the "where I've been" post + content schedule update

Hey, all I've been semi-dreading making this post for a while now (which is why its taken me so long to make it) but I figured since its nearing the start of the next month I would make it now.

The background is,

for those who don't know or don't remember, the dayjob I had during 2023 got really shitty really fast around the start of that year and it stifled me doing a lot of things, including art. I was trying to keep pace but kept slipping further and further behind, and went a long ways away without posting a lot of art-- at all, let alone for you or any personal art, etc. I was working 65 hour weeks, erratic and volatile hours, the works.

At this same time, I was trying to keep pace with the normal shtuff I'd do on a yearly basis, Mayternity, the Discord server group picture, monthly stickers, but it all kind of piled up. And the more and more I'd sit down at the computer to stare at the same five or six files that I had had open for the past six months was just filling me with dread, every additional week that went by of me not having any work to show for it, every interaction with someone I owed art tinted with this veil of "you should be working on something right now" really got me in a bad place that spiraled downward more and more into non-productivity. I'm not trying to sell this as a sob story but just sharing my perspective and why writing a post like this has been so hard.

The turn was, around February I finally got a new job, and while I touted that as being the magic hand-waving solution to my problem, (I say this like its a bad thing) in may ways, it was. But what didn't go away was my burnout. I feel like I made a lot of promises to immediately hop back into getting my backlog cleared and then stumbled at the first hurdle, which was poor planning on my part.

but! Silver linings!

I'm refusing to make any promises anymore until everything is done. But I am back at and comfortable doing art again on a semi-daily basis, and am trying to stretch my muscles again to get back in the swing of things.

I still have quite a backlog, which I'm going to list here later, and am going to try to be more honest about posting updates and WIPs. I'm also posting this as a defacto new rules-of-engagement for the time being and I invite you all to do with this as you will regarding your subscriber level, as the financial side of things is what messes me up the most about this and I wholly believe that I don't deserve a lot of the grace I've been given by you all.

The current plan:

• I am going to complete the below mentioned work, then slowly work on a backlog and try to do a "soft reset" of my content here. I have no timelines and no plans, as I'm clearly bad at managing them, but it just means a refurbishing the space here and re-working towards the expectation.

• Until the soft reset, I cannot promise any new Tier 3 YCH stickers. I am going to continue to work on the ones owed, and instead am going to "bank" any T3 payments towards a commission of your choice. This also applies retroactively, if you have five months of owed stickers and would like to convert that to a drawing, please feel free to reach out: I am offering this kind of deal specifically because while I would like to complete the work I set out to do I would also like to fulfill everyone owed, and honestly doing a single image for you at this rate will be faster and more refreshing and fulfilling to me than trying to grind out a monotonous dozen YCHs for a dozen people again. Any continued payments towards T3 will be applied to this as well, meaning if you're continuing to support me at T3 this will go towards art of your choice.
  If you would like the stickers still, that is totally fine, and I plan on continuing to work on them unless someone asks otherwise for this conversion or until they're completed.

• I cannot (outside of the T3 sticker conversion) provide any new commissions until all owed work is done. I'm sorry, but I have a lot of people asking me when I'm going to reopen and every single time I miss the mark. Commissions are something that I want to do in order to fulfill others and diversify my art, but the honest reality is right now I have a lot of things that I've constantly put on the backburner further and further. I would like to get back to doing some self-interest content and comics, and with the turnover cycle of commissions its just always been too disruptive.

• I'm going to work on things out of order. I have never really had a defined description of how I do things and have always kind of operated a bit elusively, but the honest answer is that I struggle to focus and the best way for me to progress on art projects is to work on what has my immediate interest at the time. So if you see something getting worked on or posted but something is owed to you, I am not doing this out of a lack of consideration, its just more productive for me to work on any art rather than fall into that same trap of lamenting over the same file's I've had open for months. I'm sorry.

Last point of order, My current Queue of owed art. This feels relatively small now, but I'm going to still list it here because to me its been a bugbear that gets me down and I want to list it and make it clear:

1) YCH stickers. There are nine(?) YCH stickers from the past months that are owed for about a dozen people, meaning there are roughly ~110 stickers I owe people. The number fluctuates from month to month and I don't have the exact spreadsheet open from here in Patreon but I cross-reference it prior to starting on any of them. This doesn't include any of the "banked" stickers being converted yet but its also assuming no-one does, as this is the first time I announced it.

2) I have a YCH Comic owed from last December when I needed emergency money, which is three pages long. I have been trying to sketch out some parts.

3) I have an art trade owed for a while now that I want to complete.

4) I have to make an edit to a prior group-image that I worked on to remove and replace one of the prior people, as they turned out to have joined the image under false pretenses and at the request of the owner I am swapping them for a different character.

Thank you all for your patience during this time, and I'm sorry that it took so long for me to make this post. Its genuinely embarrassing both the subject and the consequences of my actions (or lack of) about all this and I can't help but say thank you and I'm sorry. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding this.

-Moblie