24: to childfree or not to childfree? (3/3)

january 13th, 2025

three-page sequence complete!! rahhhh 😀

while working with kids, sometimes I’m jealous of the families who get to take said kiddos home afterwards, but I also feel very very lucky to be involved in these kids’ lives (they’re all so wonderful!!) *and* have so much blissfully free time to myself when my shifts are over. I suspect that much of my childhood desire to be a parent comes from a combination of wanting to have a family and wanting to be a mentor figure, and it turns out you can do those things independently of one another, which is very cool! and I really do think of all the kids I work with as “my kids,” to an extent. I have so many amazing kids!!!

huge huge shoutout also to my lovely lovely coworkers :3 I met my partner via my current working-with-kids job and we continue to work together pretty closely, which is very neat, and everyone else who works there are also super kickass human beings who’re great to spend time with both on and off the clock! part of writing autobiographical comics that I’ve been gradually figuring out is how I want to depict other real people, especially people who I haven’t explicitly asked whether they’d like to be in my comics or not — I’ve been going with an approach of keeping the focus of the comic on myself + depicting fairly fictionalized versions of people, with various details tweaked and obvious identifiers absent. that said, if you know me irl, you’re always super super welcome to talk with me about how you are or aren’t depicted in my works, whether that’s requesting to stay out of them, be removed from them, be added to them, or be like “yoooooooooooo you should give me like dragon wings” 😛 <3

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transcript:

maybe in the future I’ll find myself wanting human kids again, but as the person I am today, it feels amazing to focus instead on the humans already in my life: the kiddos in my literal and metaphorical villages, my existing friends and family, and myself!

[Blobic is standing in a snowy outdoor scene with Chris, the friendly rat-like coworker from “underemployment is like a high-stakes puzzle game,” and a third person who hasn’t been shown before and has long hair and a turtle shell. Chris is waving goodbye to someone off-panel, and Blobic is comfortably leaning on a cart, tail wagging happily, as the other two people load items onto said cart. everyone is grinning, bundled up for the cold, and wearing employee IDs on lanyards.]

person off-panel: byeeeeee!!
Chris: bye y’all! see you next week!
Blobic: that went really well! they all seemed to have fun, and the littlest ones really came out of their shells during that last activity
rat-esque coworker: I noticed that too! I think we should try and build on that during next week’s games. yo, speaking of games, Flor and I are planning to go play like four hours of MarioKart after we get this cleaned up; y’all wanna join us?
turtle-esque coworker: heck yeah, of course!

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