Hello folks, I just thought I'd toss out a journal as I continue to collect my thoughts about art and where I want to go with things in the future.
Earlier this year I took a break from doing commissions, and it sort of turned into a break from art in general. Why? In summary, I've hit burnout. It happens to a lot of artists, and I am no exception.

To skip a lot of details, I realized that I haven't felt much joy from doing art in some time. I've been caught in this loop of working hard on trying to get things right, hating everything I've done, and then having to move on to the next piece again and again. Prior to this year, commission work was my main source of income. (Don't worry, I'm aware how silly that is). But when I was in the midst of it, I was jumping from thing to thing trying to make enough money to just exist that I didn't have the time or the room to think about how much I hated it all.

The long break I've taken has given me the chance to collect myself, but I'm not quite ready to get back to form yet. There are still a few problems I have to figure out.

1. I want to improve, I like to study, but I need to avoid the trap of hating every single thing I draw.
2. I need to get into a better workflow so I can take my time to create quality products, but deliver them at reasonable times while still making profit.
3. I need to work on marketing myself better; I enjoy the feedback I get, but I still feel like my overall popularity is so small time that I'm not really getting anywhere.

I hate to say right now, I don't know how to tackle these things at all. I've spent a lot of this year going over things about myself and I've been tackling a lot of problems. Art is just one of them and the only one relevant to this post. Hopefully I find that sort of "eureka" solution soon, as I so often do when I'm up against some monster of a problem.

I don't want to quit, even if it's an admittedly dumb path to go down, but if I can work myself into a place where I work for myself and make enough money doing so, that's all I want out of my life.