Happy Holidays
The first live blog post happens to fall on a rather widely celebrated winter holiday. Our family celebrates Yule or the Winter Solstice which usually falls sometime around the 21st but that doesn’t mean the magic of this particular day is lost on us. When I was a youngling the 25th of December was all about the tree and the presents, the food, playing, the stocking, the candy and the fun. Certain aspects of my family tried occasionally to make it more about a religious affair, it never really took both for me as a child or for other adult members of my family. So Santa and the Reindeer, guessing presents, the anticipation and the surprise. It was a big thing until my horrid teenage years when I decided to be disaffected and withdrawn. I wore a lot of black clothing but was too poor to go fully goth. Makeup and hair dye was expensive and my clothing already had holes in it from wearing them but they were not in the cool spots I guess. So I lost the Christmas spirit, my family went along with it and the day became one where I would get a 12 pack of soda and $20 bucks. I don’t blame the adults in my life, teenagers can be difficult and I am sure I was no exception.
Fast forward to adulthood and I had never really gotten the spirit back until we started having kids. Well, I say adulthood but we were having kids when we were still in our early 20’s. But then I had a reason to bring it back, the spirit of things. I cared so deeply about my wife and children that I force resurrected the spirit of the holidays within myself. I would make a vow to only listen to holiday music in the car for the month of December, I would try to always say yes to any present or grand scheme my wife would concoct, lose any amount of sleep, do anything for them. The kids are grown up now and this morning it is just Jen and me having a relaxing cup of coffee and opening our stockings that we packed for each other. We are watching Ducktales and having candy for breakfast and even though the magic of that special morning now lives in memory rather than practice it still fills me with happiness. I loved our Yule celebration and being able to see everyone, share food and drink, open gifts and laugh and love all of them. Christmas morning though seems to be tied to a part of my inner child and I am wishing all a Happy Holidays to everyone’s inner or actual child regardless of what you celebrate.
Sappy, just soft my guy. Back to business. I am working on creating some sort of email campaign that will alert subscribers of new comics on Sundays as well as something to welcome newbies in when they are kind enough to give me their email. Please tell your friends, family, random strangers on the street about the site. I plan on doing probably a monthly newsletter of what I am working on beyond the comic, share some private doodles with just my subscribers, maybe stickers and stuff like that. I have many ideas and grand great plans to achieve and letting people know about them will come from this blog or a newsletter. Very soon I will start populating the store page with stickers and possibly physical merch like shirts, mugs and posters. I think I may open up commissions as well for all sorts of things. The pieces I did for our kids seemed to be well received so maybe you might like a custom piece of art to give as a gift…?
That’s probably good to cover my thoughts for the day and the week in general. I think this weeks Lu & Dag coming up I am going to try working more of the mythology roots back in. That was the original plan to begin with, a simple comic in black and white, a homage to Bill Watterson and my grandmother, a story from my childhood and my love of mythology. So look forward to that and have a great day whatever kind of day you are choosing.
