Around Labor Day weekend, Anarchy In Your Head will have been around for about 2 years. It’s been constantly evolving and changing over that time period. I started it barely even knowing how to draw. It’s been a great learning experience for me.

I started with one comic a week on a very loose schedule. I tried to get one out sometime each weekend. Soon after, I set Friday as a date and that helped force me to be a little more disciplined. It started as more of a political editorial cartoon but kind of reluctantly morphed into a comic strip, mostly by pressure of the expectations of others, though that’s a change that I ultimately was happy with. Later I added Wednesday comics. Being on a strict twice weekly schedule kept me coming up with new ideas and drawing regularly. The best way to learn, after all, is by doing. But as they said in X-Men, while evolution moves in little steps, sometimes it takes a major leap forward!

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic for what I’m about to talk about. All in all, I’m really happy with how things have turned out thus far. However, it’s clear to me that there’s plenty of room for improvement. I just dove right in, and I’m thrilled with what came out of that initiative, flawed though it was. If I had waited until after I had practiced drawing for a while and read up on making comics and hashed ideas out with a bunch of different people and developed a cast of characters and so forth, AiyH likely wouldn’t have come to be at all. I highly endorse this method of getting things done. Perfectionists never get around to accomplishing much, it seems to me.

So here I am with something that has grown organically for two years. There’s a lot more traffic, a lot of regular readers, and some avid fans. I feel like the comic has improved tremendously. That said, at this point, it feels like it’s stuck in a rut and it’s not becoming what I want it to be. Characters have been introduced sporadically over time and my drawing style is constantly in flux and it’s just kind of all over the place. I’ve had plans to revamp the comic but those plans are constantly getting de-prioritized to the rigid Wed/Fri release schedule.

So I don’t know what’s next exactly for AiyH, but I’m going off of the twice a week release schedule after I complete the Top 10 Causes of Minarchism series. It’s a thought that I’ve freqently toyed with for some time now but keep talking myself out of and I know it will keep nagging at me until I try it. This comic has been like a part-time job that doesn’t pay anything for 2 years and as long as it continues to feel like a job, I dread doing anything beyond what I’m absolutely obligated by the schedule to do. The release schedule imposes an artificial priority on releasing something, anything, and it’s just more of that scattered material that I’m just not happy with and that isn’t moving the site forward.

For now, that just means AiyH is no longer a job for me. Now it’s a hobby, something I do for fun. I will continue to release comics and write when I feel inspired, but it will very likely not be anything like twice a week. I have no idea how often it will be yet. That will be up to the Muses. They will be much like what you have seen thus far, sort of varied and mostly stand-alone concepts, until I feel like I’ve got something that’s fit to take over for the old AiyH. At that point, if I get to it, I will likely go back to a regular schedule. To be completely honest, I have to acknowledge the slim possibility that this will mark the beginning of the end for AiyH, though I don’t think so. You don’t work on something this hard for two years without it earning a special place in your heart, and I definitely want the spirit of this comic to continue. I’ve always avoided this for fear of losing the momentum that I worked hard for, but I finally decided it’s a risk I’m willing to take for the potential gain.

Considering that the comics will be sporadic, please be aware of a couple of options for getting notified of new comics and blogs. You can sign up for the RSS Feed which now includes the full-sized comics, or if you prefer emails, there is also a mailing list where you can select to be notified of just comics, just blogs, or both.

I hope you’ll stick around to see what’s next in the evolution of Anarchy In Your Head.