Nuki News #16 - Work Ethic

Growing up, my mother had to take care of 4 kids by herself. We had seen the amount of work she put in to get where she is today. To me, her success came when she got her Master’s degree and finally paid off her student loans, and no longer had to work graveyard/night shifts at two hospitals  to make ends meet as a nurse. She finally got to see us when we got home from school, and spent time with us. It got to show me what hard work can do, provided that it’s focused in the right direction!

I remember when I was very young - in kindergarten, our mom promised to us she would take us to Disneyworld. Back then, she had those VHS tapes advertising Disney vacations and we got to see how amazing it was. I remembered my mom had worked to save up bit by bit, and a few years later, when I was in 3rd grade, she did it. She saved up enough to take us on that promised trip. We had a magically amazing time, as you might expect! Of course, working a job and saving up is more money management than straight up ‘work ethic’ but, it has shown me what you can do if you’re smart about buying yourself time in the future to enjoy. 

Another example is my mom’s continued pursuit of improving herself. She’d gone to college during the day, and at night she was a nurse. In my early years I didn’t get to see her too much. We had to stay at a neighbor’s house practically as much as our own home. But she was always clear on what she was doing to help us and herself. Even after she remarried when I was in middle school, she’d continue to work to improve herself and pursue a Master’s degree, and pay off her student loans. In her job, she was getting herself higher positions- taking the place of her bosses, and then their bosses, every few years. It proved to me you have to pursue challenges for yourself to get to a higher place, it isn’t through just continuing to do the same thing day in, day out. She could have easily been done with college after her Bachelor’s and stayed as a nurse practitioner, too. But she wanted more for herself. 

After I graduated high-school, I’d decided I wanted to take pursuing an art career seriously, so to fill the void of routine school left me, I began making schedules for my weeks with tasks for each day to fulfill. I’d build a habit of doing art practice(figure drawing, painting studies, etc) and making comic pages, as I wanted to pursue comics at the time. I was drawing every day, getting in at least 4 hours a day every year from 2012 to the start of 2016. I loved tracking incremental progress, so that’s about 5600 hours invested in drawing and art. So I was quite productive with my time!

However, I don’t think schedules are all that great. It was something I took up doing because it just seemed like everyone’s life(who is responsible and dedicated) revolves around a schedule. You go to college at set times, go to work at set times, TV shows air at set times, etc. It just seemed to make sense to block out times to do things every day. But back then, I was an inflexible unadaptable personality. If something attempted to, or did, break my schedule, it’d really mess me up or upset me, or make me anxious. But it just seemed like schedules worked for my mom. Didn’t they…?

Fast forward to now, after living with the love of my life, having a full time job in the videogame industry, and becoming a more proper adult(at least, a functioning member of society and not a shut in) I tried to set schedules for myself again. And it just plain doesn’t work. I either will ignore the schedule all together, or get burnt out quickly after a few mere days of trying to adhere to it. Hell, even during my week off in May, I thought “okay!! I’m going to schedule my life to be perfectly productive and efficient” I even scheduled breaks for myself! But...after just a day of trying that, I realized the schedule I made for myself was incredibly cruel. Inhumane, even. 

It’s definitely good to be productive and work towards your goals, and set daily goals or tasks you want to accomplish. But I’ve found if you try to tie things up to certain timeframes it causes more harm than good. Especially as I get older, I’ve learned to pace myself, and more importantly, reflect where each task will get me and how it will work to my benefit in the long run. As the last Nuki News covered, I didn’t even get to do as much as I wanted to explore the character concepts; I wanted to do paintings, but I forgave myself for not getting to do them; plus it wasn’t necessary to get the point across anyway.

It’s been a while since I’d done a more advice type of Nuki News, but the conclusion I’d like to highlight is, work ethic and dedication is mandatory to accomplishing your dreams and goals. For me, I want very much to be able to dedicate my time to doing furry art for a living. So I dedicate time to being visible online, posting on FurAffinity and Twitter, growing the value of this Patreon, and doing furry commission work. At the same time though, how I accomplish these things is just as important as what I’m doing. If I’m inflexible with my time, my emotions and needs, I’ll end up burning out, like I did around May of last year. It cost me, I didn’t feel like I truly recovered until September. 

Ack, another long one. That’s what I get for starting this with a bit of backstory, eh? I figure it may be nice for folks who just want to support my efforts to know more about where I came from, and for folks who are also artists/creatives who want to know what I’m doing now. Whichever camp you’re a part of, especially if it’s both, I’m grateful for you reading this and supporting me. This year has been one of ab-normalcy, and that may become the “new normal” moving forward. So getting support from you all even if it’s just you following me without pledging, or pledging, it means a lot.