I feel like I owe everyone an explanation for where I’ve been lately. Most of my very close friends have already been informed, but I don’t want to leave everyone else out in this case. I have a tendency to be very private about my business, but I imagine there are a few people who may be concerned about my well being.

Astute watchers will notice that I haven’t posted much art anywhere lately. The reason for that was that I had started a new career. As always, I have to be cagey with the details, but it was another public servant job involving assisting people in a crisis. I really enjoyed the job and I thought I was making good progress.

Unfortunately my yearly eval came up and because I hadn’t quite reached the second milestone of the training they asked me to resign. They brought up that I had an open mind about training, a positive attitude and that I hadn’t missed a day of work or was late the entire time. Sadly that didn’t seem to factor in to continuing training. (Weirdly enough they said I could reapply if I wanted to). Needless to say, I’ve never had to quit a job like that before and my self confidence took a pretty grievous wound as a result.

After a week of floating around my house like a ghost, I started putting it behind me, and in some cases, maybe not working there is for the best. I did wind up with a little bit of PTSD from some of my “encounters” on the job. None of my clients ever met with any sort of harm, and I got to do a lot of good helping people. I still have the occasional nightmare from time to time and I’m plagued with intrusive thoughts about my self worth daily. But I don’t know. I think all that is starting to fade away.

Now I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with myself. I do have a degree in another public service field, but I don’t really want to go back to that. My last experience with the job was in a private setting and it killed my passion for it. I ended up quitting that position even though my supervisors had begged me to stay so I could become head of the department.

Throughout the past two years, and even further back than that, I’ve toyed with the idea of actually doing something I want to do. I always wanted to try a claw at being a commission artist. I know it’s risky. I am concerned that turning an enjoyable hobby into a career could be disastrous, but I really don’t want to go back to a regular 9 to 5 job making money for some rich asshole

At the same time, my art isn’t the greatest. I couldn’t charge very much. I have to battle with AI and payment companies that may try to blacklist my accounts because I primarily draw babyfur art. I’ll potentially be taking customers away from my friends who are also full time artists…

Even with all that, I still want to try. I love this community. It’s one of the few places I’m truly happy being in. I love working for you all and drawing your ideas. I also hope that if I make this my job and take it seriously, I can move forward with finishing my comic projects. I’ll never forget about Children of Maeria, and I REALLY want to launch Rainbow Drive asap. I have a decent savings that, if I’m lucky enough with commissions and spend my money carefully, I can survive for a while. I am very fortunate that Kiffin’s job doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, so as long as that doesn’t change I should have time to get my act together.

So yeah. I’ve long put my dreams and interests to the side. I may have been stable financially, but I don’t think I was ever really happy. I was always warded away from directly pursuing my dreams. I’m not as young as I once was, but maybe it’s not too late to don my heirloom armor, take up a splintery lance, call up my friend Sancho, and start tilting at windmills.