No, I don’t know where I’ve been in 2012. I mean it. I have almost no recall of last year other than being trapped, almost around the clock, in my home office working on design and advertising projects while the world passed by on CNN. Looking back over the year, I realized that, outside of working for other people, I’ve accomplished virtually nothing. This stuff is incredibly time consuming and leaves you creatively and intellectually exhausted, so the thought of coming up with some pithy blog post or, even more challenging, a comic book plot, becomes an extremely steep hill to climb. I was actually kind of shocked to finally get back over here to my own website and realize it’s been more than a year since I posted anything here, and at least as long since I’ve checked Jim’s Comic Book Life email over at the DigitalPriest account. The annual Holiday Dead Stop has afforded me a little time to pause and look around, so I’ll be making an effort to comb through what appears to be a 13-month backlog of email while updating this WordPress installation (which means this blog may come down for a while as I update and reinstall).
Presuming anybody’s actually paying attention anymore, I hope and pray you all had a great year. More important, I hope and pray for great things in the year to come. I’ll do my best to be here more often (which is easy, if I show up even twice in 2013). And my apologies to what I’m sure are a great many people who’ve sent messages to my dead-letter office. Back to you soon.
—Priest
You’ve not been forgotten.
And it’s good to “hear” from you again.
Hey Dwight. Happy NY!
Happy New Year!
Good to hear from you.
I’ve been missing your perspective on the world.
And, see, this is the part that really scares me: why *anyone* would care about my perspective on, well, anything. I have to be among the most miserably sardonic and cynical people around. Every time I meet someone who is well-adjusted I shake my head, wondering what the hell is wrong with them.
Greener Grass Syndrome, perhaps. However you see each of the rest of us, some of us – I dare not say “all” – look on you as being better-adjusted than we are.
I could be wrong, mind you.
The same reason anyone ever needs a good satirist: at least when you point out everything that’s horribly wrong with the world, you can wring some humor out of it. Laughing at man to avoid crying for him, and so forth.
That probably holds true for the fictional worlds in your comics work, too — while everybody else was being super-serious, you were pointing out the ridiculousness of the whole thing. While still dealing with some legitimately dark material.
I’m a long, long, long time fan of your work. Good to see you posting again.
Thanks, Craig. But this is probably another of those New Years resolutions we keep for about a week…
Welcome back, Priest. Sorry to hear you don’t have Big Exciting News — but Lord knows I can relate to a year going by in something of a haze. (My 2012? I got laid off on my thirtieth birthday, and…that’s really the highlight reel right there.)
Happy New Year. Take good care.
Thad: man, sorry to hear about that. What’s your trade? Maybe somebody trolling has a lead for you. I personally am thinking about starting a second career as a SkyCap at LaGuardia.
IT — which itself is what I’ve wound up doing because I can’t get a good programming job (that’s what my degree’s in). I’ve been bouncing from temp job to temp job for the past 4 years or so, which is pretty common for the industry right now; it wasn’t exactly unexpected as I’d finished the job I was hired for, but the timing sure could have been better.
But yeah, by all means, if anybody reading this has any good IT/programming leads in Phoenix metro, by all means feel free to share…
Hanging in there, though. Have an interview on Monday, and I’ve been doing a bit of freelance work. Keeping busy; that’s what’s important. As for personal stuff, I’m getting married in two months, and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in in years (down from a 36″ waist to 32″ — and I’ve been 36″ at least since high school), so I’m really pretty upbeat despite the job situation.
Yes, long time fans such as myself are still paying attention (and probably always will).
I am finding your website VERY difficult to navigate, though. Everything looks good, graphically, but the pages just don’t link to each other in a manner I can intuitively grasp. But to be fair, maybe that is just my own technological ineptitude. Anyway, here’s hoping your 2013 is a lot more fulfilling than your 2012.
Salaam.
Tez—no, you’re probably right.
The site navigation made sense when I built it, but who the heck knows. 
I’ll have a look at it when I can. Thanks for the kind words.
Peace and respect, Mr. Priest– 2013 and the world is still spinning! (shout out to the mayans..)
Back atacha, Christopher. Good to hear from you!
Welcome back to the land of the unliving. Well, those with no lives, anyway.
I just have this page directly linked, but every few months I did poke at the main page to make sure you didn’t redo your webpage again and orphan your blog (which happened at least once that I can recall).
Better busy than idle, let me tell you. I’ve been unemployed since August, and it’s getting on my nerves (and my work ethic). I did just have a phone interview with Colorado School of Mines, though, so there’s a small chance I could end up in your general vicinity. Well, closer than Kansas or Nebraska, at any rate.