july 2021

hi everyone. i hope you're all enjoying the heat wave (TM).

you may have noticed that i posted almost nothing to patreon last month, despite not working on any comics. my dog got very sick at pretty much the beginning of the month. from an emergency room visit to an actual diagnoses, it was about $2000 -- so i took quite a few commissions. a lot of commissions. i have been working almost exclusively on commissions during june, and only finished my last one today.
the other thing, more relevant to the update image, is that mawkish was diagnosed with cushing's, caused by a tumor in her brain that is 80% chance not malignant, but has a general prognosis of about 2 years before death once it becomes symptomatic enough to be diagnosed.
this compelled my ex-wife to announce to me that she has found a new partner and will be moving out soon. our lease ends this month, and i didn't really want to coordinate a complicated setup with all of it. i'm moving to texas, about 2 hours away from where i live now. it sucks to move states again, but a 2-hour drive is not bad at all. if i didn't have a place to go so close, i would probably just rent my own place at this point.
packing will probably be a little time-consuming, but because this move is so short in terms of drive time, it won't really be much of an interruption to my time making art. i don't have many possessions to pack in the first place.
i'm not super worried about finances this time, either, as being relieved of the financial burden of caring for my ex frees up a lot in the budget. some of this is immediately being taken over by mawkish's new medical needs (every vet visit costs ~$100, and a monthly dose of her medication costs $60, plus intermittent liver and joint supplements), but not all of it. i also have savings and credit now exactly for this reason.
mainly, i'm explaining this because that's what my entire Pride Month was. most of the planning and preparing is out of the way at this point. tomorrow i have a consultation with mawkish's vet about her testing needs while she is stabilized on medication (regular blood tests are very important during the initial period with cushing's), and this will help me decide when exactly i move.

for this month, i want to finish editing drop-out and finish soft pedaled. with nothing else to really do now, this shouldn't be a problem.
i would love to just redo soft pedaled from the beginning, but i'd honestly prefer to just write another side comic with a different plot instead. the older writing is a little embarrassing, but i'll live.
also, i went affiliate in mid-april on twitch, which means that this month i will Finally unlock subs-only streams on twitch, which i will make accessible to anyone here for free. i'd like to take some drawing requests at that point, but it's really gonna be up to the mood of y'all. i did pride icon requests last month, and they were really fun. work on catharsis can begin in earnest at that point as well.
hopefully this will be a decent month for rewards either way.

thanks for the patience. i will post a poll on probably sunday -- i'm gonna let my hand rest for tonight and tomorrow, because all these commissions have really done a number on it in a way i was not expecting.