Happy 2024!!! / Life Update

Hello my sweetcorns! And welcome to the new year!

I hope you all had a good new year's celebration, side-stepped all holiday-related accident and emergency, and made lots of good memories in the last year. As for me, well...

2023 wasn't exactly my year! I've drawn less this year than I have in maybe a decade - not that that is probably news if you follow my work at all, haha. I was noticably absent the entire year, which was especially kind of embarassing after not really being around much the year before that, either, and right after promising some sort of comeback and announcing my Ko-fi subscriptions. I know that none of the people in the NIGHTCORNER would be following me or my work at this point if they weren't incredibly understanding about all of that stuff, but I still shouldn't have made so many empty promises, and I really feel that I've let you guys down a little. At the very least, I owe you a bit of an explanation.

Last year was intense, but it wasn't all bad, either. Like I originally wanted to, I put work into improving my health. I've started working out and building more muscle, I'm sorting out ways to eat better, I've been seeing doctors and trying different things... Throughout parts of early last year, my eczema was really bad. I tried light therapy for it, which ended up making it a lot worse, and there were a good few weeks of my life where it hurt to do literally anything. I was listening to the constant crackle of skin breaking in my ear, my eyelids were glued shut in the mornings, and I couldn't wear clothes without those sticking to my body because of all of the wound fluid coming out of every surface of skin. Then it turned out all that could be helped through using stronger skin medication, and that my doctors have all just been extremely conservative in what they were willing to prescribe me. For my entire life. I still have pretty bad eczema, which is something that comes and goes, but I will admit I'm a little mad that maybe I didn't need to go through all of that all of the other times that happened, haha. Still... I'm getting better.

I also went to therapy last year! I don't typically share a lot about my mental health, but it's not a secret or anything that I've had a psychotic episode at some point in my life, and dropped out of school because of it years ago. At the time, I was also looking for professional help, but it turns out... it's really difficult to find it while actively psychotic! I had a lot more pressing things going on after my episode finally waned, so I ended up never really going to therapy for the stuff I struggled with or anything like that, even though I'd been meaning to... until now. It was definitely intense and took a lot out of me, but I think overall it was really good for me, so I'm glad I finally did it. (To those of you who are curious: I tried NET - Narrative Exposure Therapy).

And... I adopted a cat! His name is Iris (or Carboy), an almost-15-year-old senior.

But all positives aside, there were quite a few upsetting and admittedly traumatizing things that happened throughout the last year. Not only that, they were all also things that just took really, really long. I'm sure that one day they'll be things I'll be able to laugh about (some of them are already pretty funny - but I'm under a NDA)... they were the main reason that I was so scarce this year, and why I haven't drawn about anything other than for ArtFight. But, and I'd like to think of this as testament to the strides I've made working on myself: I got through 2023 without developing an episode.

So what's all that mean for the NIGHTCORNER?

Hopefully, not too much!

I'd still really like to get back into doing art and make good on the promises that I made this time, last year. I can't really say if I'll succeed, considering my track record so far, but assuming that this year's even marginally kinder on me than the last, I should have a much easier time with it, at least. I'll try, and if nothing else, I'll probably at least be drawing a lot more this year than the last.

Yesterday, I finished a short personal comic about navigating identity, sexuality, and desire, named "did you spend so long playing dead that you forgot how to eat?" ... I really wanted to finish *something* before the year ended, and I made it in the nick of time. I'd like to do more comics and narrative work in the future, and I have some lines out for potentially making some physical stuff like stickers. I'd also like to see if I could maybe DIY print some physical copies of this comic, but I'll first have to see how well the colors translate into print, as they're not really optimized for it. When I do put together some physical stuff, everyone who supported me through Ko-fi last year will be the first to receive them.

For now, you can read the comic on my neocities website:

[ read the 18+ (full) version here ] or [ read the 16+ (cut) version here ]!

Content warnings: NSFW, death imagery, nudity, choking (18+ only)

The 16+ version is two pages shorter because I removed the sexually explicit pages from it, so I recommend reading the 18+ version, but they are either way both about sex, and both NSFW.

As a little bonus for people who read these forum posts, I've also reposted a short comic I made circa 2016 (...so during my episode), named "flight". It's about a little bird's dream... I think.

[ read it here ]!

That's about it for now! See you in 2023, and here's to making it a good one.