I've been dealing with a very rough 3 months of daily chronic abdominal/bowel issues. And so far I have no clues or real answers from the clinic beyond that it could be long covid related. I've been experimenting with changing up my diet to little to no change and it's just been an exhausting few weeks overall. I haven't yet made another appointment but I probably should fairly soon.

This month in particular is a more stressful period of the year for me, but where it's normally just self employment tax stress and uncomfortable family birthday celebrations, this year has the added benefit of an eclipse, my older sister is back in a deeply manic depression episode and I'm falling behind on everything in general. My only real relief from all of this is that, time marches on and once April is over it won't come back for another year at least.

I've been having a very difficult time picking up my pen this past week, I've opened up everything to draw, the stream, clip studio, all my stuff, but my grip has been loose, my brain is foggy and my muscle memory is out for lunch. I have been spending a lot of the past few weeks revisiting the past, clearing out half of the submissions people I watch on here have posted over the last 4 years, fav'ing and saving what I enjoyed and adjusting my watch list for artists that I'd prefer to get less inbox clogging from and would rather just bookmark. Revisiting all the old has left me thinking about where I've been and where I am going as an artist. What do I want my art to be? What do I want to change? How do I want people to see me? I don't really have any answers to any of it, and I feel like I'm just going to keep putting it off until I'm at a point where I don't owe anyone anything, and can fully hard reset my priorities. Will I ever reach that goal? I keep moving the goal post so it feels unlikely to happen soon unless the ever increasingly dystopian future decides to cut us all a break somehow.

I've been monitoring the situation with Patreon and policy changes, I'm increasingly concerned that I'm just going to have to pack up and move everything to SubscribeStar in the near future.
If things do become an issue with Patreon going forward, I may reserve it for posting the sfw versions and make a more dedicated early access space on discord for adult posts if necessary. There's a few commissions I'm actively working on that I am concerned may fall under their new rulings for removal that I may just have to avoid posting on Patreon entirely. Patreon is and always has been more of a tip jar for my work primarily. So anyone is free to support me through other means such as Ko-fi if anything happens in the future with other sites.

Tomorrow I might be able to catch the eclipse, but I don't really know what to expect with my family, since they seem to be against making any solid plans and putting things off until the last minute. I hope a lot of you are able to catch it that can, seems there won't be another chance for 20 years. And as you know, the eclipse is basically the ultra darkened version of a full moon so everyone under the path of totality secretly become possessed by evil werewolf spirits. That's a thing, I didn't just make it up.

Anyway, that's what's been up, I don't know when my art mojo will return, but I will stream again as soon as it does. For now I may just quietly nibble away at some more difficult pictures and plan out some of the forms to keep myself going. I might be contacting any submitted google forms that are just simple sketches or inks, I don't want to take on any more colour stuff until I've cleared up the backlog because I'm just slower at colouring in general. I really need to learn to loosen up a bit more and just let go with it.

Thanks for reading!