Hi friends, long time no post? Sort of? I’m here to resolve this posting drought by….posting about not posting. Hmm.
As you might have already read if you’re up to date with the goings-on on Follower, or via the Chio Club, I’m going through some kind of burnout and need to take a bit of a sabbatical from Follower itself. I don’t have a specific planned date for returning (although I am hoping it’ll be by summer) and I don’t have a specific plan for the meantime. But I do have plans.
The long and short of the story is that real-world happenings as well as at-home happenings are starting to affect my health, mentally and physically. The conditions I have are aggravated by stress, so when something “bad” happens, I feel the effects for days afterward in the form of pain and fatigue. It hasn’t been good.
With that out of the way: what am I doing now?
My current plan is to keep making art, but keep it loose. I got a new sketchbook where the whole point is just “draw anything and don’t be precious about it.” I’ve been doodling a few little autobio comics for fun and something alternative to the more in-depth work that is Follower. I might pick up some writing I’ve let sit for a long time, I might attempt to work on a game idea I’ve been picking at for half a decade. I want to make things and I don’t want to confine myself to a rigid schedule because right now, I don’t think I can do it.
So I find myself in the wilderness, a bit. There’re a few paths among the trees here, and maybe I’ll try them all. I want to revive the part of me that lives and breathes art. It’s been a long time, and things recently have been a crushing blow that makes it hard to keep that little spark alive. But I’m doing all I can. If I’m not making art and telling stories, I really don’t know what else I could visualize myself doing with my life.
Chio Club members have already gotten some small peeks at some things I’ve been doing, and I’m working on preparing more updates soon. I’ve been adding posts to the free tier on Patreon, as a kind of mini-update thing. Also, feel free to join the quiet-but-friendly Discord. It’s been….extremely slow… but I might start hanging around there more. I am also trying to put together some low-stress stream ideas, so if there’s anything you want to see me play or work on, feel free to pitch it and we’ll go from there!
Anyway, that’s about it for right now… I’ll likely be posting here more, both blog posts and art updates. I hope you’ll join me for my exploration!
P.S. While I have you here: Teepublic is doing yet another 35% off sale on everything in my shop, so if you’d like any comic merch or other stuff with my art on it, now’s a great time! This is also going into my savings for trying to move us into better housing, hopefully by the end of this year.
