HIVVER|W1NTER|XEIΜΏΝ

You ever get kinda so bummed by a year you just don’t really wanna talk about it haha.
Yeah.

Anyway.

2025 was about as weird as last year but somehow worse in a lot of ways. I wasn’t my best self. I feel like anything I touched pretty much fucked up real bad. I was hoping end of last year I’d somehow manage to put myself out there a bit more but I retreated a lot more this year.

shit’s complicated. it still feels complicated, a little less complicated now but heavy all the same.

Anyway let’s get this over with.

So the thing with this year is we managed to get out more, walk around the city more. We did a LOT of conventions (maybe too many…. or at least too many in quick succession if we have to keep doing This Many cons we’re at least going to try and spread them out better over the course of the year in 2026). The cons we DID do… some were honestly a bit disappointing vs others which pulled out like craaazy. It was really unpredictable this year which made things really hard to plan for. We also spent the latter half of the year working on a BIGGG project (coming out next year???) Which is exciting. Even if the payment was … severely delayed. Money felt tighter this year in a way it never has before.

This year honestly just got marred… in a LOT of money stress. The two of us were hoping to kinda ‘progress’ in our adulthood (get a house/get married) but it just felt like we were constantly fighting an uphill battle.

A big thing we did this year that helped a lot–we got booted from Netflix and we stepped back from social media a little more/limited our time on it. Honestly the fastest way to start hating people/the world is interacting with the very small percentage of it that is online so I’ve been trying to fill free time with reading and gaming and being otherwise more productive.

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THE MONTHLY BREAKDOWN

JANUARY — hmmmmmmmm January was rough for a lot of reasons but a lot of those reasons wound up being personal relationships feeling really stressed and strained related and a lot of the feelings from this month were just rough. I honestly can’t remember much otherwise from this month. I think this is about when we hunkered down to finish work on Lab Partners.

FEBRUARY — Lots of printing lots of prepping for cons, for campaigns. We run a collaborative set of campaigns with friends… which is… a time. Probably too much work for the two of us to be splitting our efforts on two campaigns. We didn’t make much, it was a bust for us, with two new pin sets that don’t sell much during (or after). Still like the designs but this was… disappointing to say the least. There’s Tariff talks but it doesn’t seem to be affecting small businesses (yet–spoiler alert).

MARCH — Habby bday to my fiancee. We have our first market this month (How did this wind up being our new normal?? Starting our con sprint in March…) and otherwise have the mad-scramble to finish any prints and reprints for the first con sprint! We also put in the biggole orders for the pins from our Pintopia campaigns. It’s starting to feel like a hell of a juggle already.

APRIL — The madness begins!! We have 3 back to back cons at the end of the month (and beginning of next month), hopping from Ottawa to Calgary to a local one here. It’s a bit much. Ottawa was too quiet, the squeeze between Ottawa and Calgary too tight. We’ve learned for the next time to tone the back-to-backs down a bit more. It’s a decent run but the two of us are tiiiiired. We also (somehow) manage to fulfill BOTH pin campaigns in between all of that.

MAY — The stress continues, well, the last of our 3 back-to-backs happened to be the first weekend in May. We spend a very small amount of time taking a break, but my fiance is already knee-deep working on the new graphic novel. Our local comic fest is… outside, it rains… like all weekend. An abysmal 10 degrees, humid. We froze sitting around in a tent for 8-ish hours a day 3 days in a row…. but boy did Montreal ever come out to buy comics. We were absolutely Humbled by the turn out all things considered.

JUNE — We did Toronto Comics again this year and a friend came on up to hang out with us for the weekend. Absolute gamechanger. That weekend was great, probably THE highlight of the year. Things are looking up a bit more. The rest of June we’re really getting into the comic-making trenches (and totally pumped for it). We also launch a campaign to re-print some Dino playing cards that went out of stock last month….. honestly this year we were playing insane amounts of catch-up with our merch/print runs. Its like we couldn’t hold onto anything long enough!

JULY — Oh… hot sweaty July. Wow. 2 cons too many this month. Our usual local one (luckily) did MUCH better than last year’s. The mini market we decided to try sure did wind up being in an un-air-conditioned church basement in 40 degree heat. Lets say… not an experience for me.;;;

AUGUST — Happy birthday 2 me. Its a quiet one. We spend a lot of this month (like the rest of the summer) enjoying the days that are Nice out, hanging out in the park, chatting, taking in the breeze before going home and getting neck-deep into comics work. Otak–our usual Big Boy Con does decent but nowhere near as good as usual which is a bit of a bummer. Also– that card deck campaign we ran in July? Haha…. well now we gotta find a way to ship this thing to US backers because tariffs are about to be slapped onto EVERY order made from us. YIPPEEEEE!!

