This one's the hardest to write, as I always knew it would be. Some of you have already guessed what I've been leading up to with this; I commend your perspicacity. Today will be the final update of A Short And Happy Life. After nearly three years, this site and the person I am have drawn too far apart to exist simultaneously. I no longer can wake up in the morning and produce these pieces of myself. I need to focus myself in different directions; my comics career has pretty much stagnated during the last few years, and I don't think that that's a coincidence. I want to start a new band. I want to ride my bicycle more. I want to call my neice on the telephone and be her crazy uncle in New York. There's just too many other things that I'd rather do every day.

In a lot of ways, I think that this thing, when you look on it as a whole, is one of the greatest things I've ever done. I'm truly proud of a lot of my writing that found a home here, and I think that it gave me a chance to focus and understand my abilities in a very unusual way. But I feel like there's other things out there for me; other projects, other ways to work aside from waking up every morning and coding a page.

Over the next month, this page will gradually change into a work/portfolio site for people looking to give me work, buy original artwork, commission work, or just keep track of what's going on. Some of the archived content will stick around, but I expect to clean a lot of house; if there's something you want me to keep, send me an email. I will be starting a mailing list to keep any concerned people up to speed on publishing, readings, gallery shows, and other news; this will probably only be posted to once or twice a month at max. If you're interested, send an email to kthorlist@shortandhappy.com with Subscribe in the topic header. And you could always just email me to ask what I'm up to. I'll be spending less time on the Internet, but I'll still be around. I am still editing Portal of Evil, too. Sometime this fall, Amber will be spun off into her own site. I'm keeping busy.

I'm listening to Richard Thompson right now (if you couldn't guess) and there's a live version of "Calvary Cross" that I've been playing a lot. It's a song that Thompson could never really get right on record; there was always something off or missing. But in this concert, he nails it. It's a brutal, harrowing, beautiful document, with a stunning, out of control guitar solo. After the live show where it was recorded, Thompson hung up his guitar and didn't play a note for two years.

And that's it.