draneas

Heyo folks!

So it's been two weeks. Making a plan what to do and actually keeping up with it are definitely two different things. And boy, does it take time to make a weekly schedule (at least for the first time and for me ). I found some useful posts here on dA and made a schedule for the first week, but didn't take the time and sit down to actually make one for the second week. But I mostly kept running with the first one.
30-40 minutes warm-up with gesture drawing. 2 hours working on Proko's anatomy course and then... well. There's so much you can reasearch and practice or take a first shot at. Feet, hands, rendering / color and light... that's where a plan actually comes in handy, 'cause when you've written down what to do, you thought about it beforehand and just have to execute it. So you don't have to quickly pick a subject you want to study out of nowhere. So spending some time to think about what to do beforehand is a good thing ^^ Just don't procrastinate on it.

Other than that I had an appointment at the job center two weeks ago and the person who's in charge of getting me a "regular" job again, takes their job quite seriously... Sadly it was a different person than three years ago. Back then I think I presented myself in a better way, motivated to actually find a job. I think they didn't take me seriously, when I told them I want to be a full time artist, but since it's my problem whether I have enough money or not, we agreed on looking for part time jobs. For starters she gave me 3 printouts, where I'm legally OBLIGATED to apply. And since then I got another one. I like to think, that it doesn't matter where I work, since it's only 4-5 hours a day, but I still don't like three out of the four places. It's funny though, since I applied for two of those jobs and didn't get ANY reply. Just want to mention here, that companies / stores of a certain size (I don't know) are obligated to offer x jobs a year. But there's this "loophole", where they pretend to offer a job and then they just tell you: "Oh, we're sorry, that vacancy has already been filled." No one cares, to actually check out, whether it's a real job offer or not, but then again, how would the govs / jobcenters even go about that? That's not my place to think about... but it still makes me mad.

Anyway, I like to say, "there's nothing to fear but fear itself". But deep down, I'm really scared! Humans are creatures of habit. If there's a change incoming, there's a lot of us, who freek out. I absolutely LOVE to tell people, "it's going to work out" and "you can do it" and sometimes try and offer some proper advice as well (to the best of my abilities). But keeping my own chin up and having a positive outlook is WAAAY harder. I have a handful of people, who really believe in me and give me love and motivation and I'm very thankful for that. And I really do my best, but it's hard to lock out the fear. On one side it's kind of an adventure and exciting to break out of regularity and dive into new things. It's the opposite of boring! One of my more useful traits is, that I always try to take away something positive from negative experiences and not letting those things getting me down. But of course that's not the case DURING those experiences but afterwards. Still useful, as you can only learn through failure / negative experiences. But when I try to imagine a positive future or outcome of sorts, it's obscured by a "fog of war" or rather fog of fear. It's kinda funny. Being a creative person, but not being able to "project" any kind of view or outcome... But then again, who knows what the future holds? You can only forge it in the present (ooooh, big words).

Lastly, to jump back to the schedule thing. Since I didn't have to work in April, I switched my sleep schedule to owl mode. Going to bed between 6 and 10 am and getting up between 2 and 5 pm. So when I made my schedule, I left out the actual starting times, cause I never knew, when I'd get up. So with a positive outlook, I expected having the appointment with the job center at 10:30 am will kick me in my nuts and switch up my sleep schedule instantly. But it didn't. I was so used to staying up all night, that it didn't matter if I slept only 3 hours that night. So a couple of days ago I was like: "There's no way around it, you got to make an effort and switch it up throughout a whole week". Turns out I didn't have to. On Sunday I got up after like 4-5 hours of sleep and went to the Czech Republic (40 minutes of driving) with a good friend and his whole family. It was super nice AND I managed to not take a nap and go to bed earlier (that's about 3-3:30 am xD). So according to my efforts, I set my alarm to getting up an hour earlier than the day before, which was 1 pm. Then I woke up at 9:30 am and was like "FUCK YEAH!". So I set my alarm for 9:30 today and managed to not sleep in or be grumpy about it. Doing my best to keep it up!

I'm really glad, that it just got switched up like that. Also it's finally REALLY nice whether in this shithole of a town which makes it way easier to just pop out the door and take a walk. Since sitting in front of a screen all day is just not great, I set my daily goal to a bare minimum of 6800 steps a day. You may laugh, but even that sometimes doesn't come easy. I'm not much of an outside person, but it's absolutely necessary to move your ass about. My back and muscles are fucked up enough as it is, so yeah, keep that in mind! Get up and stretch every hour and don't forget to stretch them wrists. It'll avoid tendovaginitis or in the worst case carpal tunnel syndrome. 

