit my needs. I move in September. 

But yeah that process was pretty stressful. Every time you put a bid down you have to do this crazy mental calculus of like "will this place work for me? Oh I have to do this and this and this and I'll need to move then? hmmm ok these other things will need to change" and then you sign a million papers to commit an absurd amount of money only to find out you LOST and needing to then unwind that entire mind-path of your future. I didn't enjoy it! I think our current system is not very kind and probably it should be easier to find basic accommodations. 

But for me personally.... it worked out ok :)

Tradewaiters

Some new podcasts have released! If you wanna feel real sad may I recommend Barefoot Gen! Maybe let it be your Oppenheimer chaser. If you then wanna feel less sad, I recommend Witch Hat Atelier which is cute and fun. 

Our next episode is #100???? We're going to talk about Reinventing Comics and I'm SO EXCITED about it. 

Socialzzz

Twitter is dead. Long live twitter. 

Tumblr, Instagram and Twitch are still serving their functions. 

Mastodon is now pretty much exclusively reserved for aliem brainworms. And pictures of foster cats and nerdy jokes and climate change banter. It's basically become my "I'm not going to think too hard about posting here" multi interest repository and I've been enjoying it. 

Bsky is new. This seems to be where most of the comics community has decided to hang their hat, so this is where I'm going to socialize with other artists. This means that it will probably be less jokey, and more sincere-posting because I am friends with a lot of artists and twitter used to be how we kept up with each other. I will post art and I will post about being an artist. But I doubt it will become a "promo" venue for me. If you just want to make sure to see The Art with not much else in the way, I recommend Tumblr or Instagram. 

I'm not touching threads with a 10ft pole.

I Paused Billing for August

I'm going to give this another try. 

I feel like my brain has been around the whole world and come back again, and it's back to a place that things drawing could be fun. A big things I've been working on is the source of my energy. A lot of what used to drive me was fear and guilt, and I don't think that's the place I want to draw from anymore. 

To create the image above I focused only on bringing joy to others. That's it. I literally sat down and meditated and thought about bringing joy to others, and then sat down and channeled ONLY that energy for as long as I could. Usually the session was not very long, because I'm building a completely new brain-muscle. 

But I'm really happy with the image I came up with. I hope it brings joy to you too.

💜jam