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October '21 update: actually something serious this time
4 years ago
General
let's get to things then
YCHes and commissions, and that darn Patreon
as usual, delayed, but dw, I'm... working on. Slowly, but I am. As to why it goes slowly...
What's up?
I wanna preface this entire section with this lengthy intro bit. Anything that you're about to read... I don't want pity, I don't want to do it in order to get anything. In fact, I'll actually be upset if I wake up tomorrow and I'm going to be materially better off because of this. So please, just... Don't give me any special treatment cuz of this. Just kinda hoping to give you an insight into things on this end of the world, maybe just for a tad of non-material support, not more than that. Now, with that said and done...
As you might've noticed... My art output is very random. Sometimes it's a lot of full arts, sometimes... It's very few, shoddy sketches. And well, why's that? Laziness? Well, yeah... But that's not the only thing that's clawing at me quite frequently. It's quite hard to even talk about it for me, for the most part, due to past experiences and what usually happened when I talked about those things too much (shout outs to those who remember those days!), but yeah... I guess I'll try, because I just feel like I'm harming myself more by not mentioning it.
So yeah, "big news", I have autism. Yes, not the self-diagnosed kind. And yes, it's rather mild, so mild that some people apparently don't even notice it. I also have depression, of the clinically diagnosed kind, and that's way more relevant to what I'm about to say than the former thing, but do keep autism in mind. Might come in handy to know that, at the very least. Either way... I do take medication for it, although getting a proper therapy in this fucknowhere town is... Challenging, to say the least. Sure, there are therapists, but vast majority of them is genuinely ill-trained and barely knows the difference between sadness and depression, so... No luck in that department.
Now, why is all of that relevant? Well...
Art is a process, it takes time, it takes effort and a lot of persistence to complete. So it requires some strength to keep going, which... As evidenced, I should have it, seeing as I'm drawing for good few years now. But at the same time, I lack the strength to keep going sometimes, as odd as it sounds. In the long term, I'm just unable to give up, but the short term isn't as great. All it takes is one thing that bothers me too much and I'm not feeling like drawing anymore, be it something of the mental kind or the physical kind. I just have to be "in the mood for it", otherwise... Results are subpar. And so, as you might've guessed by now, things aren't good lately, both on the physical and mental end.
Physically, my family never was a rich one, but lately so than ever, from what I know (cuz I am not allowed to know the full picture of things most of the time, for some reason...), we [me, my mom, my wayyy younger sister and a dog] barely get by every month. Sometimes there's some extra money, sometimes... We borrow from other family members and it's still barely enough to get by. I'm not gonna go into details as to why that is, it's a journal about my problems, not an autobiography. Just know that it's complicated and I'm not eager to elaborate on it further to complete strangers on the internet. I don't have a job, obviously, despite being an adult and probably able to get one, for a lot of reasons. One of which being the high unemployment in this area of Poland, the pandemic making things even more dire for smaller businesses didn't help the matters. Even if I found a job (miraculously, through mom being connected somehow), I don't want to get it because somebody else set it up for me, I want to get it on merit, because I fucking deserved it. And even if I did have the qualifications for something and I'd be able to get the job... I don't feel like I could keep it for long, since all it takes is one major upset and I'm straight up not working well, if at all.
Which leads to the part of mental drawbacks, namely... Low self-confidence and depression-induced anxiety. The former making it hard to even begin drawing sometimes (combined with perfectionism... An awful mix.), the latter just making me afraid to draw some things, sometimes for the least logical of reasons. And, as drawing stuff for people on the internet is the only thing I can feasibly do without tripping over myself too much and severely shortening my lifespan with unnecessary stress... I rely on a business that may or may not yield income every month. The only way to make it work is to be fast, reliable and marketable.
And now, here's the part where I rip into myself, in my eyes - fairly, in the eyes of others... Well, who am I to say to you what to think of me?
