First things first: HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2023! I made some resolutions at the start of 2022, let’s see how they panned out!
1) Keep making videos, grow that audience and participation.
Yeah! I kept making videos, and my YouTube audience and participation grown slow and steady. Cool! Instagram as well, although I feel like it’s a horrible social media for watching and sharing long-form videos.
2) Focus on writing stories
Well, yeah, I guess! I wouldn’t say my year focused on writing stories, but my creative writing class forced me to work on two, and I started drawing ‘Heroic’ comic strips which are like little snapshots into a larger story. I’m gonna say I half-did this one.
3) Write some dang music
Yeah! I did this one for sure. A lot of it isn’t any good at all. I think what I had in mind was “Write an album” and that didn’t happen. But! a new house meant space for a permanent desk set-up, which meant my music gear is always set up, which means I’ve been writing LOTS of dang music. Lots of YouTube background music for sure, and plenty of feeble attempts at songwriting. Here are a couple that I like:

4) Get over writing daily comic strips and figure out what’s next
Huh. This one I definitely failed at, in that I continued to strive to write daily comic strips. It’s a hard creative habit to break, that routine of making something bite-sized every day, the satisfaction of seeing a whole pile of bite-sized stuff turn into a decent meal when it’s collected together in a book. But I do strongly feel like I need to recalibrate my creative impulses to something more substantial and long form. The best case scenario drawing a daily comic strip is that people like it for the 30 seconds it takes them to read it, then it is lost in the stream of content they are swimming in. My hope was always “Oh, maybe they’ll like it so much that they seek out my comic” but I don’t do that for ANY of the comics I like, with the exceptions of the webcomics I’ve enjoyed for 15 years and am accustomed to typing in their URL’s.
5) Focus on finding venues to help people embrace creative expression (this wasn’t in my new-years resolution blog post from 2022, but from a post a few weeks earlier)
Well, if quitting my job as a pastor to pursue education to become an arts teacher isn’t following through on that resolution, I don’t know what is. I’ve had a few opportunities here and there to make art with people, and I actually get to teach a comic making class through our community association starting in a couple of weeks.

The last few weeks have been busy with Christmas celebrations and hanging out with family. Other than the weather canceling some travel plans, it’s been good! My brother brought his OP-1 synth and let me borrow it, and I’ve been having a TON of fun making little songs. Three of them are here, the bottom video (Try) isn’t posted anywhere else, JUST HERE! So feel special! “Smile” is the one I made first, and if you can make it through the first 15 seconds, I think it’s not half bad.

Just in case you missed it, here’s a link to my short story entitled “The Lock”. I posted it this week, and sometime next week, I’ll post another one of the stories I wrote for my creative writing class. “The Lock” is a nonfiction essay about my real-life lock. I’d say it’s… non-fiction adjacent. It’s all true, but I mean, I’ve taken some artistic liberty. In any case, I’m happy with how it turned out. If you’re looking for something that takes a bit longer to read (but not TOO long) check it out, I think you’ll enjoy it.

I didn’t get around to making an art tutorial video (yet… I may today or tomorrow) and I haven’t made any comics this last week… It’s sorta hard to do solitary activities when there are so many people around that I’d rather be hanging out with. So here’s a little curated Christmas archive dive for yah:

Huh! I thought I had MORE Christmas related comics than that… but a quick browse through the thumbnails is turning up fruitless! So here’s some others:

Alrighty! AND, without further ado, some creative resolutions for 2023:
1) Make an album I’m proud of
2) Make a graphic novel of substance
3) Try to get something published (be it a short story, an essay, or the graphic novel, or whatever)
FUN! Thanks so much for reading in 2022, and I hope you’ll continue reading in 2023! Let’s all have a great year!