Here we go again

I've decided to begin 'blogging' again after a long absence. I asked the Tarot if this was a good idea—I am extremely ambivalent about how public/personal/private to be on the internet—and these are the cards I got:

Reception (known in other decks as the Empress), created by Devon Haynes and the Mentor of Keys (known in other decks as the Knight, or King of Wands). I take these two cards to mean a big YES to getting back on this internet. I don't know why I am supposed to exactly, but I suspect I'll find out soon. Funny that these two cards were drawn/created by two different artists in different places and yet when you put them together, they look like two vantage points from the same scene, like panels in a comic. Magic.

I have been struggling with whether to post about my Crazy, my Sickness, disability, and ableism on this blog. For the most part, I have been keeping my political/personal comics separate from my more historical comics. But more and more I feel the two realms blending together like that is how they want to be. I have been on federal disability for over ten years now. In that time we moved into the digital age with its all-encompassing culture of surveillance. Our government uses social networking site and blogs (among other things) as a way to monitor whether they think people are really disabled or not. After having friends be stalked by private investigators and have their benefits yanked out from under them because of facebook updates, I have been pretty fearful. But I'm done. I got some shit to say. My disability benefits were reinstated after biting my nails under the all-seeing eye of the disability redetermination process for the past 8 months and guess what? The government believes me and my doctors when we say I am severely disabled. For anyone who has been under the yoke of welfare, having it threatened on the basis of your functionality, often at times when you need it most, you'll understand the sigh of relief I am breathing. And now I am ready to talk.

For starters then, I am going to post an entire comic from a few years ago, originally published in the awesome anthology When language Runs Dry: a Zine for people withchronic pain and their allies in 2009. I drew this out at Fancyland when I was extremely sick and having a hard time. I drew the third panel, the one of me sick on the couch literally while I was sick on the couch in the lodge. Luckily it is a beautiful and hospitable 

place: