The end (of the year) is nigh

It’s that time of year, the end of the year, when people get all introspective and attempt to reminisce what the hell they even did over the past 12 months before they say hello to another 12 months laid out in front of them. It’s currently 1am, I have still another week off my main job so my body clock is back to ‘night watch caveman’, and beans rattling around in my tin can of a brain that I’ll try to dispense here.

The Space Between has had a pretty successful year, overall, we completed chapter 3 (COSMIC CASTAWAY), got accepted into the SpiderForest Collective, and our social media following on Bluesky has been ticking away nicely. Thanks to Ty we have this website so it’s nice to have this tiny slither of the internet that is just ours. Philip and the gang put together a fantastic dub of Ch3 (and I will someday work out how to actually put them on the website as a feature).

Chapter 4 has been pretty hard. I don’t know at what point I was starting to burn out, quite early in the year I think. Having the end in sight for chapter 3 I think helped push me through that finish line. Pages have been a slog for a long while, though. Every page became longer and more stressful to complete. One recent page took up the best part if not all of a month to get out the door. Even at the start of TSB, I was aware I did not have the stamina I once had for comics like I did in my early 20s, that’s understandable and I don’t want a professional career in comics anyway, so that’s not been a problem. It’s still frustrating though to be as slow as I am at producing art and then also not having any enjoyment in the process. 

It got to the point where I had to put down TSB. I got onto the next page, Ty had kindly even thumbed out the next 2 pages for me to get my ball rolling, but I just didn’t have it in me anymore. So at the start of December once the Christmas illustration was finished I stepped away. If I’m truly honest, this month has been too busy for me to really have time feeling too guilty over it, not beyond the guilt I was already feeling for drying up so quickly after coming out of a hiatus and joining the collective. Don’t get me wrong I’m still wracked up with guilt. It comes internally, no one other than myself is giving me shit, but whatever. Wave reminded me a bit ago that this is the first proper break I’ve given myself in a long while. It doesn’t feel really like a break and more so I’ve pulled up on the hard shoulder and all my parts have just cartoonishly fell away with a clang and clatter and a lot of exhaust fumes. 

Since conception, TSB has always been the love letter for Wave and I to ourselves. Shut up, I know. Regardless on how corny that is, it means that we make TSB for ourselves, we’re not looking for it to become famous, to win us awards, even to end up on kickstarter for a print run (maybe some day but you get me). We like creating together, we like how the people we have met through creating it. It’s supposed to bring us joy – and it does, it still does bring me joy. But at the moment it still doesn’t bring me joy to make. I’m having to bring myself back to that point. I cannot stress how much TSB is my main hyper-fixation, it’s what I’m usually thinking about or doing if I’m not wrangling kids at work. I’ve had to put that at the wayside, for now, and find other ways to occupy my brain to keep my mental health as stable as it can be this time of year. I’ve recently finished a big appliqué project, I’ve deep dived back into Digimon, Impmon is my adopted son and you can fight me. 

I don’t like looking to the future. It just makes me depressed and more anxious than normal. Where will I be in a year’s time? 3 years? 10 years? Fuck if I want to think about that. I don’t know what 2026 will bring TSB – more pages, hopefully. I thought I was able to get a chapter out within a 12 month period but for where I’m currently at, and the fact that Chapter 4 will be the longest chapter so far, who knows, I definitely don’t. Hopefully, I’ll find the joy in making the comic again soon, and if not, well, shit happens, I guess. We’ll try to remain hopeful for the time being, best we can.

From Wave and myself, we hope you find joy in 2026

Peace and Love on planet Earth,

Squimoo 🍒