So it wasn’t until I started seeing a fair number of "End of the Decade" lists on various sites that it occurred to me that this is the end of the…whatever the hells…and the beginning of the Screamin’ Teens (or whatever they’ll be called. I’d like to think "the Green Teens," myself.)

I tried to think of what I’ve been doing in the last decade, and it was too vast a scale. You only get seven or eight of those in a lifetime,* and you have to waste a couple on being housebroken and learning to drive. In my first fully-adult decade, I got married, got divorced, got a career, got depressed, got a second career, got laid, got tattooed, moved a lot, fell in love, held a number of jobs of varying degrees of suckitude, wrote six books,** did a webcomic, did–christ, over a thousand paintings? Really? (Really. I can only estimate, but there’s 672 on DA alone, and that only goes to 2002 and leaves out a whole bunch of work on commission and that I never bothered to post, and doesn’t include Digger.) ate a lot of good meals, travelled a bit, and took up birdwatching.

I can honestly say that looking back, I packed a whole LOT into the last decade. And I have very few regrets, most of which don’t linger much. From a rathole apartment in St. Paul, working at an insurance company reading handwritten claim forms, painting paintings that don’t look that bad unless you get up close and look at the brushwork, and praying the radiator didn’t explode and kill me, it’s been QUITE a change.

I have no idea what the Teens are going to look like, but hey, so far, so good!

*Unless you’re one of those ancient Russian guys who live on cigars and onions and vodka, and get a round dozen.
**Only two of which are on the shelves at the moment, owing to the length of lead time of publishing…