Uhh.. So you're back, back?

NOT EXACTLY.

Let me be honest about something.

Rebuilding this site, reopening the shop, writing these blog posts — all of it is terrifying. And I think pretending it isn't would be a disservice to anyone reading this who's trying to do something similar. So I'm not going to pretend. I'm going to tell you exactly what scares me, and why I'm doing it anyway.

The first thing: coming back after saying goodbye.

I wrote 12 emails telling people I was done. The shop is closed. Thank you for 10 years. And now I'm back, less than two years later, with the shop reopening again — if only for a few weeks. I know how that looks. I worry people will think the retirement was a stunt, a marketing move, some calculated disappearing act designed to manufacture demand. It wasn't. But I also understand why someone might read it that way, and that understanding doesn't make it less uncomfortable to sit with.

Here's what I want you to know, and I want you to actually hear this: I was never done with the work. I was done with the way I was doing it. There's a difference, and it's an important one. I couldn't keep flying to conventions, setting up booths, spending weekends on my feet selling prints and pins while the other version of my life — the teaching, the courses, the art I actually wanted to make — was waiting for me to have enough bandwidth to build it. So I stepped back from the hands-on operation. Not from the love of it. Not from the inventory sitting in storage. Not from the people who kept sliding into my DMs every month asking when they could buy again.

If you go back and reread those emails from early 2025, I was deliberate with my words. I chose them carefully. I said I was retiring from the convention circuit — from being physically present with my work. I never said I was walking away from commercial retail forever. The nuance was always there. I just couldn't explain it fully without it sounding like a justification, and I didn't want to muddy the goodbye. So I kept it clean. And now I'm back, and I'm explaining it — because you deserve the full picture.

I still have inventory. I still have art I'm proud of. I have new work I'd love to produce, but the optics of actively producing, listing, and distributing new product lines would mean something different — it would mean I'm not retired from that world anymore, and I'm not ready to make that announcement. Not yet. So for now, this is a window. A few weeks to give everyone who's been waiting a chance to actually buy something. Then the shop goes back to gallery mode, the site stays up, and we move forward.

The second thing: being seen as just the sticker guy.

I made over 500 character sticker designs over the course of my career. I sold them at conventions for a decade. That body of work is real, and I don't regret a single piece of it. But I've also built two full digital art courses, taught hundreds of students how to actually finish their work, passed through 5 countries, and completely restructured how I live and earn and spend my time. I train Judo three times a week in Cambodia. I'm developing a third course. The stickers are part of the story — a big part, one I'm proud of — but they are not the whole story anymore, and I refuse to let reopening the shop flatten everything back down to a single chapter.

That's why the site is built the way it is. The shop is one door. Not the only door. When you get here, you're going to see the courses, the blog, the art, the full picture of who I am right now — not just the version of me that had a great booth setup at Anime Expo. Both are real. But only one of them is where I'm going.

The third thing is harder to explain.

For most of my career, I've led with receipts. The follower count. The convention numbers. The courses. I show up with evidence because somewhere underneath all of it, I'm terrified that without the credentials, without the proof of work, I'm not interesting enough to pay attention to. And this blog — this new version of the site — is asking me to just show up. To write like a person. To share what I'm actually thinking without turning it into a case study or a pitch. That is genuinely uncomfortable for me. I'm working on it. This post is part of working on it.

Here's what I want you to take from that, if you're someone who's been doing the same thing: Leading with your accomplishments isn’t the same as being present. I chased achievements because I thought that’s what made me matter. But the people who matter can tell the difference—and you were already enough.

So. The shop opens in May. I'll be in Los Angeles for a few weeks — packing and shipping orders with my sister and a friend, the same way we used to do it. Once that window closes, it closes. The site stays. The courses stay live. The blog stays active. I'll keep writing here — not on a schedule, just when I have something worth saying. Think of these posts like letters. I send them when I mean them.

And somewhere in between all of it, I'm learning how to celebrate something without immediately looking for the next thing to chase. That one's still in progress.

Thanks for reading it.

— AJ