Speed - as evidenced... Not good on that. Perfectionism and depression makes it hard. Former makes me obsess over making things perfect. Doesn't sound that bad? Well... It's low-key like an OCD of sorts. Everything must be perfect, thus... I spend more time perfecting things that won't even matter in the final product, things that nobody will even notice or give a damn about, thus kinda wasting time. And the latter... What can I say? Depression just kinda makes you prioritize things in a very weird and irrational way, all because it doesn't just nibble at your life, but it chomps and doesn't let go so easily. Instead of drawing, lately I've been just playing Rimworld and BF4 on repeat (even worse - on metro-only servers, just cuz I crave something to do that will give a consistent non-negative result), not only because "I'm not in the mood for it". With depression... Sometimes, even if the logical option to escape it would be to just keep your head down and draw to get more money, you just crave some form of escapism from reality, because it's just too draining. [Opinion part] Oddly similar to how your local homeless drunkards, instead of sorting their life out and fixing things just opted for even more alcohol, and they keep doing it anyway. Sometimes... Reality is just too overwhelming and we don't function rationally. [Opinion over]
Reliability - lack of self-confidence really impedes doing anything consistently, paired with depression and anxiety... As I said multiple times before, one thing doesn't work - everything else falls apart in this shoddy jenga. Aside from that... Thanks to not having a decent chair (and any new chair being usually unreliable, because they design them for shorter, lighter people that don't have back problems...), physically I'm not able to draw for too long before starting to get distracted by discomfort, since the chair doesn't have enough support for my back and neck when I'm using the tablet. And no, it's not that kind you can hold in your hands and just draw on your bed. It's the kind that doesn't have its own screen, the kind that's heavy and the kind that's wired to a computer. And then... I get overwhelmed having just 2 commissions on the queue, where I feel like I'm taking waaaaaay to long to complete a single piece. And there's at least one person who's got the patience of a fucking saint that's been waiting for quite a while now, shout outs to you, my man. So yeah... Not good...
Marketability - safe to say I'm not even trying to be marketable, which in itself can be, ironically, marketable in a twisted way. But... I'm very much unlike most other artists out there, as you might've noticed. Which, again can be good. Except... It isn't. I attract a different kind of crowd with my attitudes, and that'd be a good thing, if it wasn't for the fact that it's not a crowd that's big in numbers. It's not "the lowest common denominator", and thus... I'm willingly opting out of getting extra money. And yes, I know that I might get shit for saying what I just did, but let's face it, that's just a cold-hearted, calculated, purely business perspective on people. Just as a side note, I am very cynical towards that perspective, even if I bring it up as a point here. Either way... This attitude that I have does tend to make enemies, which is perfectly fine and normal. Can't befriend everyone on this planet, even if you'd try your hardest. If not for the fact that I've probably made a metric fuckton of enemies over the past few years, and on the off-chance that one of them is reading this journal - hi, hope you're having fun. So I'm fully aware that I'm probably not seen in the best spotlight already as a result of that, and that the word probably spreads from person to person sometimes. TL;DR: not very marketable, possibly coming across as an asshole, probably got the reputation of an asshole in some circles.
And so... Here I am, trying to get some cash for my own things to spend them on, possibly will have to use some of it just to survive, and on top of that... I'm not really good at trying, thanks to many factors. Life ain't lookin' good, I'm having severe self-doubts and thus... Trying to draw anything just ends up being either painful, I end up not finishing a barely touched on thing, or I just give up before I even begin. And then I don't even know what to do about it, where to go from here, what to do with myself, yet still sticking hard to some principles. For example, you might say... "Why not increase the prices then, if you're so slow? After all, low quantity, - high quality!" - I'd genuinely feel bad to do that. I've been raising the commission prices little by little, but I'm not eager to push it into the triple digits anytime soon. Firstly... I don't believe my art would be worth that much, I'd feel bad for ripping people off, basically. Hell, even current prices, I'm feeling like they're a bit overpriced. The quality is just not there, and speed... I told you about it already. And secondly... I wanna stick to a bit of a principle. I don't like locking my art away from people for god knows how long, I don't like ramping prices up to some insane highs. I believe that art is the thing that can make someone's day better, and thus... I don't feel like locking it away in some dark corner of the internet or demanding a fortune and a half for it is fair. Besides... Art prices are based mostly on one's popularity these days. So yeah... 'fraid that ain't gonna work, chief...
idk what else to say or how to end the journal so uhhh
art uploads will continue as usual unless i just don't manage to draw a single line in the coming month, uhhhh, bye
YCHes and commissions, and that darn Patreon
as usual, delayed, but dw, I'm... working on. Slowly, but I am. As to why it goes slowly...
