Nuki News #73 - OOF!

I gotta admit something-  I bit off more than I can chew last month. Mostly with commissions- I ended up having 3 sequences(one with 4 parts), a full painting, and 6 sketch paintings, all with multiple characters. That’s 20 colored images, when I normally expect to take on 10-16! Even still, I somehow managed to complete them just a day before Halloween...also considering I took the 20th and 21st off for Birthday time. It’s cool I managed that! 

Fair warning this one is a longer post, so the Basic TLDR is:

-I need to better balance my comm workload so I don’t burn out

-Burn out causes me to not want to work on my own projects or drop important things for my next steps.

-As an example I’ve stopped working on an Ad for my art right before the finish line, because I’m probably scared of something.

-This ‘something’ is strongly related to self promotion in general, despite me being confident and happy with my work.

If you didn’t know, I am a sprinter. I take the first 10 days off each month to do whatever I want, working on personal projects, taking time to decide on business stuff, or just relax. On the 10th, I open for commissions, and spend the rest of the month working on them daily, along with Patreon stuff(AMAs, Nuki News, and SketchaNuki requests). This works out great usually, because my commission turnaround time is 14-16 days on average, so that tends to leave me with even more time off to recover and grow motivation to work on personal stuff.

I have noticed too as I’ve been doing commissions each month, I’m getting more of a sense of my face being smooshed up against a brick wall and not getting to appreciate each piece I’m making as much as I used to, and that does kinda suck. Not saying I dislike the work I’m puttin out, of course, or that I’m not putting in as much effort. On the contrary, I’m probably wearing myself out mentally to make sure I keep up my standards and get the work done. You can already figure this has some consequences. You know my Joy to the World project I’ve posted about before? I don’t feel any desire to work on it right now. That’s okay! I don’t beat myself up over these things, but it’s just something I wanna mention in regards to burn out. When I have an abundance of energy that’s when I’m able to work on something purely personal like JttW.

However there are other things I have to be real about, and that’s pushing my art business to the next level. One of my new years’ resolutions was to make an Ad for FA. Fortunately, it’s not like I haven’t started on it, in fact I made quite a good amount of headway! But the last time I touched it or made progress was May this year. I wager that’s when my shift of Anxiety kicked in and I wasn’t confident in how to proceed. Burning myself out for the short term month to month is not wise if I want to expand and do more cool things, and elevate myself as a dependable furry artist for furs to hire!

So, what is there left for me to do to complete my goal of making an Ad for my artwork?

Uh…. well, making the Ad itself, for starters. That’s it, at this point. I’ve completed the copy writing, even made a looping animation for it too! But, I legit just haven’t made the actual ad. As far as effort and skill goes, there’s not too much involved, it’s putting text and timing the animation, sure, but it’s not going to take any more wrist pain to do so. Why have I hesitated for half a year to make it and send it to FA for review? Well, nothing comes to mind precisely in response. I have a hunch it’s anxiousness about putting myself out there maybe, or the commitment, or what it’ll mean if I do, I dunno. I tell myself I’ll meditate on it, aaand then I avoid meditating. It’s clearly something I don’t want to directly face, even subconsciously.

You’ve experienced something similar before, right? Am I scared of success? Getting too many people enjoying my work or wanting to hire me that I end up burnt out or can’t handle it gracefully? Or scared of failure? Spending time and effort and money to put myself out there when it won’t result in anything for it? It’s similar to me promoting this Patreon too- and I am seeing the consequences of my inaction as well. I started the year with 42 patrons, but now it’s come down to 35 as we’re getting to the tail end of it.(and that’s not any of your fault!!! I know financial situations change, that’s been the reasons given from folks who had to reduce pledges or leave). But if I was better at promoting myself, and showing the value of this Patreon page to folks who follow me, I’d at the very least maintain patrons to fill up spots that have to leave.

My weakness as an artist and person is that I’m prone to limiting myself out of fear. I do believe in and enjoy my own work, but I’m darn scared of putting in effort into something and it not paying off. I don’t know why I subconsciously don’t think it’s worth it to promote myself. Maybe I’m tightly holding onto the belief that I just need to keep posting art and that’ll be that, no need to venture out of the comfort zone. And, there’s truth to it! I’ve been getting followers/watchers on Twitter and FA more this year than any other point in my time in the fur community by doing what I’m doing. But going out of my way to try and directly increase my numbers feels weird to me. It’s not my natural thing. I’ve been making and posting art on the internet since 2010, but self promoting? Gosh that’s been more of a recent thing, maybe 3 years at most.

Oop, this one was a bit rambly, sorry about that! Typing this out helps me clarify in my mind where I stand and what I need to do next though, so I appreciate ya bearing with me on this one.

Wise words I’ve read was ‘confidence comes from competence’ and its natural to not be comfy doing something you’re not confident with. But I need to open my mind to screwing up and adjusting. I’ll end it here, thank you for reading!<3