All right, so, I’ve been feeling a little like I’m drowning since Christmas or so, and tried to keep convincing myself that it’s fine, it’s just a bad day, tomorrow will be better, only for the cycle to keep repeating over and over while I still get practically nothing done. Of course, this feeling snowballs until I’m completely paralyzed by guilt and stress and then nothing gets done for real. 

It took me until January to realize that oh shit, this is like depression Depression, the brand-name kind. I have to follow this statement with a disclosure of the fact that yes, I have a therapist and medical team for all things physical and mental. I have a support system at home. I am ok, and will continue to be. 

That said, I am having an unbelievably difficult time working on Follower. I have been having panic attacks regarding things happening in world events as well as regular disasters at home, and it has been really rough on my health. The tl;dr is that I have several physical health conditions that make life pretty hard and stress exacerbates all of them. So even if I can make myself feel better, I physically feel the effects of stress for days after, generally in the form of body aches as if I’ve been rolled down a rocky hill and hit ‘em all on the way down. I can manage this, but it’s hard. 

Health problems aside, it’s just kinda hard to make a comic about a dystopian world while the world is, uh, this. It’s like that thing where people post real headlines and ask if it’s from the Onion, only it’s my own story and I feel like I’m reading it in the real news. 

So, for all these reasons, I’m taking an emergency sabbatical from Follower to try and level out my health to normal and to try and reboot my storytelling brain. I feel fried in every possible way, and I do not want to burn myself out so hard that I quit before I finish these stories. 

I don’t know yet how long this break will be. I need to feel it out and see how things seem with some proper rest and better practices. I am guessing at least a couple of months, and my hope is to be back with Follower by summer. 

I’m going to spend this time on other creative pursuits I’ve had on the back burner for a while. I have a lot of little comic strips that have just been unfinished for ages and could be their own zine. I want to write more, and maybe finish and polish my 2023 Nanowrimo novel into something “real.” I have an idea for a game that’s kind of a love letter to the adventure games I played as a kid, and I’ve just never had the time to work it out visually, despite carrying it around in my head for years. There are a lot of things I want to poke at, and life’s short. 

I am planning to use my Patreon’s free tier to post some of this new stuff too, so you can join for earlier looks at my weird experiments. I’m going to ease into Follower as it feels less panicked to do so, and those pages will still be behind the Patreon/Ko-Fi paywall. Some new experimental stuff might be there as well, depending on what it is. Don’t feel bad if you would like to change your Patreon pledge. I can’t hold that against anyone. 

After some time period I haven’t decided on, these posts will also make its way to the Radiochio.com blog, too, probably along with some writing and regular posting. 

If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that the solution to burnout is absolutely not to keep slamming your face into the wall because you feel like you have to do it, because you won’t break through and it won’t get better until you care for yourself and think it through. I need to change course for a while for my health, and I hope you’ll join me on this weird art journey as I rebuild myself from the inside out. 

As always, thank you so much for being such wonderful readers and fans. I appreciate all of you. 

• Bug