As most of you know, I have not been feeling well for quite some time now. What you probably don't know is that when I say, "I haven't been feeling well," what that really means is, "I'm pretty much completely non-functional lately but I suck at actually admitting it." The medications that I've been taking to help me compensate for my handicaps (bipolar disorder and ADHD) have been becoming less and less effective for years now, and these past several months have been particularly bad for me. Even medicated, the good days when I can function and accomplish things normally are growing incredibly rare, while the really bad days are becoming more and more frequent, and increasingly dangerous. In short, I'm being slowly devoured by my condition, and at this point I've realized that I can no longer say with any assurance when or if I'll recover enough to handle my current workload reliably. So as much as I loathe being more or less sidelined from my own company, I have little choice but to take a break and make getting myself back together my top priority.

At the moment, that's being something of a frustrating waiting game, since I can't yet change medications and so am limited to making what lifestyle changes I can to try to become more stable. That mostly means cutting way back on stressful things that might trigger bad days, as well as trying to eat more carefully and exercise daily and get decent amounts of sleep on a mostly regular schedule. As pathetic as it sounds, right now there are some days that I can't even manage to do that stuff. When I can do it, I think it is helping a little bit, but it's hardly what you might call a cure. There are still other medications available that may be more effective, but it will be at least several months before I can even try them because I've had to apply for disability to afford them, and that's a very slow process. (I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at sixteen, so I've been basically ineligible for getting health insurance my entire adult life, and we are very obviously not making enough money to afford expensive drugs that carry potentially lethal side effects).

This entire situation is just so incredibly frustrating and painful and humiliating for me. I've been battling these disorders for most of my life, and to reach the point where I have to cut back on actually living my life if I want to stay on this side of the psych ward door... well, that feels an awful lot like defeat. I'm not the sort who readily accepts defeat, and I refuse to let this situation stop me for very long, but at this point it's clearly going to stop me for long enough that I thought you all deserved to know.

As for what this means for the comic and the company... all I know for sure at this point is that change is coming. We're still figuring out exactly what and how, but we'll keep you guys up to date as we get things settled.

I've started playing Team Fortress 2 again recently. Eventually I got tired of the old Eirin Medic spray I was using and decided that I really ought to just draw my next spray... something equal parts cute and obnoxious. But of course I didn't want to use my own bloody characters for some damn reason, so I went with a /tg/ meme-spawned character that was basically created to be cute and obnoxious.

(click for larger image)

Oh, and here's the actual tf spray if anyone wants it:
Transparency Version (didn't come out very well)
Background Version (on a generic red and blue background thing)