I'm fully vaccinated now, and aspects of life seem to be getting back to normal. My mental state is much better than pretty much since February 2020.

I'm still burned out, though, and I think it goes deeper than just the pandemic at this point.

For a long while I threw myself in a routine where I was writing nonstop. Log off work, maybe take a walk or make dinner, write until I reached a self-imposed limit, THEN get to relax. I was treating my free time as if it was a commodity, filling it up with writing stories and focused on "doing something" with it and being "productive" in a fruitless fight to avoid pandemic depression. Which, don't get me wrong, was good and productive for a while, but definitely contributed hardcore to me being drained.

Right now I feel good, but I think I need to completely redo how I do commissions. I need to stop an immediate need to "make more money" every time I open up, and I ESPECIALLY need to focus on stories I want to tell and stories that appeal to me. I enjoy telling stories for folks who want those stories, but I can't make myself focus on things I'm not immediately drawn to.

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to be nuking my outstanding commission list, outside of the story I left halfway done when I went on hiatus. This doesn't mean those ideas are never getting written, and if you've put in for a commission from me recently, please don't take it personally, you haven't done anything wrong. I just need to reapproach this fun hobby I've turned into an anchor of a "second job" in a way that leaves me fulfilled and not burned out. I'm at a point where my creativity has returned and I'm coming up with fun story ideas, but I don't have the will or the drive to turn them into stories - likely due to the aforementioned burnout from accidentally turning a fun hobby into a second job. I hope that once I've rebooted my thought process, this will change.

I'm going into an incredibly stressful six-week period at work, and as a result, I think this hiatus will continue until then. After that point, I'll probably come back with a YCH or two of story ideas that I really enjoy. To counter the part where I'm likely transitioning from commissions to primarily YCH and less consumer-oriented works, I'll be experimenting with ways to include more people in those stories and allow for collaboration between folks. I don't want people who want to commission me to feel left out or cold, but to be fair, I started writing here in earnest in 2016 and started taking commissions in 2017. I've changed a lot in the last five years, as has my life, and I need to reassess how I'm approaching furry. I'm not leaving, but I think I need to reorient myself for sure.

So, anyway - To Do list is going away. Commission applications are in limbo for now, possibly forever, but please don't take it personally. In the future I'll be working on one project at a time with no to-do list putting additional self-imposed stress and anxiety on my head.

To end, I recently read a thread about a guy who committed himself to work so hard that he literally broke how his brain processes things. Honestly, I think I did that to myself in the late winter with furry writing - once I was sitting in front of a Google Doc for an hour with maybe two paragraphs written in that time, it was hard to ignore. So here's to finding better ways forward, I guess.

"Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth"

After a few false starts I finally embraced the furry community and started writing here five years ago as of April 2.

Life is better on the fuzzy side.

I've hit a wall. I have the energy for my day job (which is quickly becoming a full-ass career) and then I'm spent. And it's not like I have much more than cold late-winter walks, Switch games and fast food to fill my time right now, either. Things are getting better in the US (fingers crossed) but it's no secret a lot of folks have been struggling, especially lately, and as much as I hate to admit it, I am too. And if I'm being fair to myself, it's been going on for a long enough time that I owe myself a break.

I'm going to slowly work my way through the commission I've currently accepted (I feel an obligation to finish it out) but then I'll be taking a hiatus away from writing. I'll definitely be back once I've recharged, but expect my output to be slow in the near future. Depending on how things go I may be back in a month or less or I may not resume writing until near the summer, due to the requirements of that day job/full-ass career.

Sorry for any inconveniences this may cause.

open to any story ideas, content ideas, recommendations, advice... literally anything

if you want to see something from me, comment!

I was able to take four commission pitches and have contacted the respective commissioners. For the two folks who did not get slots this time around, I am keeping your story ideas around as I'm interested in writing them. IRL work, IRL stress and the time-bending nature of this eleventh month of social distance are going to limit my writing abilities for quite a while but I'll truck on as much as I can.