What's up?
I wanna preface this entire section with this lengthy intro bit. Anything that you're about to read... I don't want pity, I don't want to do it in order to get anything. In fact, I'll actually be upset if I wake up tomorrow and I'm going to be materially better off because of this. So please, just... Don't give me any special treatment cuz of this. Just kinda hoping to give you an insight into things on this end of the world, maybe just for a tad of non-material support, not more than that. Now, with that said and done...
As you might've noticed... My art output is very random. Sometimes it's a lot of full arts, sometimes... It's very few, shoddy sketches. And well, why's that? Laziness? Well, yeah... But that's not the only thing that's clawing at me quite frequently. It's quite hard to even talk about it for me, for the most part, due to past experiences and what usually happened when I talked about those things too much (shout outs to those who remember those days!), but yeah... I guess I'll try, because I just feel like I'm harming myself more by not mentioning it.
So yeah, "big news", I have autism. Yes, not the self-diagnosed kind. And yes, it's rather mild, so mild that some people apparently don't even notice it. I also have depression, of the clinically diagnosed kind, and that's way more relevant to what I'm about to say than the former thing, but do keep autism in mind. Might come in handy to know that, at the very least. Either way... I do take medication for it, although getting a proper therapy in this fucknowhere town is... Challenging, to say the least. Sure, there are therapists, but vast majority of them is genuinely ill-trained and barely knows the difference between sadness and depression, so... No luck in that department.
Now, why is all of that relevant? Well...
Art is a process, it takes time, it takes effort and a lot of persistence to complete. So it requires some strength to keep going, which... As evidenced, I should have it, seeing as I'm drawing for good few years now. But at the same time, I lack the strength to keep going sometimes, as odd as it sounds. In the long term, I'm just unable to give up, but the short term isn't as great. All it takes is one thing that bothers me too much and I'm not feeling like drawing anymore, be it something of the mental kind or the physical kind. I just have to be "in the mood for it", otherwise... Results are subpar. And so, as you might've guessed by now, things aren't good lately, both on the physical and mental end.
Physically, my family never was a rich one, but lately so than ever, from what I know (cuz I am not allowed to know the full picture of things most of the time, for some reason...), we [me, my mom, my wayyy younger sister and a dog] barely get by every month. Sometimes there's some extra money, sometimes... We borrow from other family members and it's still barely enough to get by. I'm not gonna go into details as to why that is, it's a journal about my problems, not an autobiography. Just know that it's complicated and I'm not eager to elaborate on it further to complete strangers on the internet. I don't have a job, obviously, despite being an adult and probably able to get one, for a lot of reasons. One of which being the high unemployment in this area of Poland, the pandemic making things even more dire for smaller businesses didn't help the matters. Even if I found a job (miraculously, through mom being connected somehow), I don't want to get it because somebody else set it up for me, I want to get it on merit, because I fucking deserved it. And even if I did have the qualifications for something and I'd be able to get the job... I don't feel like I could keep it for long, since all it takes is one major upset and I'm straight up not working well, if at all.
Which leads to the part of mental drawbacks, namely... Low self-confidence and depression-induced anxiety. The former making it hard to even begin drawing sometimes (combined with perfectionism... An awful mix.), the latter just making me afraid to draw some things, sometimes for the least logical of reasons. And, as drawing stuff for people on the internet is the only thing I can feasibly do without tripping over myself too much and severely shortening my lifespan with unnecessary stress... I rely on a business that may or may not yield income every month. The only way to make it work is to be fast, reliable and marketable.
And now, here's the part where I rip into myself, in my eyes - fairly, in the eyes of others... Well, who am I to say to you what to think of me?
