I'm finally home at 8:30 at night after getting my Covid shot right after work. Feeling tired as heck after a long day, but I got a lot of little boring grown-up things done, so I can feel good about that at least. Plus, this weekend I'll finally be publishing Double Dog Dare Part 2! My cohort in the art of creative combat, Aoupielux has provided me some stunning, STUNNING guest artwork, and I'm so excited to share it! I'll be posting comic updates every Friday!

Today is National Coming Out Day, and it's pretty cool to see how much things have changed for the better for today's young folks compared to the stuff I experienced in high school, which doesn't seem that long ago. (Well, sometimes it doesn't feel that long ago, at least.) It's rad to see people are finding their identities and able to take pride in it and receive support from the people around them, when the idea still seemed unthinkable to me at that age. Grargh, my eye contacts are drying up and my dog is being super annoying right now. What am I trying to say? I guess just the fact that there's so many things I thought were impossible for myself growing up, and continuing to see those things proven attainable. There's a lot of things in life I closed my heart to, thinking that there wasn't even a point in desiring it in the first place, because it just wasn't going to be possible for me. A home, a dog, marriage, and who knows what else some day down the line. My world and all its options seemed so much smaller to the 14 year old me who couldn't even fathom why life would still be worth living beyond 30. I'm excited for the coming generations and what they'll be able to accomplish as they leapfrog over my tired mummified body.

I don't really have too many exciting "coming out" stories, because frankly when you're part of the QUILTBAG+ umbrella, you're pretty much always in a never ending chain of tiny coming out experiences. Wouldn't it be nice if coming out were just like an engagement announcement, and you only need to do it once in your life in a stunning, cinematic spectacle? Nah, instead it's a near constant thing, often casually mentioned here and there in conversations over what I was up to on the weekend to coworkers, summer plans to my dentist, small talk with a neighbor at the mail boxes. Always doing split second internal decisions in my brain of Okay, how much do I need to reveal without making it a whole thing? Most of my friends and family never needed a whole conversation about it, as it was just kind of gradually understood my whole life growing up, even if I didn't have the words for it yet.

I suppose kinks and online subcommunities are within the umbrella of things you can come out about to people as well, but personally that's not really something I've felt too much need or desire to talk about to folks IRL about, besides my therapist whenever the topics come up. I've one or two chums I've known for ages who know about most stuff, but generally I keep my personal private shit personal and private. Once or twice I've shared some of my online art and interests with folks I've dated, to varying reactions (But all of them perfectly valid reactions), but it's not really important to me that they know what I like to write and draw for money online. To me it's an eccentric little hobby and side-hustle that keeps me entertained while listening to podcasts in the morning before work. If I could make the same amount of money from knitting, this website would probably be dedicated to selling sweaters and scarves instead.

This rant has gotten the better of me once again, and my contacts are now totally dried out and blinding me, which is clearly fate's way of telling me to wrap this up and go to bed soon. Allow me to reiterate, new comics coming to my store on Friday the 13th this week! And maybe even a new art pack inspired by a certain movie series.