Hey all o/ I hope you're doing well! I wanted to give a little update for August, just to keep communication open and show where I'm at with work and life stuff.

I was chugging along pretty good, until about the 15th last month when I hit a hard wall of burn out. I've had burn out before, but it would always clear out in a day or two of rest, nothing to write home about. This one though... wowzers. It hit hard and clung on, making even simple tasks feel mind-boggingly difficult, and it stayed for two whole weeks :I You know how you see people say, "You have to rest, or your body will make you"? I think it must have been something like that; all the stressors in my life hit a sort of critical mass, and my system just shut down on me. I feel like I was a computer that was constantly rebooting and blue screening, kinda. It took me by surprise, because I HAVE been resting on weekends! Or I thought I was, at least. But I often use weekends to do a lot of chores or errands or other things that I fall behind on during the week. I think I was resting a lot less effectively than I realized, heh ^^;

On top of that, the whole ordeal with payments processors trying their damnedest to essentially make adult art illegal has been a major source of stress, to say the least. You can read about that here, as well as do your part to protest this https://stop-paypros.neocities.org/

I try not to worry too hard about things that haven't happened yet, but in the end my heart is not made of steel, and I'm pretty dang scared! I love my job, even if I struggle with it at times. I don't want to see it end because of something so asinine. So yeah, I think everything that was already on my plate, PLUS that added to the mix, was just more than I could carry without breaking apart for a bit.

Unfortunately, that's put me behind my planned schedule a bit, so I'm playing catch up now. So here's what I'm working on at this moment, in order:
- Finishing currently paid for rough sketch orders taken through Artconomy/PP
- Getting WIP sketches made for all outstanding slice-of-life commission orders
- Finalizing the first Monster YCH
- Final Pride YCH order
- Getting a WIP of a larger project from my main backlog
- Sketch page orders taken on IB by the 15th of August
- Posting art to my galleries/socials

I'm taking a break from scheduled streaming this month, to give myself some room. I'd been getting weirdly stressed before streams lately, and that doesn't make for a fun time for anybody, so I'm following my heart and taking a break there.

Zines from Hourly Comic Day are still for sale on my Ko-Fi shop (https://ko-fi.com/malachyte/shop) and I also plan to add my bunny bookmarks from conventions past sometime this month!

Some other things I've been working on or doing, that you won't really see the results of but are still adding to my quality of life:
- I'm halfway through an 8 hour course on understanding finances as a freelance artist
- I've been attending in-person art workshops to further my skills and knowledge, and hopefully make some connections
- I made homemade yogurt (not art related, but I'm excited)

So yeah! I think that's about where things are at now. I'm going to just keep doing my best, learn new ways to get ahead, and keep on fighting. Thanks for reading!