The last number of years have been challenging, to say the least! Questions of self worth, identity, obligation and purpose have been constantly gnawing and, in many ways, I've felt extremely lost and confused. The catalyst for this was my mother passing, on Christmas in 2007, and life just hadn't been the same since. A lot of my drive and direction had been sapped from me, and it wasn't until Pie and I started working on the comic that I felt a bit of the direction and purpose return.

Although this doesn't come near encapsulating my most recent bout of anxiety and depression of which I've written about in the last few months, a lot of it has roots in this. I had always known that it affected me in a significant way, but it didn't quite dawn on me until this Christmas that our lives were lacking something significant ever since. I didn't spend every Christmas in mourning, that was more of a dull and continual process, but we didn't celebrate either... In fact, every major holiday and significant date passed with only the fanfare that others graced us with. Though appreciated, the celebrations somehow felt like aberrations-- a sense of being in the middle of a situation but somehow completely removed from it, like an outsider looking in.

Pie has never been one to make a big deal out of these days and we both try to make every day fulfilling in our own way, but having these dedicated days of celebration and connection with others always meant something significant to me. About three and a half years ago, when we began living in Vegas, we entered a year and a half bubble of being disconnected from most friends and even society in general. It was conducive to working on the comic, but cold and lonely at the same time. Moving back to California helped ease us out of the bubble, but something was still missing...

When we started playing Final Fantasy XIV in March, two important things started coming together. First, we had started getting pretty close to the people who were supporting us through Patreon. Having voice chats over the course of a few months ended up being really great as we grew close to a few of them. The second was that as we played XIV, a community ended up forming around us that we enjoyed immensely. Both events started to get us more socially active again and it felt like this huge breath of fresh air, especially upon meeting Brie, though that's a story for another time~

After a few months of soaking ourselves in the communities, our world felt like it was finally returning to normalcy...one that was present in life before 2007. Brie, our communities, the connection with others...though there was some difficult issues I needed to (and indeed, still am) working through, we felt our lives noticeably improving. Through the recent computer crash and my depression and anxiety, our friends were constant sources of positivity and support. They even did something extraordinary and banded together to make certain Pie and I had a Christmas worth celebrating this year...

My hope is that this comic can convey the amount of emotional impact this gesture had on me and that this blog post would provide the background for why this was so significant. That Pie and I not only had a Chirstmas, but actually got into the spirit was an incredible blessing; life felt like it was returning after an exceptionally long winter. I'm very eager to see what 2016 blooms into because of the wonderful people filling our lives, all of you who have supported us through your readership, our family, friends and loved ones~ Thank you, so SO very much everyone <3