DA (illustrated) counterpart

That's how long I've been "on hiatus". No uploads, no tweets, nada. The simple answer is, yes I've really been that busy, but there's more to it than that.

Before you start objecting, pointing at how many submissions I've commented on or favorited, or anything else that, if I had time for surely I must've had time to upload content, let's start at the beginning, way back at the beginning.

When I started uploading art online, I made this blog post. My reason for shifting focus to sites like FA or DA was because there was no inherent rules or structure to uploading stuff. You could just dump the image and put it into folders later. It would be like sharing a folder on my computer, except people got to see it... and I'd know they had because I could see their comments! Coming from Geocities and Blogger (man I feel old saying that) this was a vast improvement! Boy was I wrong.

Let's walk through the process of submitting, shall we?

1. Choose a file. Now this may seem trivial, but there is a bit of thought involved here. What format should the file be in? How big should it be? should everybody be able to download the full size or just the people it's "for"?
2. Title it. Also non-trivial. A title can make or break the, shall we say, "specialness" of a picture. It has to be catchy but not cringe-worthy. Novel, yet relevant. I'm usually good with titles, but it's still an added difficulty
3. Choose keywords. Now I know you may think it's ridiculous (especially since now people think valid keywords are things like "I, don't, know, what, did, you, expect"). However, to me, keywords have the obligation of being descriptive. they are, after all, how people who search for your art are going to find it. I usually have a very hard time with keywords ... and apparently everybody I've asked to help me with them does too.
4. Choose a category. Thankfully, this is simple on FA, since you're pretty much just indicating whether it's a picture or not.... but on DA it can be a small nightmare.
5. Theme. This should be simple, but with most of my drawings, there tends to be several categories, which makes me have to stop and think which one is the "main" one? Is this drawing's most distinguishing characteristic the characters in it, or the fact that it's drawn by hand? Is it what we're doing? Do I want this particular drawing to show up as a "furry specialty"?
6. Species. Mainly a problem in ... any drawing that depicts more than one character. Do I label it as the "main" character? The one that takes up the most image space? Do I leave it "unspecified" and lose the audience that will find it by browsing?
7. Gender. This is not difficult, but can be frustrating. If I draw a lineup with 10 guys and a girl, I really want to label it "male", but I feel it would be disloyal to that one female character. Conversely, I can draw 3 guys, and really want to label it "multiple characters", but that feels like a needless complication for the "browsing" audience.

But surely this shouldn't be a problem, right? They're all simple questions; it's not like I have a psychological impediment

...well....

I live as what any American would consider a poor person. This means that, when you add up every expense I make (food, rent, bus fare... even the paper I draw on) it comes out to less than $32.25 aday. Now don't go asking for my tax returns; my income during those 2 Years, 10 months, 9 days was more than that. Where does "the rest" go? To my family.

I'm one of those poor students you probably heard about in the news that seems very alert in class, but the back of their mind is spinning thoughts like

So what are they going to eat next week? Maybe if I don't print this or that assignment we can make it it to an additional bag of flour... no still ten cents short and I can't ask Sis to pitch in. Shit there's a new formula on the board! Why is it cubed? ...Hmm maybe some bouillon cubes... The formula is named after a doctor, better copy down his name... the doctor said to stay off bouillon cubes...

This has been demonstrated in multiple studies to be very stressful and affect academic performance, but it's manageable. Why is it an excuse? Well, try doing it over a thousand miles away.

I searched for a year and a half for a job, bachelor's degree in hand (Remember that sketch of me waiting in line? Yeah, thats what I was doing) but was unable to find one I was neither over- nor under-qualified for. Like most people at the time, I came up with the "brilliant" idea of going "back to school" and doing a masters. You could argue I took the easy way out, but the truth is there were many personal projects I wanted to do with my free time that I didn't know how to do because those classes were too high up.

Masters, by the way, are not just harder versions of Bachelors. You don't just go to the same classes and read harder texts; there are a good many additional requirements such as detailed reports of your life's achievements, having to write to some important guy with a PhD in Greenland, and finding a way to access paid content without money. Not a walk in the park, and (also proven in various studies) more stress than any student at that level is equipped to manage. But the fact that people do graduate shows that they can and do.

Unfortunately, I had only been able to get my bachelors in the first place because I was on a scholarship, and there were none for masters students where I lived.

I eventually found one requiring me to move over a thousand miles away, and happily took it. My first semester there, I learned just as much about my classes as I did about how parcel services, clearing houses, and Uncle Sam works, if not more. Again, more stressors. But if I still had my art and its feedback, it couldn't get worse, could it?

That semester, I was also robbed. It was the first such burglary in that part of town ‒ that "small college town" with nearly 200 years of police records.

...and I finally cracked