So long, Bibli’Oh. So long, Penk’s innocence.

Phil did good here. Both of us had worked other jobs in addition to Guilded Age and while neither of those jobs involved the direct kind of moral quandaries we see here, we were both the sort to wonder how much of our souls we’d need to give to our day-job identities.

Though at this point, my financial straits were dire enough that just having a day-job identity would’ve counted as a win. I had seriously overextended myself over the last few years, hoping to create enough properties that their ad revenues would keep me afloat financially, and things had gone in the other direction instead. As Guilded Age entered its third year and our Kickstarter was still not quite ready, I moved to wrap up my other creative projects (except for an ill-advised sequel to one of them) and moved in with an old friend from college, whose daughter was my goddaughter. Helping out with parenting duties made me feel better about myself in a way that my financial picture did not.

None of this relates very much to Penk except for the general “This is not where I thought I’d be in life” feeling, but it may be worthwhile context for future updates.