Sorry everyone I am behind where I wanted to be and am still working on a long-term project that keeps getting bigger so I've gotta leave commissions open for another few days, I'll try to make picks by the weekend.

If you are interested the commission form is right here: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/3/d/1rmyZRPrm9K0KRQHWZoynntsTClSuO6jssdvSMznI8O0/edit?usp=forms_home&ths=true

https://docs.google.com/forms/u/3/d/1rmyZRPrm9K0KRQHWZoynntsTClSuO6jssdvSMznI8O0/edit?usp=forms_home&ths=true

Please fill out the form above if you're interested in getting a commission from me!

Important information:
-I have officially raised my commission prices from $12.50/1k words to $15/1k words as of today.
-Due to IRL/day job constraints, I will only be able to fill three commission slots at this time. If I must reject your application, I will inform you directly.
-I will leave the form open until the end of the weekend and plan to contact commissioners Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST.
-If your application is not accepted but I do not reject it, that means I am keeping it on hand for the future and will likely contact you before my next planned commission opening.

If you need to learn more about my commission practices, you can find my TOS as my pinned journal on my main page; there's also a link here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8670119. Thanks for being great and supportive everyone!

Hey everyone, I'm going to be opening a brief commission window starting on January 15. I know there are a lot of new followers out there who may never have had a chance to commission me, and I know there are also at least five folks out there who reached out to ask about my commission status. I'm putting some new rules in place for this year.

Due to things happening IRL for me, a few changes are going into effect with this latest batch of commissions.

-I will be raising my commission prices from $12.50 for 1,000 words to $15 for 1,000 words. This isn't so much that I think I'm hot shit and my stories are godly as much as I simply need to face reality. My life is significantly different than it was when I started writing five years ago, and as such my free time has dwindled. I love writing these stories, but to prioritize them over other important stuff, I need to make it worthwhile.

-From here on out, I plan on holding my commission form open for a three-day window when I open, and once the three days are over, I'll accept three commission pitches. If your commission pitch doesn't get accepted, that doesn't mean I've rejected it - if there's a delay with another commission, I work ahead of pace or some other similar miracle happens, I'll hold onto it and contact you when I'm ready to work.

If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. I'm looking forward to reading some next-level ideas soon!

It's increasingly clear to me I won't be able to finish any other stories by New Year's, so now is as good a time as ever to wrap up 2020.

For extremely obvious reasons, this year was not the best. It started out with promise, got very interesting in February, then March 11 happened, and life got weird, and life refuses to stop getting weird. I mean, on December 29, we had to put down a cat. That's a vengeful year.

On a personal level, I honestly am doing OK. My mental health is spotty, but my physical health and financial position are stable. I'm very lucky for that, and I know others are less lucky. But if this is luck, it certainly feels monkey's paw-esque. I have people I love in my life, and I have someone special I love very much. I'm grateful to have that, even with the horrors this year held.

One bright spot this year was furry itself. Y'all, every time I opened FA, it seemed like I had new watchers and favorites. Given that I hosted a raffle giveaway in February for reaching 750 followers here, and by October I gave away another story for 1,000 followers, the support everyone has given me this year is very encouraging. I averaged more than one watcher per day over the whole year. That's special. :)

Once JT the fursuit arrives in 2021 (darn postal service delays), I'll have the fruits of my labor from writing here this year. By my count, I uploaded 38 stories and roughly 234,600 words of content. If my stories were collected in an anthology, the book would be 520 pages long. That is a lot of output, my second-highest level of writing ever in the fandom, just about 20,000 less than my peak in 2018 and a huge increase over last year's 180k.

But that's not all. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but the consistent love and support you've all shown for my stories is incredible. Before this year, I believe I only had two stories receive more than 100 favorites. As of today, I have EIGHT, four of which I wrote this year! I continue to try to improve my writing as much as I can, implementing new styles and inspirations when possible, and I'm so incredibly grateful for the new watchers and all of the support in return.

