2018 So Far

I almost forgot about the blogging function of the site so I wanted to revisit this (not that I expect a ton of people to be tuning in to this portion of the site, anyway). It's been a couple of months since my last update, so why not? My Life Update I've gotten my immigration status adjustment going last October. While I'm glad to get the money part out of the way, I underestimated just how grueling it was gathering all the information required to submit to USCIS (the part of the government that handles immigration stuff). I had to dig up a lot of old addresses, acquire some forms that sometimes wasn't readily accessible because it's dated all the way back to the early 90s and many other documents. Piles of it. Not only that, but filing out forms was annoying too. One of the questions asked if I was ever affiliated with a Nazi party in the early 1940s and I'm like... uh. Bruh, I'm 28 so obviously not...? Annoying as it was, the "are you a shitty person that has ever murdered, raped, etc." was pretty funny to me. Apparently they want to be very thorough with who they want to admit into the country/allow immigrants to stay. There's an end in sight, at least. I just can't wait for everything to be concrete and submitted and then it pretty much becomes a waiting game for me until I get pinged to the INS interview (which obviously I have nothing to worry about or rehearse because... well, duh, my marriage is legitimate and I love my husband and I love the little family we have). For the mean time while I'm waiting for all that to get settled (which I'm not in a rush for considering I work from home, work is decent but at least I have a drivers license to look forward to), I'm just keeping my head down and maintaining the household with my hard-earned money through doodles. The matter of my husband's student loans is catching up with him, so obviously being the good wife that I am, I'm going to be helping him pay that off. Thankfully it's not a crippling amount of student loan debt (you know, like, five figures), but it's not something that should be ignored or put off.

Other than all those things that need to be taken care of, life's been pretty great! Just up-keeping with my kid's education and all that (because I'm a firm believer that education starts at home), and also just, you know, grateful that I'm allowed to supplement this household and keep it together with the work that I do. Some months are better than others, of course, and freelance art is something I'm not considering doing for the entirety of my life. I do plan on going back to school (hopefully by fall semester this year) and finish up my paralegal certification (basically an associates degree). I've sunk in a lot of money these past 10 years, a lot of it being my own money, into college education. I want to see something through and have something to show for it, you know? I'm also excited not to be so isolated too. It'd be good for my mental health to not be so confined to my computer for work-related reasons.

Art Ambitions

Someone asked me on Curious Cat if I ever considered making my own original doujin and honestly, it's definitely been in the back of my mind since the last quarter of 2017. I want so badly to do something sci-fi themed but I always feel so awkward with my dialogue when I try to flesh something out in a sketch. Maybe I should be more relaxed in my approach but there's also more to it than that in which I can't readily focus on making my original doujin.

The main reason why it keeps getting pushed back and essentially procrastinated on is the amount of commission work that I get outside of Patreon. Don't get me wrong, it's totally awesome that I'm getting a high amount of work to pay off some bills and accumulate a savings (and pay my taxes because, you know, self-employed). However, it makes a little part of me sad that I'm drawing for other people and not for myself? If I made an original doujin, I could easily advertise that as a reward on my Patreon but still...

I suppose I just need to get over myself and actually find the time to work on it, even if it's little by little. Once I get over that, I suppose it's just a matter of staying consistent and not falling behind on the contracted/commission work. There's nothing more nagging that backlogged commissioned work. I don't know about any other artists, but having backlog is tiresome and I get really paranoid and uneasy. I'm trying to be better with my anxiety over it too.