I'm making this journal just as a sorta "I wanna put my thoughts somewhere and share em" kind of thing.

So, for the past few years I've been in a state of what I wanna call "comfortable depression". Basically, I was at a point where I was scraping by financially. I was making literally just enough to be afloat and have a little extra for emergencies. I have two roommates, and I have parents back home that I know I could lean onto if I was ever TRULY in trouble, so in my head this was a place where things were just alright. I worked a part time job, so I wasn't even doing a full work week. I had tons of free time. Really I should have been putting that free time into finding full time work, getting myself into a more financially stable place, self improving, etc. but I didn't. I was paralyzed because I was comfortable, because I was in a relaxed place where nothing felt particularly threatening so long as things always stayed as they were.

Of course, that's not a tenable place to be. The second problems start, you're going to find yourself in a miserable place. You won't have to tools to deal with them, because you've either abandoned them or left them to rust and decay. That knowledge constantly nags in the back of your head. The sense that you've essentially stopped movement, you're idle in life is so agonizingly painful and just flat out depressing. At the same time, you've grown so attached to the comfort that you've immersed yourself in that abandoning it feels horrifying all on its own. What if things don't work out? Even if you know what needs to be done, what if it's hard? What if the comfort that you've grown so accustomed to that it's no longer there to bury yourself in when reality is breathing down your neck?

That's where I was. For three plus years, I'd been telling myself that I didn't have to try so hard. That I could take things slow. Every time the thought of trying to improve things entered my head, and I started to stress, I pushed it aside with comfortable distractions and said I'd do it later. And that happened with everything.

Finding a new, better job? Takes too much time, you probably won't even be contacted. What if the new job is terrible? What if it's more stressful, and you can't deal with it? Better just stay where you are for now. Something will come up. You'll get there eventually. Just play some games, look at some porn, watch some anime. Vegetate, let yourself chill out and don't think too hard.

Making art? So hard. Takes a lot of time. Imagine spending so many hours on something and it just doesn't even turn out well, or you make so little progress on it, then your day is just wasted. It's so pointless, you're not even that good anyway. Maybe on the drive home from work you think "I should do some art tonight, I have off tomorrow." Then you get home, kick your shoes off, and sit down. "Well, I'm a little tired, I'll just do it tomorrow." Then tomorrow comes, and you look at the screen of your tablet and think "Nah, I can do it another time." You repeat that process over and over, each time finding some new way to distract yourself.

Cleaning up? Takes too much time. Everything will just get cluttered again anyway. Why vacuum frequently? The cats are just gonna shed more. Dishes at the desk? I'll clear them when they get in the way. Laundry sitting in a basket unfolded? Just dig around and pull out what you need, why bother with putting it up. Just keep living in comfort. No thinking, no effort, just keep yourself perpetually distracted. Even when you feel miserable about it, just find a distraction for the misery.

There came a period a few weeks ago, when I felt like all of my friends were growing distant, when I felt loneliness really eating away at me, that I had a very sobering realization:

I didn't like myself.

Not in that self-loathing sort of way. I mean in the way that, if I were to meet someone exactly like me, I wouldn't want to be friends with him. I wouldn't want to be around him. I'd find him grating, depressing, annoying.

So I decided that I don't want to be that person anymore. I want to be the kind of person people will like. The kind of person people actually want to be around. I started reaching out to people more. I started just trying to talk to people. I stopped pining over people who I felt had abandoned me, I moved on from them and quit sulking over them.

I started taking care of my surroundings a little more. Bit by bit. I started to care more about things. I let my creativity just do things. A friend wanted to run a tabletop campaign and asked me for my character's backstory, and I just wrote and wrote. I wrote like 40 pages of shit. I came up with fun character ideas for the side characters in his story, I started wanting to draw them, so I started to draw again. I felt motivated to draw, something I hadn't felt in ages and constantly complained that I lacked.

I still wasn't perfect. I still fell back into comforts, but things started to change. Everything seemed a little bit better, like things were turning around.

