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[Important]
4 years ago
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|| Trello| TOS |Business HRS/Schedule || This is going to be long, so strap in. Please bare with me.
Hey there, not sure if any of you have noticed but I've been hyper slow on my commissions. It's been for a few reasons, I'll be getting to that in a moment. However, I'm extremely tired of writing continuous obligatory "I'm sorry" journals and posts all over social media. Instead of being healthy about it, I just kind of... stopped posting and made myself disappear leaving so many people hanging for no real reason other than being extremely cryptic about my state of mind and things going on in my life. All I can say at this point is 'I'm truly working on it, albeit slowly, I'm chipping away as much as I can each moment I have a chance. Thank you for your everlasting patience with me.'
Because of being extremely embarrassed of myself and terrified I'll for a perfectly valid reason (probably) that I'll get an artists beware on me, I've essentially imploded within myself and stopped actively taking commissions all together while I struggled to finish what little commissions, so I could in some way prove to myself that I still had some integrity in the fandom.
Unfortunately, this is what started my internal spiral of chaos
To start, as I hope you know, I've started doing work for my dad in October 2019. For a time, it was something that kept me relatively afloat and somewhat reasonably paying my bills. Even though I was restricted to only a certain amount of hours each week, I could at least focus on something else other than worrying that I'm good enough to deserve commissions and have to worry legitimately every single week about whether one of my bills will be paid or if I'll have to eat the late fee. This was a constant stress for me, and crippled my anxiety further the more days that go by that I can't pay something. Although I had something a little more stable, it became unstable again when the pandemic hit. In a terrible chain of events, the career of more than 20 years my dad had that was a stable funding chute for his new business ended at the worst time in January 2020. It was inevitable and we knew it was coming, but he wasn't prepared career wise to be able to slide into another line of work that was similar. So I had to scramble. I was advised to stop work for my dad until he could survive on his own again. He had to start working for Amazon to just feed himself, and could barely fund anything else. He almost lost his house, got into a lot of relationship/friendship trouble that is still being worked through legally to this day. With all this, I had to take so much time out of my life constantly to go and fix things for him while he was busy working. This was the very thing I wanted to escape back in 2015/2016 the first time I moved out. By the graces of so many people, I was able to stay out of that life for a long while so I can just focus on myself and not this crazy fiasco of a life my dad creates around himself and he sends out his only daughter out to go fix if something fucks up. Essentially, when the pandemic hit, my dad got incredibly desperate for money, but he had a (sort of) plan to get his life together and for his new business that he was working on for over 10 years to finally take off. At the time, it gave me a sense of stability and ability to continue to work from home alongside Pox in the midst of a pandemic. I saw the writing on the wall with how society was handling this all around me, and I genuinely wanted no part of subjecting myself into the chaos of society to try to remain afloat. So I had to put full faith in whatever my dad was planning and doing to stay afloat. Of course, I struggled long with all the commissions that came in, barely finishing, and looking back at the art and feeling hella stressed and depressed. Although I was able to start work for my dad again around July 2020, it still was limited. Then in December 2020, my dad finally got a good paying job which in turn could finally finance his weird and expensive life, on top of being able to finance his business. I was cautiously optimistic when he told me that not only did I have a new role, I got a significant raise. With full transparency, I currently make $18/hr for some things and $24/hr for the 'higher level' stuff. I suddenly became a Project Manager and worked like a maniac (still am) to prove my worth, and at the same time literally playing Jack of All Trades in the organization, which has extremely sapped my energy for doing anything else. But, the kicker. Remember how I said my dad has a weird and expensive life? Yeah... because of this weird and expensive life, when I was under the impression that he would be able to fund ME and MY EXPERTISE , he hasn't been able to keep up with funding me, and currently owes me a fantastic $1,337. I have been gracious and understanding in his wanes of finances, since my job is literally to help him get his life in order, but it's getting to the point that I'm about to pull the plug on me working for him until I get my paycheck that I 100% and seriously deserve . That money has been accumulating for a cool 3 months , he knows he's behind because I let him know every time.
But I digress, the point is, I've been extremely stressed and working extremely hard to remain a relatively ok human being in the eyes of society, but I am tired .
Onto the next subject - So since I was working for my dad, during the whole time of managing his life and trying to manage mine, a lot of old feelings and self reflections came up during the time I was sitting and stressing over the job. On top of procrastinating and dealing with serious executive dysfunction, a little voice in my head decided to make an appearance while I was also trying to heal from a lot of trauma that I dealt with. Now, this little voice never existed until well...somebody I won't name. But, no thanks to those traumas and healing, I had to now deal with another thing that I pushed really hard down into oblivion and acted like it didn't bother me whatsoever because I was confident in myself and my abilities. However, things take time for me to heal from and understand. It takes time for me to think through all the events that happened a long while ago and finally pick it apart so I can finally forgive myself and cry through it. This was no exception.
