Happy new year, yall! So I previously said that I was gonna take my time allowing December to be a proper break month before getting back on the saddle, properly focusing on long-term planning, once I finally had my time to breathe from all the stuff that seriously impaired me in the last few months.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel like a strange process; it's a sensation of being impatient to start working again vs. avoiding work for my better long-term mental health vs. the fear of inadequacy vs. the euphoria of actually being inspired and optimistic... ie, a lot. However, I will say that this time gave me a lot of insight on myself and understanding how my brain works, determining where I'm at in terms of my general life/career/development/all them boring personal stuffs, and helping me better judge the question all creators/artists have to ask: "what's next?" Which is nice :D

With that, I'm gonna just go on a little bit of a ramble voicing my thoughts on things on my mind for where I'm gonna go next. I still may need some more time to properly think about plans, so please don't take any of this as decisive (especially since I'd wanna get more insight; from you guys to my close friends/family to my therapist), but I wanna share how I'm feeling now because there's a lot. Bear with the weird organization/order I do these in, I've got a lot that's tricky to structure out aha

1) Unfinished projects, failing myself, and "why?"

The biggest thing I'm most ashamed of from 2025 is the fact I failed almost every major deadline I imposed on myself. Art-wise, that includes "Maid for May", the Halloween comic, my Patreon rewards, and putting "Friends on Another Side" on a way longer hiatus than what I would have liked. THEN on top of that, other things: my TG animations weren't fulfilled on time, my smaller project didn't manifest, and many of the non-TG-related projects I wanted to work on, I just failed to give myself time for: character design stuff, music, music VIDEOS, and other personal things of interest I wanted to fit into my schedule, but ultimately couldn't.

I've done my hardest to relay all the setbacks that impeded me throughout 2025 -- school sapping away much of my motivation and time, sleep deprivation and cabin fever affecting my energy and health, and other misc. events like wildfires, various health scares, and insurance panics being hell on my morale. Even though I did have my accomplishments and personal developments I'm happy with in other regards, it evidently didn't translate consistently to art output, and with that level of inconsistency, I worry that me elaborating on everything that got in my way was me explaining both too much but also not enough. Was I being transparent, or just being whiny and panicking all the time? Am I just talking too much, or should I have been using that energy to talk to instead actually do art? It felt like something only I could answer on my own terms, but because of EVERYTHING happening, I couldn't make time for even that. It's a disaster treadmill that really demanded everything just for me to survive, and so I had to take this time to carefully get off and finally think of how to work it out in a way that's actually healthy. (I hope that metaphor made sense.)

At the end of the day, I would rather be much more communicative and honest than repressive and silent, not just because it's a burden on patrons/folks who devote their time/attention/money to support me, but because I'd feel it indicates that I have nothing to say about anything, which just feels dishonest. I think of and desire to do so much, far more than what I can reasonably put down in a journal/post like this, and I have no intentions of turning my thoughts like this away from yall to understand. Maybe I do need to shut up. Maybe not. But I feel a dialogue is still important, and will continue to provide updates and expressing myself to yall in this way directly as much as I can.

Bringing it back to why I failed myself so hard, where I see myself is someone who was just constantly afraid a lot of the time. Afraid of meeting deadlines, afraid of not being able to act upon my creative desires, afraid of breaking promises, afraid of getting hurt in the way my friends and loved ones were hurt, and afraid of failing everyone in general. That fear of failure itself would become an ouroboros that led to more fear, and in turn more failure. It's especially terrible when I felt myself becoming emotionally disconnected from some of my friends, fearing that I stopped being relatable to them, or they stopped being relatable to me, and so I left a lot of my relationships squander as I cloistered myself more, and fostering even more fear. It was exhausting, and lacking the energy or mental conviction to direct that mental energy elsewhere didn't help.

Thanks to therapy and whatever other healthy habits I had (namely D&D stuff), I thankfully have regained more of a personal foothold for direction, and in turn, a better place to start... or restart, I suppose. I don't want to give up on anything -- just because I didn't make it doesn't mean that it's gone forever, and I want to reacclimate myself to being productive in a healthy way like I did so in times past. I may not have all the answers, but I have enough that in the miasma of confusion and anxiety and fear, I have a destination in sight, and am ready to begin my trek towards it.

