I can’t finish this storyline. In fact, I can’t draw Allan right now, at all. Amanda and I broke up two weeks ago, and it took everything I had left to mail out the Allan books. They have been mailed, and so I am done with that.

But now I can’t work. I’m fighting some kind of depression. The times when I’m with people at school are the only times I can force myself to be some kind of productive, but when I’m back at my apartment I’m just constantly reminded of how alone I am. So you might not see any Allan updates for some time.

Other than that, thank you for your readership. Over the years it has both made me become a better person and helped me survive, but I think it’s time now that I rethink who I am. What this comic was. What it was supposed to be.

From the start, it was an art project—never a journal. Something I made conscious decisions about to achieve certain goals and convey certain emotions. I made it for you, the reader. It was never for me—never a way for me to explore my own thoughts and life. Through that deception, I have driven away relationships and made everything harder on myself, and now I feel like I’m trapped in an education which I’m too far in (debt, credits) to quit or transfer elsewhere. Is the comic to blame? Does making yourself appear different to someone create a pretense which will eventually find itself shattered? Probably.

So I want to start anew. But how do I do that with an archive of almost 1000 comics. How do I show you who I really am, without caring about what you think of me. Without caring about you, dear reader, how do I make something for myself? And do I even need a journal about my life when it’s all so clearly residing in my head, every bit perfectly understood, yet quiet and unexplained. Because, if a journal comic should really be for me, who should I be explaining it to besides myself?

These are the thoughts I’m struggling to fight through, the idea that something else, an entire facet of who I have been for 5 years might have just been a conscious ruse to become successful. But when does the ruse become me, and why did I become it? Or did I? I don’t even know, anymore.

I’ve tried writing out long explanations for how my life has actually gone, if I were to be able to tell it through words instead of pictures I could be much more accurate, but as I write I feel fruitless. I already know these things. That’s how I can write them. Who am I writing them for, if not myself. No, the person I want to be now is anyone but myself. Anyone but the pseudo-semi-internet-person “Allan.” I have an e-trail following me, now, with a fanbase who knows only what I’ve told them, and if I start over, who am I starting over for? Myself? Them? You?

In actuality, I’m a person like anyone who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. I say things hoping, maybe, I’ll get something right, but I usually find out after the fact that I was wrong. At the time of starting this comic I wanted to be loved or appreciated. I made comics to make you feel this way about me. Should you have? Do I deserve it? I spit half-truths and share questions hoping I’m saying something worthwhile because I want to feel worthwhile. I can’t find happiness in myself, so I push my drawings in front of other peoples’ faces and say, “Look, look what I drew. Aren’t I special?” but really the comics you like the most are the ones when you feel the most like me. When I write about you. When I write about things you like and things you find funny, so you can say, “Look, there’s a person out there who likes what I do. I am special.”

I think I need to acknowledge some kind of specialty in myself. An individual specialty. And that will take some time.