Good News Everyone!!! (The joysplosion thread)

(This is cross posted from my tumblr because I'm nowhere near as eloquent as I was a couple minutes ago, haha)

Warning: I get super emotional about comics.

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SpoilerI’m finally getting some headway on a webcomic idea that I’ve had for a while, and oh my gosh, I haven’t been this excited about making something in years. I have characters that I love to shreds, villains that aren’t generic evil overlords (“I WANNA RULE THE WORLD!!!” “Why?” “…FOR REASONS.”) and I get to play around in an entirely new universe without any weird restrictions that I usually place around myself.

The best thing though…the best thing is that I’m finally doing something I love again.

Making comics has been such a huge part of who I am, that being away from it for so long was physically painful. Like, I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I didn’t feel useful- hell, I didn’t even feel like a person. I was just this human shaped sac that slogged through each day, trying too hard and never really being good enough.

But when I make comics…it’s like my entire outlook on everything changes. Everything is beautiful again. I have something to look forward to each day. “Today I’ll work on this many pages”, “Today I’ll script this next chapter”. I’m finally doing something that’s just for me again. And that’s something I was missing for so long.

My entire life used to be based around making other people happy. Doing exactly what my parents said, making sure people liked me. And while upholding my family’s honor (as weird as that sounds) is still really important to me, and while I’m still somewhat concerned to how I present myself to people, I feel like I’ve given myself permission to be a person again. I finally have something that’s just for me, given to me from myself.

And to have that, after so long…

It feels incredible