So I am the big two nine today. I guess I have one more year of youthful indiscretion before old age is upon me. It seems like birthdays are a good time for reflection and so I hope you’ll forgive me if this is a little mushy.
This November will mark eight years of doing Penny Arcade. When we started the comic strip I was 21, single and living in an apartment with Tycho back in Spokane. I was selling computers at circuit city all day and then drawing the comic strip in the middle of the night between marathon sessions of Tribes. We lived off Top Ramen and whatever leftovers my mom would drop off. I never went to college and so I had resigned myself to a career at Circuit City. It wasn’t a terrible job and in fact just before I quit I actually requested the manager training books. I figured I could work my way up in the company to a point where I was making a decent living and then I could do my artwork on the side.
Now eight years later I have a wife and a two year old son. I’ve got a house here in Seattle with a lawn and a slide in the backyard. I work nine to five at the Penny Arcade office drawing the comic, playing games and working on all our millions of extra projects. If you had told me ten years ago that this is what I’d be doing I wouldn’t have believed you. I literally have my dream job during the day and an incredible family to go home to every night. There are a lot of days it just seems too good to be true.
I guess the reason I’m telling you guys this is because it’s all thanks to you. You guys reading the strip and buying the shirts and telling your friends about it for eight years. You’re why I get to do this every day. Thank you seems sort of silly, but it’s all I’ve got.
Also the internets gave me the best birthday present ever today. A video of Lowtax getting the shit beat out of him. Oh intertron, how did you know!?
-Gabe out
