FA+
Shop
Connections
11 months ago
General
Hey. It feels like it's been a while.
I'm not sure if anyone really noticed my absence because i was pretty good at still uploading art, but in terms of interaction, engaging with folk, I largely fell off grid from like..Mid november really. A post here or there on bluesky to show im still around, kinda sneakily hiding in a way cause i didn't want to be seen to be absent, but mostly withdrew and hid. We're calling that resilience fatigue people.
2024 largely wasn't a kind year for me, My Dad dying, then my Mum being hospitilsed with bipolar for months, my husband losing his job, our car breaking, our cat almost dying and eating our savings as a result, all the while trying hard to study for my Therapist qualification and Keep comics going on time.
I put a lot of the emotional baggage of 2024 on hold, the processing of most of that just sorta stacked on top of one another, and then when November came along with the wind down of the school semester I was suddenly like...oh maybe I can stop, take a break....And that's when I broke.
It's a classic of mine. I got sick because I had time to be sick and I hit a wall and as always rather than looking for support I curled inwards and sorta emotionally hibernated, zombified until I felt strong enough to weather the storm.
And so hi. I am back. But not because i'm feeling stronger....Well maybe there's a bit of that, but it almost feels like a necessity.
I don't think I really need to tell folk that life is gonna get progressively bumpier in the coming years, it feels like a large chunk of the western world is racing to the right depending on who throws how much money to whomever and it's fucking terrifying and I don't want to stress or scare people and it's been a big factor of what's been making me feel overwhelmed and helpless/hopeless so that's then fallen into inaction. I've buried myself in games, or art, trying to ignore the world is burning because i feel like i can't do much about that.
That's the opposite of what I can do though. Look. More than ever we need to be a community. Look out for one another, support each other because it's clear the countries most of us live in don't care about us at all, so all we really have is each other. Online life is gonna get trickier, net neutrality laws and porn laws and A.I....It's important we learn ways to shore ourselves up, look after ourselves and those around us.
I'm done with feeling helpless/ineffective/inept/hopeless
If there are fundraising things going on. I can use this page and my bsky etc as ways of boosting things, I've not done a lot of that this past year. I can do fundraising, I can pick folk up with art, i can just be here. Hopefully im getting to the end of my course and this time next year I should finally be qualified to offer counseling too. In a world thats trying to pull everyone apart I want to resist that, connect people. And also feel more of that connection myself. I'm going to put more effort in this year to do that.
Carve out my own little bunker here to survive the storm on the horizon. You're all more than welcome to join me.
I'm not sure if anyone really noticed my absence because i was pretty good at still uploading art, but in terms of interaction, engaging with folk, I largely fell off grid from like..Mid november really. A post here or there on bluesky to show im still around, kinda sneakily hiding in a way cause i didn't want to be seen to be absent, but mostly withdrew and hid. We're calling that resilience fatigue people.
2024 largely wasn't a kind year for me, My Dad dying, then my Mum being hospitilsed with bipolar for months, my husband losing his job, our car breaking, our cat almost dying and eating our savings as a result, all the while trying hard to study for my Therapist qualification and Keep comics going on time.
I put a lot of the emotional baggage of 2024 on hold, the processing of most of that just sorta stacked on top of one another, and then when November came along with the wind down of the school semester I was suddenly like...oh maybe I can stop, take a break....And that's when I broke.
It's a classic of mine. I got sick because I had time to be sick and I hit a wall and as always rather than looking for support I curled inwards and sorta emotionally hibernated, zombified until I felt strong enough to weather the storm.
And so hi. I am back. But not because i'm feeling stronger....Well maybe there's a bit of that, but it almost feels like a necessity.
I don't think I really need to tell folk that life is gonna get progressively bumpier in the coming years, it feels like a large chunk of the western world is racing to the right depending on who throws how much money to whomever and it's fucking terrifying and I don't want to stress or scare people and it's been a big factor of what's been making me feel overwhelmed and helpless/hopeless so that's then fallen into inaction. I've buried myself in games, or art, trying to ignore the world is burning because i feel like i can't do much about that.
