Why I'm Leaving and Why Matt's Not

We started this together. 

From the very first day, we collaborated on each comic. Our writing process was intermingled. One of us would write the first draft of a script, the other one would edit it and add in their insights, their feedback. I would draw it and then Matt would color it. 

Individually:

-Matt ran the website, recruited and edited the guest comics, managed our affiliate relationships, answered all OJST email, acquired our reviewer copies of products and kept them scheduled, laid out our books, ran our Kickstarters, handled licensing, organized sponsors, god only knows what else I'm forgetting, and then he'd do laundry and cook us dinner every night. 

-I handled social media promotion and then I washed the dishes and did general house tidying. (MIGHT I ADD: Drawing the comic typically took me a full week!)

We did this together. We lived and breathed Oh Joy Sex Toy all day every day for eight years. We problem-solved, we collaborated, we made this thing, this little empire of dick drawings and dad jokes. We poured our hearts and souls, our blood, sweat, and tears (literally!) into this tiny niche project that we nurtured into a real company that fully supported two people and paid professional rates to dozens more. I'm so proud of that. We both are. 

This weird little niche thing that we built? 

It matters. 

We made something together that actually matters in the world to real people. 

People have bought sex toys because we reviewed them. People picked out their birth control because of comics we've run. People recognized their symptoms from reading our comics and gone on to get medical care. People have seen characters who look and think and love like them somewhere in the hundreds of pages we've published from us and from dozens of other cartoonists. 

We made something bigger than us, more important than two nerds surviving on a webcomic. We made something that actually matters.

Holy shit, yo.

This is Matt's dream job and it was mine too for a good long while... but my brain is more fragile than the average person's. 

Actually, wait. Originally while I was writing this, I dove straight in to The Main Thing that is making me step away from OJST, and then wrapped it up by mentioning some of the lighter reasons too, but the weight of importance felt unbalanced so now I'm gunna START with the easier topics and conclude with the bummer stuff. 

1) Turning sex into my job has changed my relationship with it. I know I'm "just" reviewing sex toys, but, like, dang. It actually is work and work burns you out. I'd like to reconnect to myself, my desires, and my sexual activities with the heart and mind of an amateur-- that is, somebody who pursues an activity simply because they genuinely love it. 

2) I have other comics I want to work on. One story that I've really started to get cracking on in earnest after a couple years of sitting on it is a graphic novel memoir about my time going through the Intensive Outpatient Program. That is a story I am impassioned to tell. And also, also? I MISS FREELANCING. I miss working on weird, random jobs that have me drawing stuff that I never would have thought of on my own. Also, also, also? Some of my colleagues have comic ideas that would be fun to work on, too! I dunno, man, it's been eight years of the same thing every single week, I'm ready to stretch my creative muscles again! 

And 3), The Main Thing:

My brain, she is fragile.

At a baseline I am bipolar, have PTSD, and debilitating mental illness railroads straight through my family line (I am estranged from my biological family, save for a couple individuals). Added on top of that: my relationship with the internet is not healthy and I have been exposed to over a decade's worth of harassment that continues to traumatize me to this day. I do not say that word lightly, I mean "trauma" literally. It has caused me real damage; mentally, emotionally, and physically. "Internet harassment" is a bit of a misnomer, because that implies it lives exclusively online in unkind comments from anonymous usernames. At this decade of society being connected to the internet, though, we all know that "online bullying"  doesn't stop there; that it penetrates into your real life and damages you in actual, material ways that ostracize you from your communities and attack your financial stability. It has caused me multiple nervous breakdowns, made me suicidal, and it would have had me hospitalized in 2019 had I not agreed to do the Intensive Outpatient Program instead. 

Producing comics for OJST keeps me in the bullseye of "online" abuse and it's just... I can't do it anymore. 

In an effort to reduce harassment campaigns over the last few years, both Matt and I have become extremely stringent with how we cover topics and even what subjects we'll feature. Every sentence is hyper-analyzed to anticipate how it might be taken out of context or misinterpreted, which results in incredibly neutered writing. Topic-wise, too, we've shot down so many proposals from guest artists that explain their specific (harmless! safe! consensual!) kinks or sexual experiences if we think they might attract too much negative reaction. There's all these rich, interesting sexual fields I very much want to dive into, but given how The Internet has punished me for illustrating far more benign subjects, I am afraid to explore the more taboo subjects that most light up my brain. I just can't take the heat. Which means, for the last few years I have been creating from a place of fear and of avoidance of the things that interest me. I hate to be a melodramatic Artiste, but it has really broken my spirit down and made me dread sitting down to work. 

But here's the incomprehensible thing in spite of everything I just shared above: I do still have more sex stuff I want to cover through comics.

I'm not, like, DONE with this subject FOREVER. I'm just thinking... I  might save my sex-themed comics for traditionally published books, you know? Obviously, that won't prevent backlash from happening, but it might just shield me personally a little better from it than my current constant exposure level, you know? 

The last couple years my ability to produce OJST comics has continuously declined from the stress of everything I just explained, so Matt and I have been figuring out ways for me to do less and less work for the site. Matt's been bringing on more and more guest artists to fill in my gaps while I'd recover. With my August trip to the east coast, I was going to be taking my longest break ever away from producing OJST comics and Matt had hustled extra hard to line up enough guest comics in advance to cover that time. I thought going on a vacation might help rejuvenate me so I'd have energy to come back to work. Instead, I realized: I can't do this any more. I just can't. Thank god Matt had rustled up all those extra guest comics, eh? 

The first week was the worst, after I told Matt I had to quit. This isn't just a job for us, it's our relationship. To say "I don't want to do this thing with you any more" felt a lot like saying "I don't want to be with you any more", because who are we if we're not a team working together towards the same goals? It's who we've been for the last eight years. Plus, there's the cruelly unfair reality that me quitting a job that I can't do any more means forcing Matt to dramatically change or quit the job that he still actively loves. He loves it! He loves this subject, he loves recruiting and editing guest artists, he loves hearing from people who are using our comics in classes or who were personally affected by our work, he loves earning a steady, livable income in a creative field (DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THAT IS?!), and he loves collaborating with his wife (that's me). He had to seriously think about whether he would have to look for another job, what line of work would that even be, should he start over at square one as a 36-year-old in another field, should he transition to the traditional comics industry which is notoriously underpaid, should he try to keep OJST going without his collaborator and the person with the name everybody associates with it, would anyone still want it? It looks so simple when I write it down, but in real life asking these questions physically hurt. There was a lot of very hard conversations, a lot of pain, a looooot of crying. 

Like I already covered in my other update, things are coming together and we're both feeling optimistic about the future of OJST and my separate career. I mean, to be fair, the stress in this house is at an all-time high from fear of the new and unknown. But. As far as major job shake-ups go? I got a good feeling about this one.

I think it's gunna be ok.  

(Photos are of my very first lettuce seed harvesting! I just planted them literally today, WISH ME LUCK) 

Comment Request:

Please do not comment on internet harassment, whether it's mine or other examples you've observed. This topic is really triggering for me (Literally! I'm not using "trigger" as hyperbole to mean "upset". This subject literally triggers a physical PTSD reaction in me. I TOLD YOU MY BRAIN, SHE IS DELICATE). 

I guess the rest of this post is fair game for commenting on, although I'm most interested to hear about your own experiences with major life changes or anything else that you were reminded of from reading this novel I wrote. Enough about me! Tell me about you, dahling.