I Left. Here's What Happened.

I owe you an update.

Last time I sent an email, it was a goodbye. 12 of them, actually — a whole campaign about closing the shop after 10 years. That was early 2025. I thanked everyone, ran one last sale, and disappeared. Then a personal update a few months into my move, to let you know I was safe.

So where'd I go?

Thailand first. Bangkok. I hopped hotel to hotel with my entire life packed into 4 luggages, looking for a place to land. After a couple of months, I signed my first condo. And then the real work started — not the art work, not the course work. The life work. Learning Thai. Figuring out the MRT Subway and the BTS Sky Train. Sorting health insurance, finding a new barber, trying to make friends from scratch with no prior connection. The kind of settling that nobody talks about because it doesn't look like anything from the outside, but it takes everything you have.

Here's the thing people don't understand about why I left in the first place.

I'd been selling stickers and pins and prints at conventions for a decade. I loved it — I genuinely did. But I knew the next version of what I wanted to do wasn't going to happen from a booth at Anime Expo. I wanted to teach. I wanted to explore. I needed something new, a greater challenge, a new environment to grow in. I'd been doing it informally for years — showing people how I draw, breaking down my process on Instagram, answering DMs from artists who were stuck. But I wanted to build something real. Something structured. Something that actually helped people finish their work, not just start it.

So I built it. And with that first course, something shifted — I realized I was no longer bound by earning income in person. The booth, the conventions, the physical presence — none of it was required anymore. That realization didn't land quietly. It landed like a door opening.

Then I built a second course. Two full digital art courses, months of recording, editing, scripting. Working 6 to 10 hours a day, sometimes more. Having shared my process for almost 20 years through deviantArt, Xanga, Myspace, Facebook, and Instagram, I was finally a teacher worth learning from. That's not a brag — it's context. The courses worked. People signed up. The thing I built did what I hoped it would do.

And then I burned out.

Not dramatically. Not in a meltdown. Just slowly — the same burnout I'd experienced from 10 years of convention life. The kind of burnout where you're still working but you can feel yourself running on caffeine and momentum instead of actual energy. I stopped journaling. My phone screen time crept up to 10 hours a day. I was producing, but I wasn't creating. There's a difference. A real one. And if you've felt it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I was about a year into Thailand when I visited Cambodia with my brothers. We rode bikes through ancient overgrown temples at Angkor Wat. I met a Jiu-Jitsu and Judo community that welcomed me like family. And I felt something I hadn't felt in months — settled. At home. That feeling isn't something you negotiate with. When it shows up, you listen to it.

So I moved. Again.

Christmas of 2025, I packed away the life I'd built in Bangkok and relocated to Phnom Penh. It took about a month to get my footing. New apartment, new gym, new dojo, new everything. But three months in, it clicked. I was training Judo three times a week, tracking 18 daily habits, and actually sitting down to work with focus again. Cambodia gave me something Thailand couldn't — a pace that matched mine. And I think that's worth saying out loud, because a lot of people stay somewhere that isn't working because leaving feels like failure. It's not. Sometimes the environment is just wrong for you, and the brave thing is admitting it.

I'm writing this from my apartment, slouched on my couch, eating chips. I've been here four months now. I train, I draw, I teach, I rest. The rhythm is good. I'm 17 months into being an art teacher, deep in developing my third and final course — and I love my job. Genuinely. It's the self-actualized version of me that I always knew was somewhere in there. The spilled marbles are back in the bag.

And now I'm coming back to Los Angeles. Just for a few weeks. My brother's getting married in May, and while I'm there, I'm opening the shop temporarily — not forever, just a short window. A few weeks to move what I have, see some familiar faces, and ship some art.

That's where I've been. That's what happened.

I'll be around.

— AJ