Weekly Update - 103 (Patreon)

Sorry for posting this late. The weather's changing and we're supposed to get a big storm tonight, so we were out running some last minute errands today before we get buried in snow.

Comic this week: No. As you can see, The Next Page is nowhere close to ready. Truth is, I've been feeling kinda burnt out lately so I've decided to take the week off.  We will be back next week though!  Gonna check in to see what happened to Kiva!

Drawing: Page 134

Playing: Total War: Warhammer 3, Cyberpunk 2077, others

Ramble:
Let's talk about burnout.  I've cancelled the last two streams I had planned to do on Discord. I'm a couple of months behind on drawing character sheets for the higher-tier Patrons. I've been failing constantly to post sketches every Friday. More and more I keep letting things fall to the side and off the table. Why do I keep falling short of the things I have promised to do? Literally the only thing I've been doing for the past month and a half is drawing comics and playing video games in the spaces between.

Is this really burnout, though? In a form, perhaps. My brain wants to come up with excuses. I tell myself that it's okay to be lazy and slack off because XYZ reasons.  I'm not feeling well or I had a stressful doctor's appointment or I'm just too tired. I think what it comes down to though is that I'm undermining myself and there's no way to sugarcoat it. However, there's a problem with allowing myself to blame myself for undermining myself: for that way Depression lies.

So trying to acknowledge my flaw without being too hard on myself, I know that this is something I've always done. When expectations are high, I feel the weight of responsibility, and it causes me stress. I don't handle stress very well.  Stress makes me sleepy and then I sleep until I wake up and forget about whatever it was that was stressing me out. If I slack off and if I screw up, I lower everyone's expectations, so I feel less pressured to get things done. Ergo: less stress. The end result is that I find myself being rewarded for screwing up, basically. A behavior I think I've probably learned since I was young. I was a C student because being a C student didn't require any effort on my part, and it resulted in praise when I got the accidental B. What this fails to take into account, however, is that people like you much less if you show them you are unreliable. It erodes trust and confidence. This sort of behavioral pattern definitely has consequences, they're just not immediately apparent.

I think it's become sort of an automatic thing for me, and I wish I was more aware of it much earlier in life so I could have begun to march down the path of trying to change this about me many years ago. Alas, here we are in the present. I have to live with the now.

The thing I think I need to realize is, with the comic, I'm setting my own expectations, and then subsequently stressing myself out about those expectations to the point where I fail to meet them. I'm consistent at making the main comic. It gives my life purpose. But in addition I'm offering all these things like sketches and character sheets and cameos and all this bonus stuff in addition to the comic because I WANT to. No one is forcing me to do it, except myself. I think I need to say that and to read it aloud. It is the way I express my gratitude for your support.  It is all I can offer, my time and my art.

You are all here to read this comic I'm writing, and I'm thankful for each and every one of you. I don't want to disappoint any of you.  Some of my made-up stress definitely comes from the fear of letting you all down.  The thing is, the poor way I manage my stress is causing me to let you all down, resulting in sort of a self-fulfilling cycle.

So yeah.  In conclusion, I guess... I'ma keep drawing.  And I'm gonna try to get better about drawing more of the things I have promised to deliver on, like weekly sketches and character sheets. I want to do more streaming on Discord as well.  I just need to relax and realize that I need to stop worrying about it so much.

I enjoy drawing, and you all seem to enjoy the things I draw. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

Thanks for reading.