We’re back in 2024
Hello everyone,
How are you? I hope you’re enjoying a wonderful 2024 thus far. Mine ended a little gray – my lateral epicondylitis increased enough for me to sincerely stop all activities related to drawing for a while.
It has been painfully obvious in the last few months how I have been delaying my recovery in order to keep up with my work, my webcomic art, my professional portfolio, and commissions. Drawing is as vital to me as breathing, and every time I felt a small recovery, I just returned to my old, toxic habits as an artist. This affected my quality of work, my well-being, and even my ability to open marmalade jars.
Social media also took a toll on my mental health; all the confusion regarding which platform is “appropriate” for artists and which is not forced us to create accounts everywhere to stay up to date with the community. As a casual user of social media (and not a very good one, I must confess), this not only exhausted me because I couldn’t keep track of everything but also worsened my anxiety problems.
For this reason, I removed all my apps from the phone and added a TimeApp Blocker in case the remaining apps absorbed me more than necessary. It has been like this for more than a month (even though I uploaded my Aurora sketches), and I feel much better and have a better perspective on what I’m going to do about this topic.
It’s literally impossible for me to maintain an insane number of accounts at the moment. It’s not healthy either, so I decided to keep up with the ones that make me happy and/or work for me. Those are Tumblr, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, secondly. I’ll try to keep an eye on Threads too from time to time.
Regarding Twitter(X?), BlueSky, or Mastodon… I’ll have them on pause for the time being, especially the first one. If the art community ends up on one of them, I’ll be back, but at the moment, it’s too much for me. I’m an artist – my thing is being on the digital tablet/paper 24/7, not being trapped in the snake oil salesmen’s ways of selling us our digital social time. When they and their algorithms remember the purpose behind the social media they own, we’ll see.
With this being said, I’m happy to be back in the digital community. I have an insane amount of things to share; I’m preparing several contests, a portfolio for DC, I almost have a programmer for my game, and I’m still trying to overcome my fear of videocameras and social media, but we will get there, haha.
Thank you for being there. I’m looking forward to what 2024 has to offer us artists.