On this day in 2006, my thirtieth birthday, I felt for the first time like I was getting old.  I had started making comics two years before, left my job in Hollywood to pursue greener pastures and had just gone full time with the my art.  That day, my then wife and still business partner arranged for people I either knew or who had been touched by my work to write me birthday wishes And posted them on the still fledgling misfile site.  It was a lovely gesture from all involved.  I consider that year, not the year I started drawing my comics, but the year I went full time, to be the start of my comic career. 

It’s been 18 years since then, the span of an entire childhood blossoming into adulthood.  Many things have changed, some for the better, some for the worse.  It’s a different world.  I was a pioneer of a relatively new medium, my career took off, peaked and settled back into a state of general equilibrium.  The medium and the market changed and I looked up one day to realize I had become a dinosaur.  My personal meteor has not yet made me extinct, but I do feel my antiquity, especially online with my work now being read by people who were not even born when I started on this journey.  

The encouraging and uplifting emails I used to receive gradually faded and evolved into messages on social media.  Social media eventually evolved into a cesspool of shallowness and bigotry that I’m forced by my chosen work to continue to endure, but from time to time I still receive messages that touch me and make me proud in ways that my work has affected others lives.  

In those 18 years I’ve lost family members, attended conventions all across the continent, had three children, lived in as many states, had the worst night of my life, made my own movie, been divorced, learned to open up again, even accomplished things I hadn’t dared hope for and given up on dreams all while fighting a constant battle with depression; all in all a mixed bag.  Since my newest diagnosis and treatment though I am, for the first time in a long long while, able to appreciate the good bits and keep the bad in perspective (usually).  

So here I am.  My career is now as old as a legal adult. It can’t vote, but it can finally look back on the folly of youth and pull from it some lessons learned.  

I'm not going anywhere yet.  My career still needs its equivalent of its formative college years and its first legal drink. Hope I can have a bit of success and fun along the way.

Thanks for reading!