Red Fern Coral (paper sculpture thing? also an accidental diary entry)

I was gunna start with a disclosure admitting that I made this paper sculpture(?) "a year or so ago" but it turns out that 2019 was five years ago?????? So, uh, FULL DISCLOSURE: I made this paper red fern coral five freaking years ago. 

To guide my wire arrangement, I first drew out the main structure of my fern coral at full size on paper and then physically bent the wires on top of it, binding them together with floral tape, but you know what? I still can't get over the whole "2019 was five years ago" thing.

Originally I was just going to glue the wire thing to a single piece of paper and leave it at that, but then I realized the wires would blend in better if I added another sheet of extremely thin paper to the other side too. The result was a paper sandwich with a wire middle. 

On one side I painted a gazillion little branches so I'd know where to cut out the negative spaces. So many important things happened in 2019- and I'm not even talking about The Pandemic. Well, maybe not a ton of things happened then, just one really big thing. It's the year I went to Space Camp and my whole life changed.

I went to Space Camp for one month and then I went through the same hospital's DBT program for six more months, all while simultaneously drawing 200some pages of Let's Talk About It. And then the pandemic happened! My final DBT session was held over the phone because we'd just started lockdown.

2020-2024 are just a moosh in my mind. One long year. At some point in there Matt and I had the hardest conversations we've ever had because I knew I needed to quit Oh Joy Sex Toy. If alternate timelines exist, there's definitely one where we broke up over it. But, we live in this timeline and I am so grateful for that because we'll be celebrating 19 years together this spring. 

Somewhere in that 2020-2024 moosh I started working on Letters From Space Camp, diving back into my old journal entries and photos and scratchy comics and ephemera that I compiled during my time in The Program. My first solo project in ten years. 

I swear I only started working on Space Camp "about a year ago" but... Yeah, that's definitely not true. Oh, the file info on the first page says December 16, 2021. This little Days Calculator that I just found on Google says that's two years, one month, and two days. 

In the next couple months I'm hoping to finish re-drawing the sample chapter from Space Camp so my agent can send it out to publishers. Matt restructured Oh Joy Sex Toy and built a wholeass team to keep that ship up and running and I'm... I'm really proud everything. I'm proud of and humbled by the heart, soul, and labor that The Team puts into it and I'm enjoying the role I'm playing behind the scenes. OJST has grown into so much more than just a comic that Matt and I make, it's bigger than us. It's special.

Oh! Oh, right. I was telling you guys about this paper coral I made. I also made a bunch of other undersea thingies out of paper and wire, too. I was on a roll in 2019! My whole life changed in 2019 and my internal calendar kinda stopped around that point. It truly doesn't feel like five years ago.

In another five years it'll be 2029. In 2029 I would like Letters From Space Camp to already be a not-that-new book that got a few reviews in respected publications that really got it. I want another Oh Joy Sex Toy book to have come out, specifically collecting the comics on kinks and weird sex shit. I want Tig to be reveling in her Old Lady cat years. I want Matt and I to celebrate our 24th anniversary together and looking forward to the 25th. In five more years I will turn 45.

In 2029 I want to have five more years' worth of weird, ridiculous art projects filling up every nook and cranny of my house. I want to have acquired five years' worth of knowledge on how to solve the unique problems that come up when you're learning how to use new tools and materials. I want to have a place where I can share my projects with the weird, ridiculous people who get it, who get what I'm making and why and they get something out of it, too. In five more years I hope we're still in each other's orbits on the internet, in whatever form that takes. In five more years I want to still be making my shit and I want to still be sharing it with you, whoever you are. 

Five more years. You and me and art and stories. It's gunna come on fast. I'm not ready but I feel good about it. See you soon, 2029. See you there.