That's the opposite of what I can do though. Look. More than ever we need to be a community. Look out for one another, support each other because it's clear the countries most of us live in don't care about us at all, so all we really have is each other. Online life is gonna get trickier, net neutrality laws and porn laws and A.I....It's important we learn ways to shore ourselves up, look after ourselves and those around us.
I'm done with feeling helpless/ineffective/inept/hopeless
If there are fundraising things going on. I can use this page and my bsky etc as ways of boosting things, I've not done a lot of that this past year. I can do fundraising, I can pick folk up with art, i can just be here. Hopefully im getting to the end of my course and this time next year I should finally be qualified to offer counseling too. In a world thats trying to pull everyone apart I want to resist that, connect people. And also feel more of that connection myself. I'm going to put more effort in this year to do that.
Carve out my own little bunker here to survive the storm on the horizon. You're all more than welcome to join me.
For real though i understand 2024 was a bitch of a year, i wont go into detail on my end but irl had some pretty low points, online we had the whole Pateron and FA dramas
Sometimes we all need to just unplug and reset, and that's 100% the correct course of action
We push ourselves to find meaning, and joy in a world that feels like an anaconda slowly wrapping around us
We work so hard that even our passions can overtake us and start to become just another chore
Breaks help us reset, process the trauma, find new beauty in life and how we choose to navigate it
Never feel bad about stepping back, youve pumped out consist content for loke 15+ years now, folls can wait a minute to get their next comic page or art commission, lol
The folls eho love what you make, and respect you as a person arent going to be upset, but we will be excited when you return a bit more refreshed and bit less stressed
With all my word soup out the way, welcome back
If any of us have a friend who is isolating or drifting off - please check in on them to remind them that we care about them and are there if they need it.
Thanks for this post and I'm sorry that things have been so rough. It's impressive that you kept up with art and the fandom at all while going through that, and even moreso to share.
https://piermesh.net/
its meant to be a separate internet, made by marginalized people, for marginalized people. i believe in the project. though i dont wanna overstep on your post... but i really value community and i agree with you completely and i think projects like this will help
I really hope that there will be a brighter 2025 for you in the works.
I hope we as a community will be here for each other when or if the going it's tough. We can weather any storm.
🐨
I hope that you don't think all right-leaning people are evil monsters. Just remember that most folks are just trying to get through their day, same as you are, same as anybody is. They want to be able to afford stuff like food and clothing and housing. They harbor no ill will, they just get fed up with what their so-called leaders are doing, and in a two-party system, if the guys in office are doing a lousy job with the economy, then the only thing you can do is flip that coin and elect the other side to screw things up for the next four years.
We're fortunate in that we can change our governments with a ballot box. The problem is that you can only vote for the people who put themselves forward as candidates, not the people who would actually be good for the job. So you end up with celebrity demagogues whose great speeches are sound bites on podcasts and tweets on social media.
Since the proliferation of the Internet, we've...kind of gotten the government that we deserve.
Good luck with last year of your course!!
Its terrifying how misinformation and brainrot (for lack of a better word) is commonplace in society now. From hatred on the scale of wars to people relying on ai language models to speak or write essays and researching or obtaining information (when that is NOT their purpose). And now that AI is being used to pretend to be real people (scam bots were bad enough) on increasing scale online, its hard to just trust individuals online or in the real world anymore as they may well be just another ai language model pretending to be a human, all so someone makes a tiny bit more money.
sorry for the text wall, society is so rough right now, and it doesnt seem like it will ever recover or start improving.
We need to stick together and hopefully try and figure a solution to all this madness! Furries run a lot of the tech world, hopefully they'll throw a spanner into the cogs of the AI machine.
People need to act more together, that I would agree with sharing broad platforms rather than narrow and often introspective ones to get the things that matter done.