Then, my roommate came to me and told me about a job position that had just opened up at her nephew's place.

I'd been offered it before. It's a machine shop where they do CNC machining and assemble parts for oil and gas companies. Blue collar work, a very regular work schedule, full time, etc. The pay was decent too, more than what I was making hourly part time and with plenty of room to move upward. I got told to start I'd probably just be doing really simple work, maybe grinding burrs off parts, etc.

And I wound up declining that time. I got afraid of the change, I was so attached to comfort that I was worried about what would happen if it didn't work out. I even had a bad experience in a place like that prior, working in a chemical packing warehouse where I was fired after being injured working on the production line. It terrified me to go into a place that might even remotely resemble that, so after some deliberation I decided to just stay where I was, to fall back into comfort.

This time though, I said yes. Got an application, filled it out, and almost immediately got called for an interview. A week later I was hired practically on the spot.

I was nervous, but I was elated. Things finally felt like they were turning around for me. My part time job, which I honestly just hated going to, was finally going to be behind me. I was going to start working at a place where I could learn a trade, build a career, and actually have a life for myself.

I started to throw myself pretty hard at drawing. I wanted to draw, I had ideas. I was talking to people a lot more, I felt more cheerful and positive. I put in my two weeks notice at work and even that job stopped feeling intimidating. Everyone was supportive of me making a positive change in my life, my manager tried to arrange everything so that my transition out was really smooth.

Two weeks later I started, and my first week there went amazingly. It was nothing like the last, similar job I'd had. Everyone was extremely supportive in showing me the ropes, I was told learning would be slow and not to stress over the more complicated points of the job because I'd learn them in time. I had random people in the shop come up to me just to say hi and introduce themselves. People I wasn't even directly supervised by would come over and ask me how I was holding up with things, how I liked it, etc.

I ran into some problem days. Car had trouble and I was without it for the whole week. One day I slept through all my alarms and barely made it out on time. But that didn't bother me. I took it in stride. I didn't dwell on the negative things, I just locked in on the positive. There wasn't a day I spent at work where I ended the day feeling miserable and shitty. Tired, yeah, but even then I wasn't crashing-out tired.

I kind of even started to realize that I was happy even though I wasn't spending time with friends. Even though, by all accounts, I should have felt "lonely" or "isolated", which were things I'd always, always complained about. Somehow I was just content despite still being as alone as I normally had been.

It's when I started to realize that somewhere along the way I'd made such a massive mental shift that I was no longer perpetually depressed. That I'd learned to be okay with being alone. That I'd learned to be okay with things not being alright. That I'd learned to be okay with not always being comfortable. That realization actually put me into tears. Finally figuring out, after all this time, the shit that had shackled me to misery was my own desperate want for comfort. Learning to let it go has been the hardest thing I've ever done. It's a change I even think I'm still in the process of making, but the change so far has been incredible, and I still keep feeling so overjoyed with it that I keep tearing up and crying over it.

At the age of 32, I still find it so crazy that I can still make changes like this. I've always been afraid that as I got older that things would just be more and more set in stone, but they haven't been.

If you're reading this, and you have things you're struggling through, I hope my ramble here can be a little beacon for you. Something to show you that just because things feel bleak, or that because you feel helpless, doesn't mean you can't still rise above all the misery and pain. Life is a very long road, and when you're locked in depression the first step forward is the hardest. You'll stumble, you'll fall, you'll feel hurt, and you'll still feel pain. But, the further you go, the less it will bite, the less it will sting. You'll grow stronger than the pain. You'll be happy in spite of it.

As for me, I will continue to draw massive tiddies and asses and stuff, and I hope to keep improving so that y'all can keep enjoying 'em ♥

I want to gauge interest in commissions here among my FA followers.

Shoot me a note if you're interested, optionally you're welcome to elaborate on what you'd like done, etc.

For references about pricing / tiers, see the commission sheet linked in the footer.

Gonna update this later.