Hey there!

I know I should be going on and on about how I'm so excited that Sacrimony #6 is going live next week and I totally am excited but I wanted to take a moment to talk about something particularly special to me as it's still fresh in my head.

Last weekend, my bestie and I went to the Met Museum to check out Vincent Van Gogh's Cypresses. I knew it was going to be depressing and resonate with me on a lot of levels, but I didn't realize how hard it would actually hit me.

Van Gogh has always unfortunately been the poster child for "crazy artist paint good" and it's a stereotype that I really hate. I wish that he would get more credit for the amount of actual work that he put into his concepts and developing his techniques. He didn't just magically make paint appear on a canvas through the sheer power of "crazy magic." He practiced his craft. A lot. Like a normal person.

Maybe this is me projecting my own feelings about art through Van Gogh, but the Cypress collection felt strangely ominous. Not just because they were what he painted towards the end of his life, but because I could sense a sort of desperation with each piece.

I felt like his obsession with trying to capture the essence of the cypresses was literally haunting him. Once again, probably my own projection, but I got the impression that he felt like if he could make the perfect cypress painting, his life would be completely changed and all of his problems would suddenly be solved and he would magically be happy and never lonely ever again.

And even though he came out with some of the most breathtaking pieces I've ever seen, I think he realized that at the end of the day, he was still himself with all of his problems, mental illness and loneliness but with a few more lovely paintings under his name. That's the sort of feeling that leaves you empty.

I bring this up because I know what that kind of crash feels like and I want to normalize it.

It happened to me after my first Sacrimony campaign for Issue #1 back in 2021. I was happy and relieved that the campaign was a success and I was super grateful to all the people who showed up for it, but something felt off. As happy as I was about it, I felt like I should somehow be... happier.

I started wondering if I was 'broken' because I didn't feel a life-changing amount of happiness. I realized that I was just the same person I was before the Kickstarter, just with a new book. All of my problems weren't magically solved and I wasn't some sort of "better" version of myself and it was hard to process. I think our perceptions of what we think success "should" feel like versus whatever it actually does feel like is tremendously warped and it's not talked about enough.

Yes, success temporarily changes how we feel in the moment, but it doesn't change who we are as people. And I think we need to redefine what our version of "success" really is.

I haven't quite figured out what I would consider to be "success" for myself, but I've worked past those feelings of emptiness since that first Kickstarter campaign. Now, whenever people ask me how it feels to be such a "big successful comic creator who's self published seven single issues and one trade paperback so far while doing all the art and writing myself" I can only give them an honest answer: I'm still the same weird nerd I always was, but with more books under my name. It's not self-deprecating, it's just my honest answer.

I'm still me and I always will be me, just with more books.

​Speaking of more books, Sacrimony #6 goes live in less than a week on June 22. If you haven't yet followed the campaign to be notified when it launches, here's the link to do so!​

Thanks so much and have a great weekend!
-M