HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It’s been a while (Staind) since a new episode or anything has been posted on this here website, and that’s entirely my fault. 2021 got away from me pretty quick. Hardly feels like a year has past. To me, it feels more like DLC that was added on to 2020 that just took a while 100%.
I spent a lot of time in 2021 trying to figure out my mental health and what were things that made me happy. When things were completely shut down and I wasn’t really talking with anyone, I had started thinking ‘I’m only doing these things because it’s what people expect me to do. I don’t know if I even like any of this stuff anymore,’ which is a real mind-fuck to give yourself when you’re stuck by yourself for a year and some change. I realized I had to let go of some people and things that were super toxic to my mental health, find some new people that were more supportive, and pay some debts that I had been honestly avoiding for far too long and which the ever-present nagging stress of was really starting to get to me. But, after cutting out things and reorganizing myself I find I’m finally in a place where I could pay such things and it wouldn’t leave me homeless or otherwise destitute, so that is a positive.
Another positive: since 2020 I’ve been playing a bi-weekly D&D campaign with some of my oldest friends, and during that time I would draw our characters and the scenarios we were dealing with, and it really reinvigorated my love of drawing and creating. Creative people have a tendency to compare themselves to others, and I am no exception. I used to just sit and look at Instagram for hours, scrolling through some amazing artists and their work and just continually say to myself ‘I’ll never be THAT good’. Which is just another means of defeating myself before I even get started. For the holidays, I drew some cards and such for my younger cousins and extended family and was met with this overwhelming positivity that I frankly didn’t expect. Between that and the D&D doodles, I realized I was just getting in my own way. With that in mind, I have chipping away at prepping comics to post to the site, so expect to see a few updates on those fronts in the near future.
On the podcasting front, it’s kind of funny. When we were in lockdown, I was getting very comfortable talking to people through Zoom or Discord or whatever, and thought it would be super easy to get a hold of a wide variety of people since we’re all stuck in similar circumstances. And it did, for a while. When lockdown lifted, I thought ‘Great! Now I’ll be able to talk to people in person’. But it seems to me as soon as things opened up, everyone’s schedules (myself included) blew up and we were all constantly busy. It was hard getting people to carve an hour or so out of their day to sit down for a chat. I honestly had an easier time being able to guest on other people’s podcasts than I did getting people to sit down for mine. That was a little frustrating, but of the podcasting I did get to do this past year, every time I sat down to talk with someone else I had fun. Good chats with good people who I’ve learned from, and it’s made me reconsider my approach to scheduling guests on my shows. All in all, I hope to be releasing a lot more podcasts this year than last, and introduce ya’ll to some very interesting and funny people.
So what I learned with all this introspection and whatever is that I DO get a lot of joy out of comedy, out of writing, out of drawing and from podcasting. These are the ways I most readily give back to the universe a little bit of joy, light and entertainment, and I really look forward to doing a lot more of that in the coming year.
Thanks for sticking around and listening to the podcasts, looking through the comics and trying out the writing exercises. More is on the way.
Stay Safe and Healthy,
Ryan
