I feel like I've spent the last few years kind of stuck in place. Right now my wife is attending university, hammering her way through a physics major, which is good. The down-side has been that we're living with my parents because we can't afford to rent a place of our own just now, and while I appreciate them letting us stay in the suite they built for my grandmother when she was alive, it's impossible not to feel the loss of independence. Between bills (including, most notably, my school loan payments) and the difficulty in finding work in California, there's just no way we can afford an apartment. I've got a part-time job at a major bookstore chain, which was a welcome development, though of course I'd prefer full-time employment at something greater than minimum wage. Still, I'm trying to count my blessings rather than curse the darkness, or some other appropriate mixed metaphor.

Recently, though, I've found some inspiration to take advantage of my current situation to start improving things about myself. There were a number of influences that brought me to this place, but the one I'll mention here was, oddly enough, playing a Visual Novel called Katawa Shoujo ([link]). The story of how this game came to be in the first place is really fascinating, considering it came from rather humble and somewhat scandalous origins and grew to become a really beautiful collection of love stories.

Anyway, it had an effect on me, and from what I've read online, I'm not unique in that regard. I've changed my eating habits to be healthier, I've started running in the mornings (I'm doing a Couch to 5K program right now), and I've started trying to make changes in my daily life to improve upon other problems I've been struggling with (or, more precisely, putting up with) for a very long time.

As for what this has to do with my artwork, well, I'm hoping to apply my renewed outlook to that, as well. At the moment I've been preoccupied with a desire to make Katawa Shoujo fan-art, but I'd like to get focused on my comics project again. I've taken on some paying freelance work, which, while the subject matter was outside what I normally prefer to do, made me feel pretty good when I completed it. I've felt discouraged for some time about the difficulties I've run into in getting an art-based career, much less getting into comics professionally, but I feel like I'm at a point where I'm prepared to start making an effort again. It's a bit of a slow recovery, because I'm taking small steps right now and feel as though making some kind of big declaration or resolution would be setting myself up to disappoint people, if that makes any sense.

Why am I posting this all here? I don't know - mostly because I'm tired of looking at a two year-old journal posting every time I bring up the website.