I, unequivocally, started really hating my art. Nothing I drew looked right. Nothing I sketched looked like something I did. I started to extremely struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling the reason that I have little engagement, little art making, seemingly no improvement, even though every time I look through I know I've improved, I started to spiral out of control. I've genuinely neglected commissions because I felt as if whenever people received their art that they secretly hated it. I've just gotten into this depressing state where; sure, I'll finish this art piece but I'm not proud of it. I'm so grateful to those that still show their love in their own ways of my art, but that little voice became extremely obnoxious and loud. And only until recently, did I figure out why it grew to such a huge demon in my brain. To save myself from sharing too much, the general reason why this feeling began to exist was two major things: (1) A person I genuinely cared a lot about, once upon a time, rarely showed interest in my craft, let alone was not usually excited for me or my endeavors in such a way that I've had little promotion, and (2) despite me drawing seriously for practically 10 years at this point, I have felt I've gone little to nowhere with my engagement. In fact, I've felt ever since late December 2018, albeit it already being a shitty year became even shittier when I made a decision to leave the DutchAD community immediately upon my expulsion from the admin team, that I've lost ALL engagement. And because of all this, I've felt my art didn't matter, I didn't matter, and nothing I did mattered. Not only did I lose my passion in many facets, I lost many things that genuinely made me happy and willing to keep going with my art, all in an instant. I've felt like my soul was just sucked out of me, and in an attempt to put myself back together, my soul was put in at an angle and slightly to the left. I've felt tethered to a shell of a person since that day, and I just... don't feel ok. Like I said, despite me feeling so much better in terms of coming to understand the trauma of many things and someone, being able to move forward from it, my art has ultimately suffered. I have felt trapped, and thanks to no health insurance and our god awful healthcare system anyway, I will remain trapped until I ultimately just have to figure my shit out on my own, because therapy is expensive and lol what is money anyway?
And just to top this off with the icing and cherry on top, I have a cat named Shadow who is extremely old and very sick. He's almost 20, and has been with me since 2005. He's been with me through literally thick and razor thin. I've almost had to give him up two times in my life because my dad just didn't want him around anymore, three times if you consider my dad literally suggesting putting this cat to sleep because of a minor health scare. But, through it all, he's still here with me. However, throughout the pandemic, his health has deteriorated significantly. We have taken him to a vet, and the only thing we could do is hope that we can rid him of his bronchitis. But it is difficult when this cat has a significant heart murmur, another mystery sniffle/congestion combination that the other cats and him have and the vets have refused to acknowledge, and the inhaler I have for him has barely helped him. I've had to heartbreakingly watch him, feeling helpless, because here I am trying to take care of him but I have little to help him go to the vet to try to heal him. I've been absolutely terrified to try to raise funds for him because I'm terrified of potential backlash, and terrified I wouldn't be able to keep up with a plethora of art and perpetuate my killed passion to now force myself to draw. We're doing what we can, but on top of his sickness, his age is progressively starting to show through, and it's further breaking my heart.
I want what's best for him, but I'm struggling emotionally and mentally with everything else. I want to help him, but my finances are consistently poured into bills. Every single cent of it. And to have my finances so intertwined with how fast I can get art done, and taking more commissions, literally everything that could make my life easier and happier, has legitimately made me feel absolutely worthless.
I feel so incredibly worthless, that I've throttled myself into obscurity, stopped making friends, stopped seeking out the friends I have left, and found comfort in the darkness I created around myself. And I feel like it's all my fault. No one else's. I feel as if I created this mess and now I deserve everything I'm feeling.
With this, I've decided once I finish the commissions I have in queue, I'm just gonna give in and stop taking commissions for an undetermined amount of time. I could feel better next week, next month, next year, couple days from now? Who knows. Perhaps I'll decide this is crazy and I'll just take a commission or two each time so I can still draw and mend my relationship with my art in the process. But ultimately, the one thing I do want to do is work on my art in other ways. Like anatomy, lighting, backgrounds... things I ultimately feel like I'm struggling so hard at. But if I were to take a couple commissions at a time instead of opening multiple slots, perhaps I could ask for forgiveness on me wanting to use it as a learning experience as well? I don't know how gracious people are willing to be... but these are things that have been rolling around in my head for quite a few months now.
I don't really have a way to end this whole diatribe of how hectic my life has been. So I'll just stop it here before I break my heart any further than it already has been.
My one ask is, please no advice, I don't want it nor do I need it plaguing my sensitive, broken, and raw state I'm in right now.
Thank you for reading.
