Nuki News #74 - Set Course for 2022!

Picking up from last week’s NukiNews, I’ve decided to side-step repeating last month’s problem of over-working myself by combining both November and December’s commission queues! This is helpful because November and December have multi-day holidays basically toward the end of the months, and I’d rather give myself more room for maneuvering in completing comms, extending my turnaround time to before the 25th of December. That way I’ll have 2.5 weeks off to prepare for the new year and come up with new directions or focus for a project moving forward.

Oh and if you’d like to commission me, here’s the form you may fill out! I’ll be taking over 10 spots, so you’re likely to get in for my last batch this year!

https://forms.gle/tmMAoV3A92mDMtLz8

For a while this year, I thought I’d have more energy or motivation to do more art outside of commissions consistently. But right now I’m realizing that sort of thinking risked me repeating the mistakes I had in the past, like in 2018/2019 where I overwhelmed myself with trying to do too many different things that require a ton of focus to do consistently.

It’d be a mistake though for me to just think I’ve only been working on commissions though. While not art, I’ve gotten more free time to keep myself healthier than I’ve ever been in my life, in fact! I’ve been exercising consistently, meditating, even picked up fun hobbies like playing pathfinder with friends, and cooking! Letting go of my dayjob last December has led me to enjoying life much more in general and keep a healthier mind too. On top of that, I of course enjoy the work I’m doing. It’s not easy, I push myself to produce good work for my clients and supporters! But it’s a good kind of stress where I’m problem solving, growing and keeping things interesting.

So, who cares that I don’t launch a webcomic that updates weekly or finish an RPGMaker game I started, or don’t make as much personal art as I expected? My goal this year was to adapt to doing art full time, and honestly doing that alone is incredible. There are creatives who do try to make their passion a full time business, and burn themselves out and end up hating their own work or never pick up a pen again over it. My mind and body have definitely been thanking me for how I treat myself. I don’t force myself to overwork or do things I don’t feel good about doing.

I’m going to be my best boss! So when I thought up the idea to combine commission queues of this month and next to give myself a more generous deadline, and take on less than 20 commissions to account for complexity of requests, I was pretty much for it. I aim to close out the year strong in my goal of opening commissions every month, and a byproduct of that has been posting wonderfully smuushy art to share with the fur community every other day! :)

Anyhow, thank you for reading today’s post! Ill catch ya’ll next week, hopefully the Ask Artie Anything Answers post, but if not it’ll be another NukiNews!