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It's ALIVE
6 years ago
SO, I've been itching to post a good update with some nice news for a while, and I can do that finally!
Now, there's a couple things I want to tell about: first thing's first, I'm finally done with my backlogs! There's a couple more things I need to finish for a few people, but otherwise I finally did what I set up to do and it's a giant burden off my shoulders.
Today also marks almost a full year now of me not having any serious issues with my health - I still get an occasional chronic headache or migraine, but it's better now. My mental health's been stable, I'm slowly recovering from the weight loss that happened last year, and in general feeling pretty good. So things are finally paying off.
Second, now that it's over, I guess I can share some of my opinions on this whole ordeal.
Some folks know the details, but the gist of it was that a few years ago I had some unfortunate events happen irl and also in my social life at the same time that messed up my mental health big time due to the sudden and consistent stress - something I wasn't expecting to happen as it's been several years since last time I had a serious breakdown. But it wasn't getting any better and dragged my physical health along with it eventually, as I started getting very frequent headaches that lasted for days on end, issues with sleep, stomach acting up due to a messed up eating schedule, and it all was piling up. All of it damaged my social life greatly, but even more it damaged my ability to work.
Needless to say I was not anywhere near being in a good state to do consistent work and was in a dire need of rest, but couldn't afford it as family and finance issues put me as the person to be paying the bills and bringing food on the table both for me, and my mom and my cats, with my brother dealing with his own new family and his work problems.
So that put me in the position where I kept taking on big amounts of work, on top of undercharging, despite not being able to finish it in time, to make ends meet. And that's how I ended up with very long backlogs, depression, health issues and struggling to fix everything. It felt like I was taking one step forward, two steps back and for a couple times, every time I set a deadline for myself to have everything done, something happened to completely stall it again ( i.e: last year where I lost about 7 months of time due to sudden weight loss and fever, and stomach issues, resulting in constant doctor visits and more stress ).
And having these backlogs hanging above my head were adding another layer of stress because I hate failing people and making them wait, and yet it just kept happening and was this constant feeling of shame and anger at myself.
And on top of it, it felt like I'm losing time with my art - I wasn't getting any better at it, I was totally burnt out, wasn't practicing as much as I should have, and it seemed like I'm stagnating when I should've improved so much in that span of a couple of years, but instead I was stuck.
But it did get better eventually, and I dug myself out of that hole, and now that I'm here, what I can say is... This is still my fault. None of the things mentioned absolve me of the responsibility and failure at communicating with people in time and overall making sure whatever happens to me doesn't damage other people. I still should've found ways to work around these problems and, well, get over myself instead of letting them pile up more and more and causing stress to other people.
And I said it before and I'll say it again: I am really sorry for failing to do my job and having people wait on me, but I'm also incredibly grateful to everyone who gave me time to get through this mess and helped me along the way, it means the WORLD to me.
But now, at least I am finally standing more or less firmly on my feet again, and I'm really excited for what I can do next year - getting back to working on commissions again, practicing and improving my skills since I have a lot to catch up with, doing more adopts and fixing things that still need it.
The last few years have been a complete blur and I'm just so happy to finally be able to go back to living and not existing, and working on being better both as an artist and, well. Human being hahah.
THIS ENDED UP being kinda long, apologies! I just wanted to share my thoughts on things now that I can reflect on everything more.
Now, there's a couple things I want to tell about: first thing's first, I'm finally done with my backlogs! There's a couple more things I need to finish for a few people, but otherwise I finally did what I set up to do and it's a giant burden off my shoulders.
Today also marks almost a full year now of me not having any serious issues with my health - I still get an occasional chronic headache or migraine, but it's better now. My mental health's been stable, I'm slowly recovering from the weight loss that happened last year, and in general feeling pretty good. So things are finally paying off.
Second, now that it's over, I guess I can share some of my opinions on this whole ordeal.
Some folks know the details, but the gist of it was that a few years ago I had some unfortunate events happen irl and also in my social life at the same time that messed up my mental health big time due to the sudden and consistent stress - something I wasn't expecting to happen as it's been several years since last time I had a serious breakdown. But it wasn't getting any better and dragged my physical health along with it eventually, as I started getting very frequent headaches that lasted for days on end, issues with sleep, stomach acting up due to a messed up eating schedule, and it all was piling up. All of it damaged my social life greatly, but even more it damaged my ability to work.
Needless to say I was not anywhere near being in a good state to do consistent work and was in a dire need of rest, but couldn't afford it as family and finance issues put me as the person to be paying the bills and bringing food on the table both for me, and my mom and my cats, with my brother dealing with his own new family and his work problems.
So that put me in the position where I kept taking on big amounts of work, on top of undercharging, despite not being able to finish it in time, to make ends meet. And that's how I ended up with very long backlogs, depression, health issues and struggling to fix everything. It felt like I was taking one step forward, two steps back and for a couple times, every time I set a deadline for myself to have everything done, something happened to completely stall it again ( i.e: last year where I lost about 7 months of time due to sudden weight loss and fever, and stomach issues, resulting in constant doctor visits and more stress ).
And having these backlogs hanging above my head were adding another layer of stress because I hate failing people and making them wait, and yet it just kept happening and was this constant feeling of shame and anger at myself.
And on top of it, it felt like I'm losing time with my art - I wasn't getting any better at it, I was totally burnt out, wasn't practicing as much as I should have, and it seemed like I'm stagnating when I should've improved so much in that span of a couple of years, but instead I was stuck.
But it did get better eventually, and I dug myself out of that hole, and now that I'm here, what I can say is... This is still my fault. None of the things mentioned absolve me of the responsibility and failure at communicating with people in time and overall making sure whatever happens to me doesn't damage other people. I still should've found ways to work around these problems and, well, get over myself instead of letting them pile up more and more and causing stress to other people.
And I said it before and I'll say it again: I am really sorry for failing to do my job and having people wait on me, but I'm also incredibly grateful to everyone who gave me time to get through this mess and helped me along the way, it means the WORLD to me.
But now, at least I am finally standing more or less firmly on my feet again, and I'm really excited for what I can do next year - getting back to working on commissions again, practicing and improving my skills since I have a lot to catch up with, doing more adopts and fixing things that still need it.
The last few years have been a complete blur and I'm just so happy to finally be able to go back to living and not existing, and working on being better both as an artist and, well. Human being hahah.
THIS ENDED UP being kinda long, apologies! I just wanted to share my thoughts on things now that I can reflect on everything more.
But definitely keep commission queues shorter, and raise your prices a bit if needed : P
Either way, glad to see things are fixed up!