SEPTEMBER — Two cons again… phew… eesh. Too many LOL. Ottawa is pretty abysmal. We’re not doing it again. We did a new comics fest: Gouttieres & Gribouilles and it was quiet but it was fun! It was nice to be able to have a quieter space to talk and chat with other artists we only get to see in passing at busier shows. I hope this one pops up again next year. It’d be nice to watch it grow a little bit more.

OCTOBER — My god peace & quiet. No conventions this month. I spend half of it wrapping up my inks on my fiance’s new book: Fangs & All~ It looks great, I honestly have no idea how it all happened/came together in the end but there it is 245 pages you don’t get to see till next… //checks calendar, fall! 8) If all goes well!

NOVEMBER — WE FINALLY WENT BACK TO HALIFAX WEEEEEEE HOO!! I’m so glad! We’d been trying to get back into Hal-Con since 2019 and this year we finally made it. Its just as good (if not better) than I remember. We spend a bit more time here chatting with friends! My partner finishes up colours and covers and hair pulling on his new graphic novel (it looks so fucking good I can’t believe we have to WAIT so long to show you all ;A; ) We spend a lot of free time actually resting and recouping between the start of our Holiday con sprint… which luckily wound up being just a bit of a jog this year since we didn’t get into a couple markets applied for.

DECEMBER — Cons! Resting! Gaming! Chilling! We took as much of this month off as we physically could, spent a lot of it going to the mall, watching movies, playing games, generally taking it easier and trying to relax before we come back in January.

Weird year. Weird mental year for me, really. I felt like i was being handed about 500 impossible puzzles to solve and given a ticking timer to solve it. I’m still reeling from it. This break we took this year really did not feel long enough but I’m feeling antsy NOT getting back to work again so. Might have to figure out a bit of a better break-plan this year so I’m not feeling so spent.

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2025’s GOALS…

CONCRETE

• READ 30 BOOKS THIS YEAR (lol)
• UPKEEP DAILY WRITING GOAL (500-1000 WORDS/DAY) (I actually DID do this one pretty good. had to stop a month early but I’m counting it as accomplished)
• FINISH DAILY PHOTOS PROJECT (….i keep forgetting I have this project in the wings aaa)
• FINISH A SMALL SKETCHBOOK (also lol)
• FINISH THAT PITCH (look…. it had to be bumped over to this year but i swear I WILL do it this year;;; )

PERSONAL

• GET OUT THERE MORE/BE MORE PERSONABLE (ha ha… well. uh. idk.)
• TRY SOMETHING NEW THIS YEAR
• GET YOUR HEALTH CHECKED (IMPORTANT, DUDE) (i DID get that doc’s appointment and im all in good health–AND i even got a doctors note about getting on T~)
• LESS… TAKE-OUT. (hey we DID do this one too! dropped from 1-2x a week to once every couple weeks (save for when we were out of town unfortunately) and the options picked were very often not the worst ones available!)
• BUILD BETTER HABITS (i think i did better at this! learned to manage social media better, learned to take Active Breaks– walk around town, take advantage of nice days to get out, kept up the gym–I’d like to add: get back into reading properly this year and fall back into some old hobbies of mine)

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2026’s GOALS

CONCRETE

• FINISH 3 DRAFTS
• FINISH THAT PITCH
• FOCUS ON & FINISH SMALLER PROJECTS

PERSONAL

• READ MORE/ GET AN EREADER
• GET ON T??
• GET… MARRIED??

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THINGS THAT STUCK OUT TO ME THIS YEAR…

Those are all the big guys up above but I also read a LOT of shorts (bought a good 25-30 comics off the Shortbox Comics Fair AND we did TCAF and MCAF this year I always pick up a bunch). More on the ones that really stood out to me belowww~

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS

Rubs my hands together. Okay, spicy takes, exciting takes lets kinda run few a few things that really stuck out~

• BOTH prose books I read (and finished) this year had really fun characters, were short and sharp. Excellent. The one I can’t talk too much about was the same, minus the short. But just as excellent.
• DATE EVERYTHING boy was that game sure something. I made a post about it over here.
• Did a lot of comfort-rewatching this year UHM. I’ve seen TADC & KPOP …nearing about a dozen times… each.
• TADC has some of the most compelling storytelling to date in an animated series. Last thing that really hit me on a character level was Steven Universe I think.
• KPOP DEMON HUNTERS— look its not like that DEEP or anything but the music was really catchy and it really felt like it WENT for it.
• FOREIGN BODIES by Drew Albert still lives in my head rent free. Wow. I wish there was more just so i had more to devour.

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Okay I’m out. I’m not sure what else to say, its bumming me out more trying to find a silver lining to 2025 when all I wanna do is shift my focus so here’s to 2026! I hope its a good one for all of you~

H