2014 in Review

Lordy Bagordy, I can't believe it's the end of the year already. As may be obvious from my decade's worth of autobiographical comics, I'm a compulsive chronicler of my life and year-in-review lists are a a personal favorite of mine. 

So here's the challenges and accomplishments of Oh Joy Sex Toy in 2014. 

CHALLENGES of 2014:
♥ Struggled to keep up with my schedule, had to use guest comics way more frequently than I'd like and I was never ahead. Never had time to draw side comics or take on freelance work or commissions. (Well, a couple, but they were favors to personal friends)
♥ Even though I used so many guest comics, Matt and I weren’t getting actual time off. We really needed to take time out to decompress and not work, we’re both pretty worn out.
♥ Email inbox is a disaster. I think I'm just gunna have to declare Email Bankruptcy and archive everything from 2014 in January, start over fresh. This makes me feel like a terrible, ungrateful person, but the state of my email is just unmanageable right now.
♥ Learning curves with Matt working full time on OJST and representing our small business. He's severely dyslexic, which makes people assume he's lazy or uneducated or even unintelligent based on his spelling and punctuation (WHICH COULD NOT BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH). His writing also doesn't convey his tone very well, so we had some misunderstandings with some people we were doing business with. Everything worked out in the end, no hard feelings. I dunno, just learning curves to transitioning into this job (figuring out what this job even IS), y'know?
♥ Struggling with trying to figure out my boundaries as Erika The Internet Character that people engage with on social media and write both positive and negative articles about— and Erika The Actual Human Being who is neither a totally amazing queer feminist role model nor the pure concentrate of awfulness and evil who is ruining feminism and queerness. I’m well-meaning and flawed and I’m trying to internalize that just because I can’t make everyone happy, doesn’t mean I’m actually the bad person people tell me I am on the internet.
♥ Mental Health. Always. Doing my best. Doing lots of difficult work, every day. It’s been hard. 

ACCOMPLISHMENTS of 2014:
♥ Tons of good press from pretty well-known websites and papers and podcasts. Even my dad was proud!
♥ By popular vote, OJST was named the #1 sex blog on Kinkly, which came with a $500 prize.
♥ OJST has been getting 1 million views each month for the whole year.
♥ Launched this Patreon, and it’s changed everything. It’s our #1 income source each month and enabled Matt to work on OJST full time. Stunned and so deeply grateful for the support and freedom its given us.
♥ Kickstarter went shockingly well, backers got their books sent out before our estimated delivery date (HOW MANY CROWDFUNDED CAMPAIGNS CAN SAY THAT?) and we were over-funded enough to increase our page rate to guest artists, past and future.
♥ Book release party was a huge success, She Bop was packed so full you couldn’t move and the line to get your book signed wrapped around the store. Twice. People drove hours from other states to attend. I’m still stunned.
♥ Finally ran out of both DAR! book print runs that I’ve been selling since 2009. Emotionally, it feels like letting my early-20s-self take a seat and let the spotlight shine on the current work I’m doing in my 30s.
♥ Topatoco took us on as their newest clients to distribute our merchandise. Super validating for me, since they’re represent some real powerhouses and don’t just pick up new people willy-nilly.
♥ My drawing improved a lot this year. I’ll never be happy with it, but it’s gratifying to see improvements.
♥ OJST, a free comic on the internet, is not even two years old and it supports two people full-time and feeds their cat and pays their house’s mortgage. This is unbelievable to me. Literally, unbelievable. 

When I think about the last twelve months, the accomplishments far outweigh the challenges. My primary struggles were mentally and emotionally; but professionally? Professionally, this has been A Very Good Year. Honestly? This has been My Best Year. 

I think regularly about this line I wrote in a DAR! comic from 2007, “I know what I want to be as a Grown Up, but I don’t know how to get there.” ( http://www.darcomic.com/2007/09/04/bulb/ ) 

It took the previous sixteen years worth of devoting my life to this craft and the last six years committed to this as a career and I absolutely could not have accomplished this without the active emotional and financial support of my readers, my community, and my husband, but: 

2014 is the year I got there.