Where have you been? Why has leihu been abandoned? Why aren’t you posting daily drawings or Netflix reviews anymore? What are you doing instead? These are all questions no one has asked me, I received exactly zero e-mails inquiring as to my absence or lack of posts since May 12th. Even though no one is asking, I still felt I should say something about it.

1.) I’ve been busy with work, running a business can be the most rewarding adventure ever, but at the same time it can be stressful, time-consuming and hard-core. Fortunately, my business is kicking ass and taking names. I love what I do—maybe too much. It’s difficult to separate work from hobby at times. It’s something I’m working to rectify, but for now it’s going to mean a few times a year I get really burnt from burning the candle at both ends and the posting schedule here will suffer for it. I’ll try not to beat myself up about it.

2.) I’ve felt creatively drained recently. The drawings have stopped flowing from my finger tips. The magic will come back—occasionally I can’t draw for shit. I think part of this drain is that I have a shit-ton of ideas for things I’d like to do, but they all feel/seem so far off, that I strain myself reaching for them, as opposed to just working on the base I have. It’s that constant self-improvement gene.

3.) I’ve been emotionally down. Nothing major, just feeling bad about myself and my career. Things happen sometimes in this industry that really irritate me, and make me want to throw a hammer at somebody, but I turn that frustration in on myself and instead of taking a stand I let it eat at me. I let other developers and industry people make me feel bad about who I am. I let them feel superior as opposed to putting them in their place as they most obviously deserve. I let them talk down to me, and make me feel small. I shouldn’t allow this, I’m not any lower or higher in the web design food chain then anyone else. This is something I need to workout, it’s a side-effect of losing weight—which has always been my armor. Now that it’s melting away I feel I have to protect myself in other ways which is less than mentally healthy.

4.) Having a new baby takes up time. I love it.

5.) I’ve gotten to the point where I need to redesign this site, which I’m scared to do. The current design garnered me more attention and praise than all forty-four designs prior combined. Unfortunately, this design has become stale and I have plans that don’t fit in this format. I want a different color, I need change, I crave it.

I want folks to continue coming by and read my thoughts and look at my drawings so I’m terrified to re-design, it has been really eating at me. Making it difficult to get any real writing or drawing or progress on the re-design done. I don’t want to hear; “Nice design, but I really preferred the previous one.” or “Looks good, but what happened to the last one, that was your best work ever, I don’t think you can top that you fluke.” Ok so that one was unlikely, but you get the point.

6.) We are in the middle of trying to refinance our home to get out of a high interest second and a variable potentially high interest first, lower our overall payment and get some cash back to take care of some bills, which has made me begin chewing my nails again… not good.

That’s about it, my excuses, my explanations. I hope it sheds some light on the darkness here lately. I want to get back on a schedule, and start pumping out new content, which will happen it’ll just be a week or two. I am sorry, I don’t ever intend to leave this site hanging, I love working on it, but I am a Cancer, and we do have our mood swings.

Now for some updates;

1.) I redesigned Onelotus Creative (http://1lotus.com/) I wanted to make something simpler that basically said Hi, here’s my work, hire me. I think I accomplished that. I also used some illustrations in the design and went with a dark overall brand.

2.) We got a new puppy, she’s a Shih Tzu and Chihuahua (I like to say, Shit-wa-wa) mix. We named her Temperance Joy Mathias—Yes, David that is after Bones—she’s 8 weeks old, we got her today

3.) Cameron has begun rolling over from front to back and back again, such a smart boy.

4.) Our rat Doyle got a tumor and passed away, that was a sad, sad day, and I owe him his very own post.

5.) Bryce graduated pre-school, such a smart boy!

6.) I shaved my beard, first I tried a mustache but, apparently too closely resembled Jeff Foxworthy, so then I decided to grow out some mutton chops instead.

Well, I hope this explains a bit and catches us all up. I’ll be back to posting again soon, thanks as always for reading, I appreciate each and every one of my readers.