Another fun stat - in skimming over my stories after my friend Round asked a very interesting question, I determined that there have been approximately 158,000 pounds of fat gained by characters in stories I've written this year. While the majority of that comes from "The Return Of The Curse Of The Fatsune," in which JT gains a whopping 60 tons, there was a hell of a lot of chonk happening this year.

What's to come in 2021? Fursuit content once the USPS gets its shit together. More stories, and some shifts to commissions and pricing. I expect I'll be raising my prices as writing time has been more difficult to get lately, and I will also be offering fewer commission slots as my work's busy period will ebb and flow in the winter before hitting hard from late April through early June. Depending on when I get a vaccine jab in my arm, that schedule could be further complicated by cramming two years of travel into four months over summer. But hey, at least there seem to be reasons to be hopeful on the horizon, right? That's more than we've been able to say for a good chunk of this year.

With just 38 days left in this dogshit year of 2020, I'm trying to solidify plans for the rest of the year. I figured this would be helpful to everyone, especially those looking to commission me.

-I will not re-open commissions "officially" until the post-Christmas corridor, depending on how productive I manage to be in the rest of this year. I wrote a LOT and grinded a LOT this year, and while I think the results speak for themselves as far as quality goes, I need some time to unwind.

-When I do re-open commissions, I will be increasing my prices from $12.50 per 1,000 words to a flat $15-16 per 1,000 words. In my current career, writing time is starting to become a luxury, and I need to make sure I'm getting reasonable results for my efforts. This serves as a heads up for that!

-My end-of-year schedule currently involves a story trade for my friend Monstress and I have signed up for Kikatsu's annual Secret Santa; those projects will likely eat up 2-3 weeks of the year. Some of the remaining time I'll use to write a gift story or two, while...

-IMPORTANT: I WILL OPEN TWO YCH STORY AUCTIONS TONIGHT BETWEEN 8 AND 10 P.M. BASED ON STORY IDEAS FROM THE LAST YEAR THAT HAVE RECEIVED SIGNIFICANT POPULARITY. DUE TO RECENT SUCCESSES WITH AUCTIONS, I WILL INCREASE THE AB AMOUNTS HIGHER THIS TIME SO MORE PEOPLE HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BID.

I have a commission to finish, one more commission to complete after that, and then a trade with a friend. I know I've heard from at least six of you about wanting to know when I open commissions, and it's awesome to have that level of support! In the meantime, though, I plan on holding a YCH auction or two before opening up the commission form. I really enjoyed the YCH auctions I did over the summer, both the outpouring of support from y'all and the fun process of writing the stories themselves, and I'd like to do more.

I'm asking before I start putting ideas together, what would you like to see in a YCH story plot? Interacting with my characters? Something wild and new? Some of the early ideas I have kicking around include:

-Your character battles with/against The Lardy Lupine
-A journey into a licensed property - I know folks like my Star Fox, Robin Hood and Zootopia fics, for instance
-A close, transformative encounter with Gemie
-A journey to The Fat Universe

Like I said, these are early ideas. Very early. I'm going to be thinking this over for a little while. But I'm all ears in the meantime!

There were 34 total comments on the journal, so I ran a random number generator for 1-34. I got a 2, and the second comment belongs to  WeissesJaguar, who is therefore the winner. Thank you all so much for entering!

(I waited until I had 1,001 followers to post just so I wouldn't jinx it)

Somehow a whole freaking thousand of y'all have decided you're interested in the stuff my brain cooks up. Whether you follow me for the stories or the art, thank you, sincerely. Obviously this year's been a huge crock of shit, but one of the bright spots has been the community here giving me so much love lately. I am grateful for it. I only just had my 750 follower raffle on February 23, which means I've picked up 250 followers in 215 days. I don't even know how that's possible but I'm sure as hell not complaining.

I will be holding a raffle for a 2,000-word short story on this journal. The deadline to enter will be 9:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, September 27. All you need to do is leave a comment on this journal (and follow me, but you're already doing that if you're reading this). Your comment can be anything. After the deadline, I'll send a note to the winner and set things up. The raffle story will be written after I complete my current commission, which I expect to take between one and two weeks.

