Rachel Nabors

07:55 am: Changes.
After next week, I won't be doing a weekly comic for gURL.com anymore. It pains me to do it, but financial difficulties, especially those generated by my jaw and self-employment taxes, make it nigh on impossible to live my dream anymore.

It's a new life. I loved making comics for a living, but it was just too hard to keep making them when I was constantly worried about my security. I hope you can understand. Thank you for reading as long as you have. You made me feel like a star, no matter how small or how briefly, but a star nonetheless. I thank you.

Sometime mid-May I hope to start doing bi-monthly comic for gURL. I have to finish my Rachel-Sparrow storyline. I was going in a particular direction with it, and I don't like leaving loose strings hanging. Rachel's got a love interest, and we finally know that Sparrow isn't just a bitch but has horribly low self-esteem. There is so much left unsaid!

If you donated money to help with my jaw and want to retract your offer, I understand. I won't be self-employed much longer, and if you feel cheated that your donation is no longer supporting a struggling comicker's quest for a straight jaw but now just a struggling young person's quest for said jaw, I will understand. Drop me a note, and I can refund your donation with the click.

What makes me feel most terrible is that I get all these emails from girls telling me that I've inspired them to make comics and that I've shown them that they can make their dreams a reality. I feel like I've let them down. I'm so sorry. You should not give up making comics. I will not. The world may not be ready to support many full-time chick comickers, but it's close. Please do not give up on your dreams

Details
I had actually started investigating getting a real job before Joe proposed, so this has nothing to do with my future wedding. Like I said, it's all finances. At the end of the year, I just could not make the numbers work. So I will no longer be the girl who makes comics for a living. Now I will be the girl who designs sites/graphics and does comics as a hobby.

But I try to look on the bright side. You can't make comics about life unless you've lived, and at least now I'll have a solid hobby instead of "being my job". And once I'm in Raleigh, I can start getting my jaw fixed. I'm really excited about that, of course.

I spent most of this week in Raleigh, job hunting and moving stuff in. I should be fully moved-in by the 7th of April. It will be a strange new land, far from the bosom of my mountains, far from my dog and my mother and my friends. It will be very scary and probably lonely, even though I'll have Joe. (You wouldn't happen to live in Raleigh, would you?)

Men complicate everything. I had a nice job lined up here until he proposed! Then I had to carefully weigh my options. Stay, wait, go? In the end I chose to move to Raleigh because there are more design jobs and more opportunities for education and advancement there. Unfortunately, it's also hot and a commuter community, which means I'll have to drive a lot. I dislike that immensely. I hate cars, I hate driving. It's like throwing out an hour of your life every time you get in one. I will need many books on cassette tape (not CD, my car is from 1995, yo) to console me.

But I hope to move closer to where Il work so I might not have to commute. And some day I may even have a motorcycle again, to further help with gas.

So that's it. I feel like it's the end of an era. I kept it weekly for one year and five months. It's been so much fun. I already miss it.

Thank you very much. For everything.

Tags: update

05:37 pm: Response to Changes
I received the following note on MySpace, and because she brings up some excellent concerns, I thought I would clarify what role my future husband did play in my decision to move. Posted below is her comment and a version of my reply to it.

Even though everyone is saying to you that they understand and that they hope you have a wonderful etc, I am sitting here wondering why you would give up your biggest dreams and live with a guy, away from everything that you once loved. I don't know you, and I don't know anything about this guy or your old home, but it pains me to think that one of the best comic chicks around is getting pushed over by some guy. It is not a good influence to show your fans that a girl can be easily woo-ed by a man and give up her dreams in the midst of it. A lot of girls do this to themselves, I didn't think you would be one of them to give up everything. I don't understand why you would do this and possibly won't ever.

It was great to hear from such a sensible a young woman. I understand her concern completely, and she's absolutely right. A girl should never abandon all that is important to her for a man! But I made my decision to get a day job long before he proposed, and let me assure you that I carefully weighed my decisions before deciding to move. I can only go so far in Roanoke. I could have requested that my fiance move up here, he was willing, but then I realized that I (and he) have a better chance of advancement and success in the urban area that is Raleigh. There are better colleges for furthering my education, better jobs and opportunities, more creative people to interact with, and a bigger comicking community. That's to say nothing of its proximity to some of the best facilities to work on my jaw. I had always planned to move camp, but I did not expect to move it so soon or southward. Life change is always bittersweet, and I am sure this is not my last move.

Also, the sooner I know where I will be for two years, the sooner I can start fixing my jaw, which is of prominent importance to me right now and the reason for my seeking a non-comics job. So all the more reason to move as soon as a decision has been reached. (Plus, I need a job to keep living, and I can't take the job up here and leave after only a few months. That's bad form.)

As you can see, my decision to move has more to do with business sense than my deferring to my significant other. As I have made sacrifices to move down there, so too is he making sacrifices. (I negotiated with him for hours before accepting his proposal. There will be sacrifices, but not of the virginal kind, thankfully!)

But I completely agree. A girl should never give up her dreams for a guy. Keep your priorities straight. Don't be afraid to set your foot down, to negotiate, to have demands or principles. They are worth fighting for.

It feels like I'm losing a dream, but as so many other readers have already posted, I'm not losing a dream. I'm leaving a job. As long as I keep making comics, even if it is in my spare time, the dream lives.

Tags: update

08:30 pm: Dreamtime: My next home office.



I have a feeling my next home office will look like this, only with more metal and chrome.

I love that pink. Found it in a search for Bis lyrics.