"When God closes a door, He opens a window"

I wanted to tell everyone that in about a weeks time I will disable my FA account for good. The reasons for my decision are two-fold.
First and foremost have the recent security leaks shown to me that this site and its admins should neither not be trusted with my information, nor with the upkeep of this fandom. There have been plenty of incidents where the ineptitude and uncaring of several admins have made me question the integrity of this website. This has made me feel very uncomfortable at many times.

Secondly, after a lot of consideration I have come to the conclusion that me being a part of this fandom is only doing me more harm than good. I am a person who has a lot of difficulties dealing with emotions, with the fulfilment of expectations and dealing with dissapointments.
I also struggle with the reality of things. I know that in general I have been accomplishing a lot of great things but my heart feels like I have been doing the opposite, much to the protests of my brain.
I feel and partly also think that there is a big sense of indifference towards my art even though I am still working hard on improving it and myself.
I do not want to keep up the illusion to think that someday I might become "popular" so I am willing to face this reality by stopping to post furry art publically. In fact I do feel like I "ripped off" a lot of comissioners to whom I offered sub-par, unproffesional artwork and I feel ashamed over this.


"I really would have liked to love, but I didnt trust myself to allow it." - Karl Valentin


I also feel like I am in the process of loosing many and great friends who are all connected to this fandom and I do not know wether this is an illusion or how to deal with these feelings in general. As a foreign person and with practically all of my furry friends living abroad, there is little to no personal exposure to them and their lives. In my experience it appears that having to interact with friends with a delay of over 6 hours due to timezones is very difficult among other things.
Also recent events have shown me that I can create new bonds with friends that I have right here even though they are all strictly non-furry. These have been very good experiences for me and I am beginning to realise that in order to stay a sane person I need to focus on growing my local friendships much more even though they might not include any furries or artists but instead other very interesting people in their own right.

I don't mean, and I say this with great emphasis, that my experience with the fandom and the good friends I made there has been detrimental to me.
In fact I will carry with me many good memories and important lessons for the rest of my life. It taught me to be just the artist that I always want to be and to express myself in the way I should. It's been both an invigorating but also humbling experience. I would not want to trade those for anything in this world.

Alas I don't think that I myself happen to be a good, wholesome person. I have a lot of flaws and I have to say that the slightly volatile nature of some aspects of this fandom is not a good match for the bad parts of my personality and behaviour. In this way I often feel hurt emotionally and mentally after certain interactions with the fandom.
So I am convinced that in order to protect myself, the members of this fandom and especially my friends I should stop any interactions with it at all.

Now you have the long and short of it. I can't stand it all anymore frankly and I think that in order to both improve my art and my person I need to cut myself off of the fandom for the forseeable future so that it doesn't pose a distraction or a danger to my endeavours.

I still want to become a great artist who tells great stories using comics and I want to find a way to communicate my deepest feelings and wishes and dreams to everyone else.
And along the way I want to find a way to hammer out my flaws at least a little bit so that they wouldn't show as much anymore. I know that I will probably never really get rid of them at all.

For anyone who is still keen on following my art I will keep posting it on my DA account still running here http://marcel-the-crow.deviantart.com/ only that I will try to increase the intervalls so I can focus on finishing larger batches. Perhaps I will also reactivated my tumblr account as I think its a neat option especially for posting comic things. I should also mention that I've closed my twitter account for good too. I think the devil made this website I truly do. It brought me nothing but anguish and lots of unnecessary distraction and worry. I wont miss it.

I do not know what I should still add to all this, other than a heartfelt thank you for the ride that the fandom has offered me and again for all the good memories I've had with my friends there. They will be treasured dearly.

TL;DR

Gonna leave the fandom and shut down my gallery because: FA is shite and interactions with the fandom have been taxing on my psyche. I need to count my blessings and accept that maybe its not my thing afterall. Will keep posting art on DA and hoping to improve as a person and artist without the fandom in the long run. Peace~