I'm also thinking I want to commission something to celebrate 1,000 followers, like I did for 500 followers a few years ago. What I want, though? No clue. Something weight gain of JT, but beyond that, I'm oddly out of ideas. I'll take recommendations in the comments, and if any artists see this and want to draw a fat wuff, feel free to get in touch.

Thanks for a thousand, everyone, and here's to the next thousand!

Whether you're a long-time listener of my podcast with  Adrion_Knollstead, The Anthroholics, or a first-time listener, I'm excited to say we've got a special surprise - in honor of Aggretsuko Season 3, we recently interviewed Ben Diskin, voice of Haida the hyena, Jack the golden retriever and Shirou the wolf (among many other characters)!

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/38065438/

Form: https://forms.gle/53kRzSqpEzc18yEv7

I'm still accepting commission applications. I've received some great ideas and am excited to get back to work. I'll start setting up a few tomorrow, but I need a little more time.

I've alluded on Twitter to some bad news. Two weeks ago I reconciled with a member of my family after we let time and distance pass us by. (It was both of our faults.) This week I found out they have a rare, deadly form of cancer. It's tearing me apart. Things haven't been great healthwise for the Wulv clan, my mom just had a major surgery this week too, so I'm frazzled. I'm waiting until I can get into the headspace I need before I get back to full speed.

Having finally emptied my To-Do list, I'm opening my commission form back up. If you're interested in a story commission, please submit your pitch here: https://forms.gle/y2tGABp1sz2LgRjAA

I will leave the form open for the next week and will contact applicants next Saturday, so y'all have plenty of time to get your ideas together.

Since my fursuit is paid off and IRL stress from work and life are grinding me down a little bit, I'm going to take a week off from furry writing to let myself recharge. I figure taking something off my plate now will help reduce stress until next weekend.

So please submit an application if you are interested in getting a story from me, and I'll start contacting folks next weekend!

Hey everyone, just wanted to provide a few quick updates.

First, you may have noticed a shitload of grinding and writing this year, and for good reason - I am ECSTATIC to say I just paid off my fursuit in full and completed my DTD yesterday. In a few short months, Sarahcat herself will have turned JT into a full-body toony wolf fullsuit! I am so excited for this next step in my furry journey and cannot wait to suit with all of my friends at future cons when The Modern Troubles are over. For podcast listeners, this also means Adrion and I will become even-closer friends as we won't just be best friends but suit siblings!

There's a trade-off from that, though; in these last few weeks, I've been burning the light a little too bright. Like, "reached his yearly word-count goal by mid-August" burning. My creative juices aren't flowing as well these days, so after finishing my current commission and completing my one outstanding one, I'll be taking a hiatus of a week or two to unfrazzle my fur and recharge a little.

Expect me to re-open commissions in a few weeks, probably a little before Labor Day so I can save up a little for a trip to see my boyfriend! Thanks for reading everyone!

the story got bought immediately lmao

Happy July, everyone, and congratulations for making it halfway through 2020. It hasn't been easy, but we're here.

As the journal's title says, I am opening for commissions! I have a new way to set up commissions, too: I've created a Google Form, which you can access here https://forms.gle/spv9Htn5yc7jPGco8

Most of my info is readily available in my Commission Guidelines journal, which I continually update. I've made a few more updates to it, too, but it's not anything too stringent.

Please send in an application over the next few days if you're interested! I won't be closing the form for a few days, as I'm still working on my story auction (though I'm over the 2/3 done mark with that as of today, so it won't be long). Sometime around Thursday-Friday, I'll reach out to folks and set up a new To-Do list!

As many of you know, I've been saving up for a full JT fursuit for a few months now, and it's getting to the point where I need to throw every extra dollar into my savings fund to make sure I can buy it.

