This is a "pick me" blog post. I'm a "pick me" kind of person, really.
In 2015 I passed my N3 JLPT certification test. I'm in my 30s now, and I've never once been to Japan. I told my mom earlier today: (you should call your parents every so often btw) "Yeah, I've given up on that whole going to Japan. It's not ever going to happen." I've said the same thing to a lot of people lately and, the more I think about it, emotionally dumping like that is lame. Telling people that you'll never live out your dreams, like living in Japan, is basically just begging for sympathy. You feel bad, so you want others to feel bad for you too. I get it. It's something I'm working on limiting now that I have cool outlets for my bullshit, like blogs.
I'm not going to ask 'if' I'll ever be a full time artist. I'm going to ask 'when'. I'm just gonna:
* keep making comics
* keep making educational content
* keep trying to be interesting
*keep advocating for important stuff
There's no stopping, not anymore. I stopped creating for most of my 20s. No new bits. No writing. I stopped doing open mics. I gave up. Fuck that. It's time to make up for almost a decade of lost time.
This dude I used to know, Ben, once made a mummy out of McDonald's food. He was a very talented sculptor... but that wasn't going to pay the bills. Eventually he found financial independence in making MLP, Rick and Morty, and other pop culture themed dragon dildos. Ben's artist background made pivoting to starting a medium dildo injection molding business possible. And that's what twitter is! It's my dildo injection molding business. It's absolutely not what I would like to be using to spread my work and ideas, but - as people talk about the sharpest tool in the shed - Twitter (I'm not calling it X, Elon) is the biggest dragon dildo I could find. Well, there is also Tiktok.... but Tiktok is basically the Mr. Hankey's of "platforms I'd rather not be on" right now. My anus isn't ready for that. I'll stick it my Rick Sanchez sized Twitter dragon dilly. It's just the right size.
Bear Blog, and other sites adjacent to Bear Blog: NeoCities, NekoWeb, self hosted landchad sites, fediverse instances (mastodon, pleroma, ect) or public git repo hosted sites pushed with Hugo - basically any site that's on an ethical platform or independently hosted and has an RSS feed, those will always be my home. Twitter will not. But Twitter (and other sites like it) is where I need to be pushing my stuff for internet points: so I can eventually make educational videos about tech for a living, instead of working in tech. Everything I post there is always going to be posted here first. I won't subject people to using terrible websites that force you to log in to look at stuff. Forced logins are dumb.
That post with collection of potential tweets that I said I wouldn't tweet because I don't use twitter? Some of those are getting turned into tweets. Sorry. Still, I need to get slop out to the pigs if I want to become a successful slop peddler. All of this slop will be neatly posted here first, though.
I'd like to thank bex for an interview she did with some dude. Honestly, it was a reality check on self-promotion. If you're a creative type, which is what I identify as, you need a business email and a twitter. People need to be able to contact you. I'm not a huge fan of being easy to contact. My discord was signed out of for maybe 70 days across 2024. That's who I am, an anxious, introverted person. Still, I've gotta break out of my shell a little more and keep pushing boundaries - like with weight training or, I guess, anal training (since that already came up earlier in this post). Today I take the fist step in stretching towards prolapse: I've made a public email, which you can actually email me at, and Twitter.
Maybe I'll make a Patreon, who knows? I could ship zine comics to your house. You can visit monster.bearblog.dev to view my Monster in the Cave comic, as well as other comics I write and print out as zines. My wife is nice enough to illustrate them. As I said somewhere in that 2 hour video about my channel, you're also cool to sell copies, irl or online. IDGAF. Just credit us. You can find pdf print outs and odg templates to make your own zines (which I have several video tutorials for) on the Projects page. Fuck plastic and 3D printing. You can't recycle that shit. Papercraft if the future. Every coffee shop and pizza joint in America should be overflowing with fun little boxes full of independently printed tiny books and comics, maybe some paper toys, to help educate, inform and enrich local communities - the people you actually live close to. Want more Linux users in your area? Make a Linux Zine. Want ewaste policies reformed? Make a zine.
Anyway, as if I haven't so subtly asked for your support and sympathy enough so far, I am now going to explicitly ask. Please consider following me on twitter or youtube. I'm going to be there for a while. I'd also appreciate likes and retweets. Sorry for being so shameless. What I don't want to do, though, is beg for likes on Bear Blog. Likes on here should be natural and real because this site is real and not phony - and it's run by a really cool guy. I don't want to treat this place like a substack either. Each one of these blog posts is a canvas for ideas and feelings. Reposts on other sites will only be a facsimile.... not that I judge anyone for using tiktok or twitter. That's just a preference. Not everyone wants to use RSS feeds and interact with minimalist blog posts.
Oh yeah, I just started a Monday through Friday livestream call in show on YouTube (which has been pretty difficult). Join my Discord and hop on the "Autism Tonight" voice channel if you want to be a part of the show. Just in case your 'tism radar isn't working, yeah, I have autism and love using the A-word. I swear people are going to, if they don't already, start calling it that. :D
IDK, my life is going to become increasing tryhard. I'm going to try hard, even if some of the shit I post is extremely embarrassing. Fuck it. I choose making fun stuff online over working towards career advancement. I'm not giving up on saving up for Japan either.
Edit: I just saw the official X permium page retweeting fucking Benny Johnson. What a lame site. I'm still gonna use it but damn could they have retweeted someone less lame? I don't even mean this as just a polticial take. He's committed crimes against humor. Fuck Benny Johnson.
also by artist I don't specifically mean an illustrator. I'm more of a writer and performer, though I do consider making ironic post-clickbait thumbnails an artform. educator and joke person don't sound as cool.