Hey there, not sure if any of you have noticed but I've been hyper slow on my commissions. It's been for a few reasons, I'll be getting to that in a moment. However, I'm extremely tired of writing continuous obligatory "I'm sorry" journals and posts all over social media. Instead of being healthy about it, I just kind of... stopped posting and made myself disappear leaving so many people hanging for no real reason other than being extremely cryptic about my state of mind and things going on in my life. All I can say at this point is 'I'm truly working on it, albeit slowly, I'm chipping away as much as I can each moment I have a chance. Thank you for your everlasting patience with me.'
Because of being extremely embarrassed of myself and terrified I'll for a perfectly valid reason (probably) that I'll get an artists beware on me, I've essentially imploded within myself and stopped actively taking commissions all together while I struggled to finish what little commissions, so I could in some way prove to myself that I still had some integrity in the fandom.
Unfortunately, this is what started my internal spiral of chaos
To start, as I hope you know, I've started doing work for my dad in October 2019. For a time, it was something that kept me relatively afloat and somewhat reasonably paying my bills. Even though I was restricted to only a certain amount of hours each week, I could at least focus on something else other than worrying that I'm good enough to deserve commissions and have to worry legitimately every single week about whether one of my bills will be paid or if I'll have to eat the late fee. This was a constant stress for me, and crippled my anxiety further the more days that go by that I can't pay something. Although I had something a little more stable, it became unstable again when the pandemic hit. In a terrible chain of events, the career of more than 20 years my dad had that was a stable funding chute for his new business ended at the worst time in January 2020. It was inevitable and we knew it was coming, but he wasn't prepared career wise to be able to slide into another line of work that was similar. So I had to scramble. I was advised to stop work for my dad until he could survive on his own again. He had to start working for Amazon to just feed himself, and could barely fund anything else. He almost lost his house, got into a lot of relationship/friendship trouble that is still being worked through legally to this day. With all this, I had to take so much time out of my life constantly to go and fix things for him while he was busy working. This was the very thing I wanted to escape back in 2015/2016 the first time I moved out. By the graces of so many people, I was able to stay out of that life for a long while so I can just focus on myself and not this crazy fiasco of a life my dad creates around himself and he sends out his only daughter out to go fix if something fucks up. Essentially, when the pandemic hit, my dad got incredibly desperate for money, but he had a (sort of) plan to get his life together and for his new business that he was working on for over 10 years to finally take off. At the time, it gave me a sense of stability and ability to continue to work from home alongside Pox in the midst of a pandemic. I saw the writing on the wall with how society was handling this all around me, and I genuinely wanted no part of subjecting myself into the chaos of society to try to remain afloat. So I had to put full faith in whatever my dad was planning and doing to stay afloat. Of course, I struggled long with all the commissions that came in, barely finishing, and looking back at the art and feeling hella stressed and depressed. Although I was able to start work for my dad again around July 2020, it still was limited. Then in December 2020, my dad finally got a good paying job which in turn could finally finance his weird and expensive life, on top of being able to finance his business. I was cautiously optimistic when he told me that not only did I have a new role, I got a significant raise. With full transparency, I currently make $18/hr for some things and $24/hr for the 'higher level' stuff. I suddenly became a Project Manager and worked like a maniac (still am) to prove my worth, and at the same time literally playing Jack of All Trades in the organization, which has extremely sapped my energy for doing anything else. But, the kicker. Remember how I said my dad has a weird and expensive life? Yeah... because of this weird and expensive life, when I was under the impression that he would be able to fund ME and MY EXPERTISE , he hasn't been able to keep up with funding me, and currently owes me a fantastic $1,337. I have been gracious and understanding in his wanes of finances, since my job is literally to help him get his life in order, but it's getting to the point that I'm about to pull the plug on me working for him until I get my paycheck that I 100% and seriously deserve . That money has been accumulating for a cool 3 months , he knows he's behind because I let him know every time.
But I digress, the point is, I've been extremely stressed and working extremely hard to remain a relatively ok human being in the eyes of society, but I am tired .
Onto the next subject - So since I was working for my dad, during the whole time of managing his life and trying to manage mine, a lot of old feelings and self reflections came up during the time I was sitting and stressing over the job. On top of procrastinating and dealing with serious executive dysfunction, a little voice in my head decided to make an appearance while I was also trying to heal from a lot of trauma that I dealt with. Now, this little voice never existed until well...somebody I won't name. But, no thanks to those traumas and healing, I had to now deal with another thing that I pushed really hard down into oblivion and acted like it didn't bother me whatsoever because I was confident in myself and my abilities. However, things take time for me to heal from and understand. It takes time for me to think through all the events that happened a long while ago and finally pick it apart so I can finally forgive myself and cry through it. This was no exception.