That's why I'm trying something new tonight and launching my first story auction! It's based off a really promising story idea I've been playing around with but was never quite able to figure out how to use. The high bidder will have plenty of options to fill out the story how they choose!

More tonight around 7 p.m. EST!

I'm going to hold off on commissioning art for a bit while I sort out my expenses, but I do have an ever-present hankering to get art. What kind of stuff would you like to see me get in the future? (Also, if you're a friend or acquaintance who would like to get a commission with me, now is your time to say so!)

Some stuff I'd like to get in the future:
art of The Lardy Lupine
Disney fatfur: anthro Simba and Robin Hood
JT as Robin Hood cosplay, especially when fat
Fanart fatfur interest: Sly Cooper
JT-as-gainer series, using the "Gainstagram" concept I'd seen some other folks use
Fat Cat Army

With everything going on right now (black lives matter btw) I just wanted to thank everyone for the bright spot of more than 10,000 likes on my work. I know they weigh heavily toward commissioned pictures over stories, but I'm very happy to share my weird kinks and furry shit with the rest of you fuzzbutts. To 20,000 and beyond!

I'm giving away a few Amazon giftcards on Twitter! Nothing too crazy, but I wanted to have some fun this weekend! Check it out here!

https://twitter.com/youcrazyforthis.....72279659847683

Wow, the world changed since I last opened for commissions. It's pretty alien to go from everything being fine to your office closing indefinitely in less than a week. And that was nothing compared to my state going on lockdown.

At least the anxious voice in the back of my mind was right to worry for once.

That said, I'm in a pretty safe place right now, which I know isn't the case for a lot of other folks. Now that my previous outstanding commissions are complete/in review, I'm tentatively ready to take more, but I know with everything going on, demand will be lessened, and I don't want to take work away from anyone who needs it more than me. Consider this a soft opening. If you're interested, my free time just spiked.

I'll be donating 25 percent of all commission revenue to charities supporting COVID-19 victims or those impacted by COVID-19, the majority of the rest will go toward my fursuit fund. (Did I mention I'm planning to order a fullsuit JT from Sarahcat? If she accepts my pitch, I'll be a six-foot-tall red wolf soon!) I was planning on writing stories for access on my Ko-Fi, but with everything going on, I don't think now is the right time to put up a paywall for my content. If I can provide enjoyment during this less-than-ideal time, I might as well give it out to a wider audience.

I'm also considering opening up a trade slot or two, which would be story-for-art (sorry, fellow writers). If you're interested in trading with me, send me a note.

I'm definitely going to work on some personal projects in the immediate future, too. If anyone has any suggestions they'd like to see in Charitable Corpulence Part 3, or if you've got any stories that need sequels, let me know! I definitely have a cruise ship weight gain story I can rework into something special. I also need to write something with my boyfriend, too. (Yes, I have a boyfriend now! I ended up becoming good friends with Turbo, the dragon who's commissioned some of my stories. Then he flew up to ANE. Then we realized sparks were flying. The rest is history.) I'm also considering some kind of charitable donation drive for COVID, but I am unsure what kind of focus to give it.

In short - commissions and possible trade slots open, 25% of all commission funds go to COVID-19 charitable relief, saving up for a full fursuit, will be working on personal projects, would love advice/suggestions for projects you'd like to see.

After my next two commissions, I’ll be entering a really stressful period at work. It’s annual, and last year it heavily impacted my writing time, hence a content slowdown last spring. This time I’m preparing for it so I don’t waste any commissioners’ time.

That said, I’ve noticed a slow but growing trend of folks offering content on Ko-Fi. I haven’t launched a Patreon because I doubt I’ll be able to give it the monthly support subscribers expect, but I am considering using whatever free time I get while I’m busy to write some really good story concepts I’ve been kicking around.

So, in short, if I put stories up on Ko-Fi, would you be willing to pay to see them? I promise they’ll be of the same quality I put into my commissions. I have three stories in mind. One would involve JT, one would involve Smash Bros characters and one would be an original concept. I’m interested in hearing your feedback.