Sailing from the Grey Havens
A decade. A decade, my friends! Ten years — beads of my life! — have slipped through my fingers while I cartooned for you.
Back in 2015, when first I drew a comic and slapped onto it my punny brand name, my ambitions far exceeded my talents. Those first drawings were miserable. Yet so determined was I in those days to build a brand, to make a name for myself, to leave my mark, that I resolved to continue. A career, I told myself. I was going to make a career of it. Even as it wore me down, even beleaguered by trolls and bereft of success, I continued. Yet the slow trickle of patron dollars could never make a career and I found them instead more and more often — to my great dismay — feeding the bellies of my children.
How right and just it was, in hindsight, that my children gobbled up every dollar.
God does not call a man to worldly success; He certainly hasn’t made it a priority in His plan of my life. God has seen fit — may His Holy Name be praised! — to make me reliant on Him in all things. Surely, though I know not how, this is to the advantage of my soul.
I have not been successful, but I have continued because I felt the pressure to succeed and I needed the money. A wise friend once said to me, “God has all the money in the world,” and truly, though we go through life under the costly yoke of usury, He has never let me lack for long what I truly needed at any moment.
A decade ago, a 30-year-old drew the first TGC comic. A 40-year-old draws its run to a close. What I am saying, my friends, is that after a long, internal struggle, I have decided to end TGC comics and withdraw from (most) social media. (More specifics below.)
Why? Because this decade has been a fruitful meditation on what matters.
These last few years, in weary moments, I’ve pondered the meaning of it all, whether it was worth it. The celebrated career I’d desired? Never materialized. The mark I wanted to make on the world? Nothing but vapors, phantasms of my weak imagination. But God’s was greater! In retrospect, I see that Our Lord arranged for me a better mark to leave on the world. Of all my children upon this earth, the oldest few are now planning lives and loves and careers of their own. The others will follow soon enough.
(On my horizon is a 16yo eager to attend seminary and pretty certain that, God-willing, he will be a priest. My 15yo is narrowing her options while widening her talents, and her own discernments now are focused on what career might help her prioritize her motherhood.)
I find myself increasingly drawn to spend my time with these kids God gave me. TGC has never really made the mark I meant it to. But my need for validation has fizzled with age and maturity. I don’t need people laughing at my comics so much, I have a loving wife and kids and I want to turn my eyes outward more to help others.
Talking it over with my betters, a group of older, wiser Catholics I know on Discord, I was given a helpful nugget for thought: the need to tend my own patch. I titled this piece “Sailing from the Grey Havens,” but tending my own patch sounds rather more hobbity than elven, doesn’t it? So instead of drawing my comics to a close with the promise of elven melancholy, let me instead open the windows to the springing hope of a shire garden.
Unlike one hobbit in particular, I don’t intend to make myself disappear entirely. I wish merely to tend my patch.
I have several more comics to publish, already drawn. Those will be made public on Ko-Fi this month. Then all my comics will be archived and made available. For those interested in following me, I will continue to write frequently on life and faith and current events and whatever strikes my fancy — maybe even a stray cartoon or two — here on my Substack, where you may subscribe. These posts will not take so much time or effort as cartoons; still, I would be grateful to anyone who did choose to become a patron there. A bit of spending money is a good boost of confidence for anyone.
Thank you all for your attention and love over the years. I am convinced that my comics have been mediocre, but your patronage has not. You have made me proud to have accomplished a decade at this endeavor, no matter my own inadequacies. May Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Geek — for He loves us all with intense interest — bless you immensely.