Hey,

I just wanted to give an update about my injury and recovery. I've been continuing to work with my physiotherapist over the past couple months and things have been noticeably improving as a result. My neck and upper back have become much more loose, and I haven't had any serious pain lately. That doesn't mean I haven't had any pain, but the soreness I feel at times after doing work with my arm is much more akin to workout soreness.

This is aligned with my own changed mindset about all this.

Essentially, because I have been dealing with this for so long, even after fixing the underlying issues causing all this pain and these problems, I could still have had reoccurring bouts of pain if I considered any soreness or discomfort as a re-aggravation of my arm issues. My brain has been conditioned through experience and time to see that as a surefire sign that things have gone wrong. However, through some discussions with my physiotherapist, and some of my own work, I have been treating such soreness equal to just the natural process of using my arm/upper back/neck/etc. In the past, any amount of soreness would cause me to stop immediately and attempt to nurse things back to a good state, reinforcing my mind's notion of what those signals meant. But now I go and do some stretches to loosen things up, and get back to it in a day or two and let things get ready for upcoming work.

That's a lot of words to say that I'm now drawing again, and slowly building up my arm's work capacity. In fact, I have consistently drawn at least 2 hours or more a week for the past month. At the rate I'm building my drawing hours each week, I should hit 20 hours of drawing in a single week in late December. This is in line with the plan my physiotherapist introduced along with a re-introduction to working out at the gym. Building strength is important in this process.

It may be a few weeks to a month before I feel I'll have the capacity to begin work on commissions again or stream, but I started working on promised gift sketches this week as those are much smaller and easier to handle with such a short drawing time-frame each week.

Thank you all again for your patience and understanding through this long hiatus. I will continue to work with my physiotherapist even after making this much progress to keep building on what we've already done and to hopefully make this the last long break I have to take due to arm pain.

Let me know if you have any questions or anything regarding this or anything else.
Mini-AMA I guess.

Thanks,
Oter