Hello. My name is Non.

I've been neglecting to post any kind of update for a while and at this point there are a lot of things to talk about.

What have you been writing?

Last year I started working on Rhinestones, the bimbopunk origin story. This project has been going on and off since then and it's currently sitting at more than two hundred pages. I haven't touched it in a while at the time of this writing, I was experiencing some frustrations back at the start of summer.

Since then there were several other long projects I tried starting on. A Breath of Euphoria was the only one that got finished and that was still with some difficulty. I tried working on a sequel to It Suits You which got stalled out. I had two different attempts to write something for Milotic Day and neither one panned out. I haven't been able to pick a single thing to settle on for a while, and every time I get a new idea that I'd be excited to try I get frustrated knowing that the other projects on my backlog are going forgotten.

The most complete writing I've been doing for a while is for drabbles. I started doing these over a year ago as an exercise to improve spontaneity and get out ideas in a more digestible format. The problem with them has gotten to be that I'm getting more sluggish, which means it takes longer to complete them and then I have less time to do writing, and any time I miss a day it feels like more of a failure.

All drabbles and unfinished projects are available through my Patreon. I have been wanting to make some form of drabble content packs that can be purchased but I haven't gotten around to figuring out how best to do that yet, as I've been neglecting to do for years now. My parents got me paranoid about the idea that I need to have my own platform set up or else I'm going to lose a cut on any sales that I make.

What happened to those commissions?

The short version is that I've been so terrified of the notion of taxes that I've been unable to muster the will to try doing more commissions.

I've also had people asking me about coloring commissions lately, which is something that I don't know if I have the capacity to do, I'm so consistently unsatisfied with my coloring efforts that I don't feel I'd be able to perform adequately for something that I'm getting paid for, nor do I even know how much I could reasonably charge.

Why have there been so few streams lately?

Things haven't been going very well for the past few months.

My computer is well and truly hitting a breaking point. Somewhere between Windows 10 support ending and my decision to switch from Chrome to Firefox, performance started getting a whole lot worse. It feels like every week something new happens to get me stressed out. Computer randomly restarts over night, drivers break, graphics glitch out, the chug is worse than ever, nothing is ever consistent long enough for me to get comfortable. I desperately need to get a new computer, but even that itself is a cause for stress because I'd really rather not get Windows 11 and I don't feel that I'll be able to handle switching to Linux.

Then around the same time that all started, I began to feel more acutely aware of how poorly I've been treating my hands for so long. This is most obvious when it comes to art, I've had poor posture for a long time, but it also applies to writing and gaming, so all the things that I could be doing are potentially just exacerbating this problem. I don't often feel pain but there's a distinct sense that I'm not entirely well, and this is enough to make me too anxious to do anything.

I've also been increasingly worried about my finances during this time. I've been trying to work more frequently but all too often things just don't work out with my substitute job, it gets me worried that I might have to lower my standards and accept jobs I don't want more often. Getting more sub work, however, cuts into my time and energy to do anything else, contributing to fewer streams and less art completed. It would be ideal if I could get paid for my art but, well, see above commission complications. This has ripple effects compounding all the other problems, making me all the more conscious of the expenses that will go into getting a new computer, worrying about going to Anthrocon next summer, getting new art, and so on. There has been some alleviation to this problem recently thanks to a big check from my grandmother, but I still have to be more cautious about my spending.

All of this has been contributing to me not feeling as readily capable of streaming as I once was.

tl;dr

I'm stressed the fuck out and I don't know what to do.