Those mermaid leggings were bought on sale from Ambrie.com after a very well-targeted ad on Instagram was placed in my feed. Well played, The Algorithm. Well played.

Matt and I were just going to skip an update this week but then, like, I felt bad about not having a comic for OJST’s readers, so instead I decided to re-use this story I drew just for my Exclusive Autobio Comics tier patrons a few months ago. If you enjoy my journal comics, hey, there’s more of them where this one came from over on Patreon.

We’ve only ever completely skipped an update once before– it was either this last Christmas or the one before that. We put up a temporary image on the site saying “be back next week!” or something and as soon as the next comic was up, we deleted the placeholder from the archives. We never got any notes from folks about it, I wonder if anyone actually saw it.

There’s an orange tint in the air from the California fires. It’s kind of pretty, in an apocalyptic-sort of way. Matt and I are doing a bunch of file and coding prep work this week before we announce our sponsors for the next year, but also… dang, man. It’s tempting to blame our exhaustion on the smokey air clogging up our lungs and slowing down our synapses, but I think we’re also simultaneously Legitimately Out of Juice, regardless of environmental factors. Not in a bad way! Just a… We’re-In-Our-Mid-To-Late-30s-And-We’re-Tired way. But also: The-Air-is-Literally-Orange-and-Smells-Like-Burning way, too.

See y’all next week. Stay safe.

Be responsible when collecting your mermaid leggings.