2) Finishing the unfinished

First things first, my priorities are on getting these overdue projects out, not just because of the obvious wanting to complete promises, but because I wish to clean-slate my approach to big projects and scheduling in ways that are more practical and feasible than what I previously expected. With those incomplete projects I listed above, here are my rough guestimates for what order I'll be tackling them in and what needs to be finished per project:

* Creator-Crownie sketches: I have a few small sketch-based sequences that were long overdue that I am presently working on completing now. Individual sketches are their own thing, but I likely will be releasing full sequences individually rather than all at once, mostly because I enjoy them and wanna give them the spotlight they deserve, especially after this long.
* Halloween TG comic: it's more than halfway done, requiring some linework, coloring, and FX. Of the unfinished projects, it's the most close-to-finished, so expect that to come out first after the sketches.
* Maid for May: Oof, the big one. As I've alluded to in the past, I had to do a conceptual soft-reboot of the comic due to the unexpected size of the collab making for a frankly really boring comic per my original plan (maybe when I finish it, I'll post the previous original draft just to see what I meant by how tedious it became). Fortunately, I've been able to come up with what I think would be a better idea that should flow better, all while still hosting all the design info that was submitted last year. This will absolutely be a bigger project that will require more periodic updates during the process as I want to check in for feedback on its direction; further details will come later. Hopefully I get it to this year's May 😓
* RPG-themed knight/princess TG animation: That one also has a significant amount complete, but there are still several poses to draw, effects to implement, a bunch of really boring things like backgrounds and sound design to have to take care of, so I don't expect it to be complete immediately; this will take some time to get right.
* Other animations: There are a few other small-scale things I've teased last year that I never got around to developing, and those may also be really delayed for all I know given how much I have to focus on in the meantime.
* FRIENDS ON ANOTHER SIDE Chapter 3: This is also something I'm very strongly considering and have on my itinerary; I really wanna have some "regular"-released project, especially this one given it's been on such an unexpectedly long hiatus. However, at the minimum, I want to be finished with the sketches, Halloween comic, and at least foundationally underway regarding Maid for May first before I make any promises.

I don't have any solid guestimates in terms of how long any of these will especially take as I don't particularly trust myself at this point to be good with that, but this is the order of consideration I will take these particular developments. The closer they are, the more confident I am that I can break these down and accomplish them, but I don't wanna get too feisty in terms of overconfidence -- there's a lot of work I still need to do.

3) Thinking for the long-term (for now)

So with that, what else am I planning, and what am I expecting to take on when I'm eventually caught up? Once again, I am not setting anything in stone yet; I still have much time to consider, people to consult with, feedback to assess, and me to ruminate on. This is just me spitballing some of my prospects right now as I'm thinking about where I'm at and what I can do to NOT repeat the same mistakes that failed everyone last year.

* For starters, I need to improve my lifestyle routine. Not being in school is going to be extremely helpful and freeing, but I'm doing my best to be cognizant about my sleep hygiene (I'm still working on developing consistent good habits so I don't feel so tired and anxious during the day), and also finding ways to avoid cabin fever and mental burnout working the same claustrophobic routines. I'm still unsure of what I should regularly do to get out of the house or studios and avoid staring at a screen at all times, but it's something I definitely gotta work on to feel stimulated and healthy -- here's to being able to find something out along with my therapist.
* Something I've been contemplating the nature of is my ability to make monthly deadlines per Patreon's model. I've noticed I have a bad habit of lateness brought on by unexpected roadbumps in my monthly routine, but based on the fact I did used to be fairly good at maintaining them, I'm unsure if it's ultimately because of my poor discipline, or overall my inability to cope/handle stress/anxiety very well. Considering I've only JUST became freed from my massive daily obligations and am only now beginning to hit the grind again, I think it's too early to reasonably assess whether I should retire doing monthly rewards or not, but the optimist in me believes that I'll think of something that'll eventually be satisfying and more consistent for everyone. We'll see.
* In conjunction with reconsidering monthly obligations, I am very interested in finding other projects to be a part of. Commissions or general freelance work are something I should be trying to get back on again (school REALLY wasn't good for allowing me to do that), and I'm very interested in getting involved with more projects based on my broadened artistic skillset, may or may not be within TG space.
* More collaboration with friends! I have a small art trade with a fellow creator coming up soon as a personal gift that I'm looking forward to have done, and in general, I wanna get back in touch with more artists in my community. I feel like my poor self-care has resulted in me quietly fading out with some folks I was familiar with, and I really wanna play my part again in reaching out with folks I love, respect, and cherish and creating with them.
* I'm also still considering other avenues of creative endeavors to try out. I've hinted for a while I wanna do more music stuff (and perhaps music videos), and if there's something I definitely learned to love doing in 2025, it was running D&D and other TTRPGs. I've mentioned before of either running games as a job (as in, probably a volunteer sorta thing) or potentially making content out of it like actual play. A big thing on my mind is that I wanna find a way to bridge my various hobbies and things I'm passionate about, and allowing me to take advantage of the things I'm skilled at -- my concern is the fact that not all followers interested in my transpositive artstuff are interested in D&D and vice versa. I do wish to experiment, though, and am very interested to see if you'd agree I should try it out.
* In terms of an actual dedicated Patreon-related reward thing for the time being... would anyone be interested if I started doing art streams? Maybe hearing my (disappointingly crap) voice as I work on doodles live?

I'm eager to getting back to work with open arms and my best step forward. Thank you all so much for your seemingly endless understanding and support, I'm gonna do my best to make it up to you all and get out the best art we all wanna see.