On Tuesday the 23rd I’ll be doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) in r/fantasy over on Reddit. Why? Because I’ve been self-employed for ten years now.

2004, September 20th, a Monday… that was my last day at Novell. Tuesday the 21st was my first day cartooning full-time.

And here we are in 2014. I think that the right day for celebrating a decade of Schlock Mercenary as my day job is the 21st, because while quitting was satisfying, I’d rather celebrate the beginning of the next thing than the ending of the previous thing. That said, here’s what I wrote ten years ago on September 20th:

In the face of this new-found freedom, I’m going to spend the next 90 days pretending to be a full-time cartoonist. It may be little more than a sabbatical, or perhaps a pilgrimage-at-the-drawing-table. Then again, it may be a pretense that dictates the shape of reality. I’m not unemployed. I’m SELF-employed. Pretend that with me, please.

The game of pretend has turned out pretty well thus far. I look forward to the perpetuation of the pretense for another decade and beyond…