You may have noticed that the comic hasn’t been updating this week. You may also have noticed that I increased the size of the comic last week and did so for seven days straight. That was my way of saying goodbye to the comic.

There are several reasons why I chose to retire the comic. To me, each reason has merit and each reason makes me doubt my decision. I’m going to try and explain myself, but it doesn’t matter if no one understands.

I started the project two and a half years ago as a partial means to populate my website with something other than a blog. The work that went into designing the comic interface was tremendous for me at the time, though now I look at it and see quite a simple application.

When I first started, I drew each comic by hand, inked them, scanned them into the computer to be cleaned up and have the dialog added. It was time consuming. However, I think I produced some of my most visually appealing comics towards the end of my hand drawing them. Anyway, I switched the drawing them directly onto the computer. Sometimes I wonder if that was the best choice for the comic; it saved me time but I had trouble drawing the comic I wanted to draw.

In the past few months, I had gotten drawing comics down to a science. They could be whipped out in fifteen minutes; idea, drawing and everything else. To me, it showed. I had ceased to put the same time and care into each strip that I had when I first started. It doesn’t make sense for me to do something if I’m not going to try and do it well.

It wasn’t fully my fault that the comic started getting lazy, I had a busy semester this Spring. I wanted to pass everything so I could graduate, which I did, and that put the comic on the back burner. But graduating placed itself into a comic where I never planned to have the characters graduate or age. It’s true that Georgie left school to work full time and he didn’t exactly graduate. But the way I look at it, Georgie was me in those final strips. He was in school for a while and left with something partially useless; for him it was an unfinished degree and for me it was a degree in English. We both entered into the workplace unsure if we made the right choice, worried about leaving behind the life that we had grown attached to.

Getting a full time job was a factor in my decision to retire the comic. I’m worried that the comic would become the same old drudgery that I get in the office, just as I received my inspiration for comics from school. If I don’t enjoy going to work and sitting at a desk each day, how could I enjoy drawing a comic about it? And then there is the time-sink aspect of the comic. If I’m spending x amount of time each week drawing a comic, that’s x amount less time I have a week to gain skills to make myself more employable or to make dinner and relax after a long day in the office.

And then there is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the Peace Corps. I’ve never had any intention of trying to update a comic while I’m in another country. Well, never might be the wrong word because I toyed with the idea of doing twenty-seven months worth of comics before leaving (that’s 351 comics which is roughly how many I’ve done so far). Regardless, if I leave for the Peace Corps, I’d have to end the comic. This way I have more time to dedicate myself to making sure I leave in September.

I regret bits and pieces about the comic along the way, things I wish I had done and things I wish I had done different. However, I couldn’t ever say that I regret doing the comic.

All of that being said, thanks for coming along for the ride with me. And who knows, maybe I’ll start anew when I get back from the Peace Corps.