(aka Kaijukat attempts to return to the internet!)
Hello friends, fans, followers, & peeps!
First off, I’d like to say, thank you so much to all of you for your patience and support! Randomly disappearing from the internet is a thing that often ends up happening when real life begins to overwhelm and consume, and I deeply apologize to those that ended up getting caught up in it. To those that I owe things to, I am working on catching up to everything and reaching out, while still balancing real life, so my goal is a slow but steady pace.
Anyways! I wanted to make this post because I feel like I experienced a huge art/creative burn out sometime last year. Since then I’ve been able to begin bouncing back but I’m planning on coming back in a bit of a different way and want to talk about some of the reasoning.
Running Kaijukat as a business was an interesting experience. It was a rewarding experience, but it was difficult to maintain stability. It gave me a lot of insight into what it takes to run and maintain this sort of business, what sort of things I’m personally more interested in focusing on, and a better idea for how I would like to reshape the business model in the future, and things I can do in the present to fix mistakes, and continue producing products here and there but in a more hands off approach until I am ready to begin anew.
A huge problem I began having at a certain point was a huge “art block”. Things I drew never appeared how I wanted them to, concepts I understood before seemed to baffle me, ideas seemed stale, my hands were too shaky to draw lines properly, nothing seemed to come out “right”, etc. And because I was using my art as my business, drawing things for myself, or using art for anything other than the business came with an immense sense of guilt, especially as responsibilities began to pile up, and deadlines marched closer.
Recently I’ve begun actually wanting to draw again. As I started walking away from using art purely as my business, for designing products and for the public, I began using art for myself again, and almost purely so. I realized that I stopped drawing for myself or for fun as much as I began to table at cons more, and especially as I began real life regular working too. Since childhood, since before I could even remember, drawing has been my most comfortable form of expression. Talking is hard for me, expressing myself through words can often be difficult. Right now my art doesn’t HAVE to be my means for survival in this world, and I’ve decided that if I can help it I’m going to try and keep it that way. I’m looking for my work to help me in a supplemental way, but not depending on it.
Gradually teaching myself self discipline and patience is the long game here. I’m looking to become much more active creatively, not just with drawing but in a wide variety of my life! And I want to share that with others, and see others’ creativity as well! I want to inspire and be inspired! I want to reach out to others, and become better at reaching out and maintaining the relationships and friendships I already have in my life and form new ones! Instead of constantly wondering and worrying over how much of myself I should share with my followers, I would like to start focusing on essentially just sharing myself, and opening myself up to others, it’s way better on my mental health. I’m focusing on my art being a source of happiness, rather than purely a source of profit.
