The showing of Treasure Island has officially ended! I have pushed and pulled so many wheeled set elements on and off stage, and I must have sent like 12 skeletons up through a trapdoor. I know that last part doesn't make sense. The skeleton was the most chaotic element of the show. Anyway, It's been great for my core strength and leg strength. I was worried that my weak back would be a problem since I was essentially The Guy Who Moves Heavy Stuff but my lumbar region held up brilliantly. I'm glad I participated, but I'm also glad it's finished XD. God that was a lot of work.

So as of the beginning of last week, I've been working with my local community college in a stage production of Treasure Island. I'm part of the "deck" crew, meaning I move in set elements and make sure props are ready when and where the actors need them. This is distinct from "fly" which is only about set elements that are too big or heavy to move without using some larger mechanism of pulleys and ropes.

Anyway, it's a real commitment and there will be twelve showings clear through to the middle of next month, so I'm a tad busier than normal. I'd blame my utter failure to adhere to my regular schedule on that if I was a liar, but I'm not, so I won't. No, I just fell off. What the production WILL do is slow me down in my continued adventures of not following my schedule. So there's that.

So, to make a long story short, I didn't want to do that last drawing, but I did it anyway. I already knew that forcing myself to work was the fastest way to thoroughly burn out my creative battery. But I had already agreed to it.

Lesson learned: It's called a 'request' because it's a request. My slip wasn't even because I flaked out and let someone force me to feel obligated. It was because I apparently didn't quite understand the concept of a request.

So basically what I'm saying is that I'm not sure when the next drawing will be. I wish I had a monitor to check my battery percentage, but I don't. All I know is that it'll be back relatively soon, and it'll probably be in the form of some shitty meme drawing. You have been warned.

All right, so since I started actually getting requests, I'm going to change my scheduling in order to save my hand. Now I'll only do a Frequency Friday if I have no ongoing request that week. No changes to technical practice tho. Hopefully that'll work better.

Good news: It wasn't depression.

Bad news: I spent all my motivation finishing the secret santa art event on the Hyun's Dojo discord and I can't post it here until everything is delivered on the 24th.

So, I just finished my acting class final, which was a scene I had to do with one of my classmates. She was more experienced and handled it better, but if you'll excuse some petty whining, I think she got the easier part. Anyway, my brain has this weird way of handling stress, which is that it holds up fine for the duration of the stressful event, then completely says "I'm gonna stop being productive lmao," and sinks into depression. Afterwards. This means I ghost my friends, slump on creative projects, and generally feel like a useless slug for a few days.

I didn't really think it was gonna hit me this hard, but I guess I pushed myself a lot over these past few months. I'll be back eventually, I just gotta shore things up by doing nonintuitive things like shunning social interaction and flaking out on my obligations.

I hope. I mean, it could just mean that clinical depression is crawling back out of irrelevance like some old villain on episode 400 of a shounen anime.

So with Inktober wrapping up, I thought "hey, I'm gonna have to stop drawing like a maniac soon." But I was wrong. I do not have to rely on arbitrary internet challenges to provide a relentless schedule. I can do that myself!

So, starting as soon as my art motivation battery gets out of the negatives, I intend to start drawing on a regular basis a few days a week. So far I'm thinking of doing fanart on Fridays and practicing a certain technique every Tuesday.

I mean to get better, and damn it, procrastination is not going to stop me.

So, basically, a few days ago I thought to myself "I've got all this art I just drew for Art Fight 2023 but nowhere to post it except for like one Discord server." I used to have a Deviantart account, but then I witnessed the fall of the Eldar and decided to leave. Anyway, I figured Newgrounds was an alright place to put my art and I'm planning on joining Archive of Our Own as soon as their waitlist gets around to me. I'll stick my writing there.