Anyway, since cutting way back on online activity, my head space has cleared up, and I was driving down the road the other day, and boom! Brain percolated, and big scene for ADS I’d been struggling with burbled up like it had never left. I just worked it right out.

I think writing online was just taking up too much headspace and energy. Interacting with my fans has been great and energizing, but everything else has to go.

Jeremy, best of luck with that promotion! I feel the same way, once blogging was a positive thing, now it’s not. I fully intend to post update on my work, answer questions once in awhile, but anything outside my personal art sphere, forget it.

Quin, I’m just about to finish two major projects, and then I have almost 2 months to do nothing but commissions and A DISTANT SOIL art. I am really looking forward to it.

I have less than a month to go in a promotion track I am currently on. If I pass, it’ll mean a lot in terms of my career path and a sense of relief and accomplishment. My time is better used focusing on finishing what I need to do and less on following some flame wars.

I’d love to see more A Distant Soil. If the choice is your blog posts and ADS, ADS would win hands-down.

This summer, I had a family emergency, and was at the hospital for five days. Now of course, people don’t know that, I never mentioned it. But I had a few people admonishing me for not blogging or tweeting about some issue that had come up in comics at the time, which I knew nothing about, and how dare I not mention it, don’t I care?

I think that last bit is what really convinced me to hang in the towel for good. Something else happened recently, that made me take that clean, final break with a particular clique of the comics blogging community. Pretty toxic bunch at times, this was the last straw.

I have a life outside of this other stuff, and I really want to focus on things that are positive and that move me forward. From a time management standpoint, and from a toxicity standpoint.

I have gained several important clients and picked up some very lucrative work because of contacts I have made with professionals on social media.

When I have time to do it, I am able to get very good sales on art and books via the internet. If I put serious effort into it, I can make a solid five figures a year in extra money (though in years like 2015, I cut back on sales because I have too much publishing work and don’t have time for mail order.)

I can state with a reasonable degree of certainty that I have made a solid six figures of income due to contacts I have made via the web and online sales.

However…

In terms of actual hours spent, I am looking at an investment of about 14 hours per week for 15 years between blogging, message boards and social media. A fair estimate of 10,920 hours.

10,920 hours is 273 weeks of forty hours a week of effort. That’s 5.25 years of a full time job.

Now, if I halve that in consideration that a goodly portion of my web time is probably me looking at LOLCats and joshing with my friends, that is still a full time job for 2.65 years.

I would not have scored some of these good jobs or made those book and art sales without my regular social media presence. I have picked up a number of paying lecture gigs as well.

But it is well past time that I need to be blogging. The return on investment is not there, social media is a fraction of the effort, it is far less stressful, and it leaves me more time to do other things.

Like make more books.

Your blog posts have been interesting and insightful but I can understand your need to shift focus. Looking forward to seeing more of your art-related posts when you have the time.