Speed - as evidenced... Not good on that. Perfectionism and depression makes it hard. Former makes me obsess over making things perfect. Doesn't sound that bad? Well... It's low-key like an OCD of sorts. Everything must be perfect, thus... I spend more time perfecting things that won't even matter in the final product, things that nobody will even notice or give a damn about, thus kinda wasting time. And the latter... What can I say? Depression just kinda makes you prioritize things in a very weird and irrational way, all because it doesn't just nibble at your life, but it chomps and doesn't let go so easily. Instead of drawing, lately I've been just playing Rimworld and BF4 on repeat (even worse - on metro-only servers, just cuz I crave something to do that will give a consistent non-negative result), not only because "I'm not in the mood for it". With depression... Sometimes, even if the logical option to escape it would be to just keep your head down and draw to get more money, you just crave some form of escapism from reality, because it's just too draining. [Opinion part] Oddly similar to how your local homeless drunkards, instead of sorting their life out and fixing things just opted for even more alcohol, and they keep doing it anyway. Sometimes... Reality is just too overwhelming and we don't function rationally. [Opinion over]
Reliability - lack of self-confidence really impedes doing anything consistently, paired with depression and anxiety... As I said multiple times before, one thing doesn't work - everything else falls apart in this shoddy jenga. Aside from that... Thanks to not having a decent chair (and any new chair being usually unreliable, because they design them for shorter, lighter people that don't have back problems...), physically I'm not able to draw for too long before starting to get distracted by discomfort, since the chair doesn't have enough support for my back and neck when I'm using the tablet. And no, it's not that kind you can hold in your hands and just draw on your bed. It's the kind that doesn't have its own screen, the kind that's heavy and the kind that's wired to a computer. And then... I get overwhelmed having just 2 commissions on the queue, where I feel like I'm taking waaaaaay to long to complete a single piece. And there's at least one person who's got the patience of a fucking saint that's been waiting for quite a while now, shout outs to you, my man. So yeah... Not good...
Marketability - safe to say I'm not even trying to be marketable, which in itself can be, ironically, marketable in a twisted way. But... I'm very much unlike most other artists out there, as you might've noticed. Which, again can be good. Except... It isn't. I attract a different kind of crowd with my attitudes, and that'd be a good thing, if it wasn't for the fact that it's not a crowd that's big in numbers. It's not "the lowest common denominator", and thus... I'm willingly opting out of getting extra money. And yes, I know that I might get shit for saying what I just did, but let's face it, that's just a cold-hearted, calculated, purely business perspective on people. Just as a side note, I am very cynical towards that perspective, even if I bring it up as a point here. Either way... This attitude that I have does tend to make enemies, which is perfectly fine and normal. Can't befriend everyone on this planet, even if you'd try your hardest. If not for the fact that I've probably made a metric fuckton of enemies over the past few years, and on the off-chance that one of them is reading this journal - hi, hope you're having fun. So I'm fully aware that I'm probably not seen in the best spotlight already as a result of that, and that the word probably spreads from person to person sometimes. TL;DR: not very marketable, possibly coming across as an asshole, probably got the reputation of an asshole in some circles.
And so... Here I am, trying to get some cash for my own things to spend them on, possibly will have to use some of it just to survive, and on top of that... I'm not really good at trying, thanks to many factors. Life ain't lookin' good, I'm having severe self-doubts and thus... Trying to draw anything just ends up being either painful, I end up not finishing a barely touched on thing, or I just give up before I even begin. And then I don't even know what to do about it, where to go from here, what to do with myself, yet still sticking hard to some principles. For example, you might say... "Why not increase the prices then, if you're so slow? After all, low quantity, - high quality!" - I'd genuinely feel bad to do that. I've been raising the commission prices little by little, but I'm not eager to push it into the triple digits anytime soon. Firstly... I don't believe my art would be worth that much, I'd feel bad for ripping people off, basically. Hell, even current prices, I'm feeling like they're a bit overpriced. The quality is just not there, and speed... I told you about it already. And secondly... I wanna stick to a bit of a principle. I don't like locking my art away from people for god knows how long, I don't like ramping prices up to some insane highs. I believe that art is the thing that can make someone's day better, and thus... I don't feel like locking it away in some dark corner of the internet or demanding a fortune and a half for it is fair. Besides... Art prices are based mostly on one's popularity these days. So yeah... 'fraid that ain't gonna work, chief...
idk what else to say or how to end the journal so uhhh
art uploads will continue as usual unless i just don't manage to draw a single line in the coming month, uhhhh, bye
