Apology & Self Care Journal (Patreon)

It's been a very rough few weeks for me. And while mental things are slowly improving, I'd like to take a moment to reach out and talk a little about what's been going on lately, even if it may seem a bit trivial or mundane.

Coming out of November into December stuff had already been off to a rough start, my dad just had abdominal wall surgery for a hernia and was recovering in stitches unable to do much of anything for several weeks. I had to pick up a lot after everyone and do lots of extra lifting/shoveling. It wasn't the worst thing in the world and was mostly manageable.

But going into December, it was like a chain of dominoes collapsing, my dad got really sick with whatever respiratory virus has been going around, my older sister and mom both catching it from him in high severity. This happening just as the sink pipes in the kitchen plumbing clogged up (which is a recurring issue every few years due to the incline of the house foundation and the main basement pipe) which rendered the main sinks unusable for a large period of time, this just made everything from cooking to cleaning a headache. While juggling working on commission work, constantly forced to order takeout and trying to take on stream sketches to catch up on piling bills, and taking care of sick family, every day was becoming increasingly more stressful.

All of this stress was only really being managed by playing Scarlet every opportunity I wasn't drawing, dealing with home problems, etc. I try not to feel bad for playing so much but I probably lost a few days just to shiny hunting and being too lazy to pick up a pen. But I had been feeling increasingly isolated the past several months and it was starting to wear me down. Then my depression anxieties began to set in again.

So before continuing, I'd like to first apologize to the few of you who regularly come to my stream, I got a bit negative last week and may have made more than a few of you feel bad for having asked for increasingly complex works from me. It was a little unprofessional, and I should just respectfully decline more when I feel incapable of delivering certain demands. I also apologize to patrons, I should communicate more clearly when I need to take longer breaks between content.

Venting about complex work in stream, lead to me realizing more and more that, on top of all the built up stress from the previous events, I was starting to feel burnout hitting me mentally. And usually when I feel burnout, the best thing I can do for it is to socialize a bit and put myself into a period of recharge where I indulge in inspirations, spend time with friends and just loosen up.

But that's not what was happening.

Increasingly, every time I tried to socialize with friends, and every time people even came to me to say hi. It was immediately followed up with:

"Hey when can you do this?"

"When are you streaming a wheel?"

"How big is your queue."

And when this happens in an overwhelming amount, it suddenly warps the idea of streaming from a fun gathering of doodling, to something people only come to for the opportunity to use me as a tool to express their ideas. While I continued to ignore my own creative goals, abandoned ideas and begin feeling a growing lack of enjoyment toward drawing repetitive prompts. And since the stream is where I am able to keep a majority of my focus while drawing, it hurts my productivity on queue work every time I avoid streaming to escape this kind of pressure.

It is very much like a cycle though. And no single "customer" is to blame for my negative mental state. Nor should anyone feel guilty for seeking me out to do the one job I currently have. Regrettably, when these periods of toxic headspace crop up, I can't shut out certain negative thoughts. I start to fall into a period of self hatred and loathing. Where in the end I can only blame myself for every expectation I failed to live up to. All while feeling scared that people only tolerate me to get art.

Because of this, many of you who are waiting on me for commissions have waited increasingly lengthy periods that in most cases should be considered unacceptable. I understand that I'm reaching a point now where I am taking on too much, and I'm not sure I can meet expectations of commissioners anymore without clearing my plate completely of what I still owe. In the future I have been debating just stopping commissions altogether and searching for part time work to help pay bills a little while I clear up my backlog. But doing anything outside of drawing and managing home problems has left me too exhausted to mentally re-organize any parts of my life lately. My only real future goal at this point is only to work solely on stuff that I'd prefer to make, so I can stop boxing myself in creatively and start to feel like I can grow a little more again.

So this final apology goes out to all of you who've stuck with me throughout the years. I'm sorry for not taking better care of myself. I appreciate each and every one of you. I may need to go on an extended break for the holidays this year, so I don't think I will end up managing to do anything big or fun events like previous years unfortunately. But I hope going into 2023, I will reach the point where I begin to clear the slate and start to re-find myself.

Thank you for reading.