I, unequivocally, started really hating my art. Nothing I drew looked right. Nothing I sketched looked like something I did. I started to extremely struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling the reason that I have little engagement, little art making, seemingly no improvement, even though every time I look through I know I've improved, I started to spiral out of control. I've genuinely neglected commissions because I felt as if whenever people received their art that they secretly hated it. I've just gotten into this depressing state where; sure, I'll finish this art piece but I'm not proud of it. I'm so grateful to those that still show their love in their own ways of my art, but that little voice became extremely obnoxious and loud. And only until recently, did I figure out why it grew to such a huge demon in my brain. To save myself from sharing too much, the general reason why this feeling began to exist was two major things: (1) A person I genuinely cared a lot about, once upon a time, rarely showed interest in my craft, let alone was not usually excited for me or my endeavors in such a way that I've had little promotion, and (2) despite me drawing seriously for practically 10 years at this point, I have felt I've gone little to nowhere with my engagement. In fact, I've felt ever since late December 2018, albeit it already being a shitty year became even shittier when I made a decision to leave the DutchAD community immediately upon my expulsion from the admin team, that I've lost ALL engagement. And because of all this, I've felt my art didn't matter, I didn't matter, and nothing I did mattered. Not only did I lose my passion in many facets, I lost many things that genuinely made me happy and willing to keep going with my art, all in an instant. I've felt like my soul was just sucked out of me, and in an attempt to put myself back together, my soul was put in at an angle and slightly to the left. I've felt tethered to a shell of a person since that day, and I just... don't feel ok. Like I said, despite me feeling so much better in terms of coming to understand the trauma of many things and someone, being able to move forward from it, my art has ultimately suffered. I have felt trapped, and thanks to no health insurance and our god awful healthcare system anyway, I will remain trapped until I ultimately just have to figure my shit out on my own, because therapy is expensive and lol what is money anyway?
And just to top this off with the icing and cherry on top, I have a cat named Shadow who is extremely old and very sick. He's almost 20, and has been with me since 2005. He's been with me through literally thick and razor thin. I've almost had to give him up two times in my life because my dad just didn't want him around anymore, three times if you consider my dad literally suggesting putting this cat to sleep because of a minor health scare. But, through it all, he's still here with me. However, throughout the pandemic, his health has deteriorated significantly. We have taken him to a vet, and the only thing we could do is hope that we can rid him of his bronchitis. But it is difficult when this cat has a significant heart murmur, another mystery sniffle/congestion combination that the other cats and him have and the vets have refused to acknowledge, and the inhaler I have for him has barely helped him. I've had to heartbreakingly watch him, feeling helpless, because here I am trying to take care of him but I have little to help him go to the vet to try to heal him. I've been absolutely terrified to try to raise funds for him because I'm terrified of potential backlash, and terrified I wouldn't be able to keep up with a plethora of art and perpetuate my killed passion to now force myself to draw. We're doing what we can, but on top of his sickness, his age is progressively starting to show through, and it's further breaking my heart.
I want what's best for him, but I'm struggling emotionally and mentally with everything else. I want to help him, but my finances are consistently poured into bills. Every single cent of it. And to have my finances so intertwined with how fast I can get art done, and taking more commissions, literally everything that could make my life easier and happier, has legitimately made me feel absolutely worthless.
I feel so incredibly worthless, that I've throttled myself into obscurity, stopped making friends, stopped seeking out the friends I have left, and found comfort in the darkness I created around myself. And I feel like it's all my fault. No one else's. I feel as if I created this mess and now I deserve everything I'm feeling.
With this, I've decided once I finish the commissions I have in queue, I'm just gonna give in and stop taking commissions for an undetermined amount of time. I could feel better next week, next month, next year, couple days from now? Who knows. Perhaps I'll decide this is crazy and I'll just take a commission or two each time so I can still draw and mend my relationship with my art in the process. But ultimately, the one thing I do want to do is work on my art in other ways. Like anatomy, lighting, backgrounds... things I ultimately feel like I'm struggling so hard at. But if I were to take a couple commissions at a time instead of opening multiple slots, perhaps I could ask for forgiveness on me wanting to use it as a learning experience as well? I don't know how gracious people are willing to be... but these are things that have been rolling around in my head for quite a few months now.
I don't really have a way to end this whole diatribe of how hectic my life has been. So I'll just stop it here before I break my heart any further than it already has been.
My one ask is, please no advice, I don't want it nor do I need it plaguing my sensitive, broken, and raw state I'm in right now.
Thank you for reading.
My brain just loves to tell me otherwise right now unfortunately, but I'm working on telling my brain to shut up and let me be happy. It's going to be a difficult journey, but a necessary one
I guess you can find some solace when I say I'm repairing my relationship with my art, albeit slowly, I'm definitely starting to feel better