Shattered
Jul07
on July 7, 2023
at 12:00 am
Chapter: 31 - She's Got the Look
Location: Belharght High School, Cafeteria
This… totally isn’t taken from experience. Not at all.
Hey all! Just a quick update to let you all know that the chapter is (finally) finished being written, and the next chapter will be starting real soon! I’d start this week, but I’m finishing up a big project for a client and I’d like to get that done so I can focus better on making comics.
I want to thank you all for sticking around and being so patient with me. I’m really looking forward to making comics again! This is such an insane chapter, I hope you guys love it!
Hello everyone! How are you all doing?
As you know, the world’s been a bit insane these last couple of years. Like everyone else, I’ve been affected by this insanity as well. I work at a pharmacy as my day job as low-ranking management, so this has eaten up much of my time. We’ve also been suffering from being able to keep managers on staff (We’ve had at least five in the last three years or so), and this affects my schedule as well as my one coworker who has been with me since the beginning (Everyone else has left or gone back to school).
I also don’t want to go into too many details, but things with my family have been rocky to say the best. My biological dad died last June, and I’ve been struggling mentally since then but mostly managing. My mom and I basically don’t speak. I talked with her last October after not having seen her since the end of 2019 in person, but things basically ended in calamity. She’s very anti-vax and anti-mask, and pro-gun, etc., etc. you get the point. She turned her back and walked away from me after I poured my heart out to her. She disowned me from the family before, and this was essentially the push I needed to completely block her from my life. Needless to say, this has affected my mental health a lot.
All things haven’t been bad though! 2021 was an incredibly rough year, but it hasn’t been too bad this year thus far. I’ve been drawing a lot more frequently (you can see a lot of this progress on my Patreon!), I did really well at the fair last year, and I did better than ever artwise financially, which is awesome! Still not enough to quit my job, unfortunately, but hopefully in the future soon! But this in itself is a blessing and a curse, I suppose. I love doing art, and I’m never going to stop doing it, but it’s very time-consuming! I also currently have two big commissions I’m working on, which I took when I didn’t have too many hours at my day job, but that has since changed. They are mostly both finished, but I don’t like having too many untied ends before working on another big project.
On top of all this, I am learning Japanese, trying to spend time with Dean in the short amount of time we have together every day (he’s also struggling at work), and snuggling with Vienna (my dog). I also occasionally get some video game time and reading in!
I know in the end, this all sounds like a bunch of excuses (and I guess it is), but believe me, I absolutely, completely miss drawing the comic. My characters bring me so much joy in drawing their dumb faces, and it’s not something I plan on quitting until the story is complete. I know there have been some pretty big gaps here and there, but unfortunately, that’s life. In the meantime, you can help me out by backing my Patreon or buying some stuff in my store! Every little bit helps me get closer to being able to quit my day job and retail (ah the dream) forever.
Thanks to everyone who’s been sticking with me all these years, I hope you all stay rad.
~Heather
I’m sorry I’ve been a bit quiet lately. I’ve been scrambling to get ready for Terrificon, which is in a few days! I’ve also got some personal projects that I’ve been working on, which is why I haven’t been posting much. Thanks for waiting patiently for me, there is definitely more JD coming soon!
Sorry guys, I’m going to have to take this week off. I had a death in the family, and I’m still pretty shaken up. I’ll try to get it up next week. Thanks for understanding ♥
Hey everyone! I have a bit of news… My day job has me working well into overtime hours for the last few weeks, due to our store being a Covid vaccination center. We are always low on employees, so only a few of us are left to cover the front store because the others are covering pharmacy. Since we have 14-hour workdays, there are only a few of us left to cover the hours. So, I’ve been working 9 and 10 hour days five days of the week (luckily we still get two days off).
I normally work about 30-ish hours a week, so adding almost 20 hours to that has me struggling to get personal projects done, including the comic. I’m really bummed about it, but for the time being, I’m going to be updating every other Friday. This is only temporary because eventually, we’ll go back to normal hours and the normal amount of employees. It may even only be a couple of weeks, and I might be being ridiculous here XD
TL;DR: I’m going to be posting every other week for a little while because I’m working way too much overtime XD
“Had a dream and it filled me with wonder…she had other plans…”
…and we’d just gotten restarted too. Shame, that. Presumably something important got in the way.
Finally, though, I developed something to say.
It helps when you have a surprisingly public nervous breakdown. From the looks of most of them, they were looking for a way to quietly bow out ahead of this.
…so…meanwhile…it’s almost October…