The past many months, things have very much Not Let Up for ya girl, and I've been feeling it big time.

For most of this year I've been gearing up to tackle bigger, more exciting projects and finally, properly kickstart this whole endeavour of mine that's kinda been puttering along at a leisurely pace. Unfortunately, what this has mostly achieved was getting me to draw less, while making me more anxious about it because I was falling behind.

I can't and won't get into specifics, but it's genuinely felt like there's been A Crisis™️ or An Event™️ of some form for me to be worrying about, anticipating, or planning ahead of in my life for the past year or so. Were it not for the people close to me, and the amount of support I benefit from every single day, I would not be here writing this post right now.

I don't mean to engage in hyperbole; this is simply the best way to make the point that I have a lot going for me, and yet I still feel like I'm constantly treading water.

I'm genuinely so fucking scared.

There's a lot of reasons why, but I'll speak about just one in the interests of openness and brevity; I want to share a story with you all that I know has permanently damaged me and my ability to commit to long term projects. Yes, I have talked to my therapist about this. No, I haven't seen her in a while, and I can't afford to.

Back in 2018, I went on hiatus. This was because of a job I secured as part of a massive cultural programme where I live, for which I got to produce an art exhibition as a collaboration between artists from here and from Japan. I got the job by recommendation through my then-girlfriend's sister, who later became a manager within the company, and its production was admittedly somewhat fraught. I had to put my personal work entirely on hold, following which I spent a good 4-5 months catching up on a backlog of rewards I owed my patrons. Even then, I wasn't confident that I'd get it done at all, never mind completed to the level of quality that I was hoping for.

That said; it was a huge success at the end of it all, and I even heard that the project was a lot less problematic than others that were being worked on at the same time.

One of the exhibits was a live painting performance by one of the Japanese artists. It was a beautiful show, that resulted in an even more beautiful painting. My dad and I collaborated with her to have it set up just to her liking, and she was grateful enough to gift the canvases to us, as they would be too expensive to ship back.

The day before, I was stood in front of them even as the ink was still drying, talking to my girlfriend's sister - and manager - about it. She said "if she leaves this behind, I have first dibs," which I nervously laughed off. In that moment, sat across the table to this wonderful artist, I was torn in half: immeasurable gratitude on one side, and inconceivable anxiety on the other.

The year of stress and six months of blood, sweat and tears I poured into what still remains my life's greatest creative achievement all came to fruition for that weekend, and left me with an amazing sense of pride and relief.

That lasted less than a week.

My girlfriend's sister came to know about the canvases, and she got so upset that she wouldn't talk to me for months afterwards, causing a rift in the family that made me feel afraid to spend time with them; something they did extremely regularly. She felt unappreciated for the damage control she'd apparently done behind the scenes with upper management, while the exhibition was still in production - especially since I neglected to mention her or her team when I gave the opening speech.

Most anything I've invested more than a couple of hours, across a week or two at most, has been hard to do, and then never been a victory that's lasted long for me. Something has always come up right afterwards that completely takes the wind out of my sails, and prematurely ends my revelry in what I'd achieved. My RSD and negativity bias makes it hard for me to see past that initial shock and disappointment, and by the time I've gotten past that hurt, the afterglow from my achievement has long since faded. This happened again quite recently.

This is a chronic issue I've dealt with for longer than I'd care to admit - the Final Boss of delayed gratification, as it were - and it's genuinely, immeasurably stunted my career path and progress with taking on more ambitious, and frankly, lucrative projects that have lived, gathering dust, in my notebooks and WIP folders for years and years and years.

I appreciate you all for your unending patience and belief in me, but I have to confess that the faith I have in myself that has carried me this far has started to slip rather drastically, in ways that I'm struggling to reconcile with, and work through on a daily basis. I worry about the sheer excess of support from people and connections I've sought out in order to feel like I can stay afloat enough to do my part and follow through; never mind keeping up with what people may expect of me in return.

I'm going to keep fighting as best I can. For right this moment, though, I'm very much at a low point that I'm desperate to look back on someday, hopefully soon, and feel grateful for having overcome.

Even if I genuinely can't yet see the path I'm going to take to get myself there.