Phew... What a wall of text. But if there's nobody around to listen to this BS, I find getting it out this way already helps a lot, no matter if someone actually reads it

So have an awesome day!

CAUTION! LONG TEXT INCOMING!

(TL;DR further down)

So, here I am, writing another post. I’ve thought about a lot of things this April, and also I realized quite a few things, so bear with me.

Having worked in proper sales for 9 months - for a cell phone carrier nonetheless - taught me some stuff.

If your boss is a dick, scrutinizing every word you say, verbally offending the whole staff when sales weren’t 100% the day before, still moaning about sales when they hit 100%, pressuring everyone to get at least 150% a day, having no people skills whatsoever and not selling anything themselves (and if they did, there was an 80% chance, the customer came back and complained...) or otherwise being any kind of role model, GET. THE FUCK. OUT. OF. THERE!

If not for a damn cool co-worker, I probably would have quit after 3 months already…

So I told everyone and their dog, that I can’t keep up with that shit anymore, it got to the boss, we had the creepiest friendly talk in all of those 9 months and they laid me off. The temp agency I was hired through laid me off as well shortly after, but there was a 4 weeks notice, so I enjoyed about 4 weeks of freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, the work itself can be quite nice, goes by quickly and the money was great. But I’d rather keep my sanity and earn a couple of 100 bucks less than being loaded and going insane...

While working at the store, I literally did nothing after coming home. Just sitting their, watching youtube and netflix, one thing after another. I made like 2 or 3 drawings in over 6 months? Shit...

Without the mental stress I went back to drawing quickly as you might have recently seen, although I only published a handful of drawings.

So, doing a retrospect of April in my mind, inspired by a couple of “rules for success” articles and videos I’ve read and watched, and a private furry con in a friend's garden with a total of about 20 people, I attended this weekend, a few things came to my mind.

I have lots of flaws I need to work around.

I’m a master of procrastination. I’m unorganized and all over the place.

I’m socially awkward, even being with nice and understanding peeps like this weekend.

So if I ever really want to achieve my goal of being a self-employed artist, I need to do it properly, I need to understand it as work. I did draw and practice almost the whole month, but there’s not much to show for it and I can’t think of a day where I didn’t get distracted by shit. It’s easy when you’re sitting home alone and you’re not accountable, just enjoying life a bit too much.

But if you don’t take what you do seriously, nobody will take YOU seriously!

So after the party, yesterday morning at around 5 AM, I started drafting countermeasures. A plan to follow, making schedules, pondering about doing more NSFW art etc.

One main point that I neglected going into hermit mode, is my audience. You guys! And for that I’m sincerely sorry. Having worked in sales and usually babbling and ranting A LOT (if there’s someone to listen, also this post is exhibit A), I have an amazing talent to NOT communicate with you guys. And I want to change that ASAP. I want to talk to you more, be more open about myself and my work (as an artist), and listening to your opinions, ideas, suggestions! You matter the most, because without you, there’s really no point to it.

So a thousand times, thank you! Thanks for bearing with me, thanks for not abandoning me, thanks for leaving comments and especially thanks to those, who welcomed me back after a long absence! I got a super warm and fuzzy feeling from that

Essentially I’m going to build a proper work schedule, including streaming into it,  and a rework of my Patreon. I also thought about offering merch via society6 or a similar site.

My tangible goal is to use the free time I have being unemployed, to build a steady monthly net income of at least 500€ in the shortest time possible, but not exceeding one year (cause then the unemployment benefits get halved and the jobcenter will “fuck [you] in the ass! RAW, with 30 dicks!” - quote by Arin Hanson aka Egoraptor of Game Grumps fame).

TL;DR
I’ve gotten myself laid off by my workplace and want to dedicate 100% of my time being unemployed to reaching self-employment. I want to take it seriously and schedule my work time, including streaming into it, a rework of my Patreon and potentially merch. I want to engage more with you, my audience and reach a monthly net income of at least 500€ within a max time of a year.

Double that though and my dream won’t be a dream anymore.

Luckily you can live okay with 1000 bucks / month in my little city in Germany.

So yeah, wish me… determination and endurance I guess.

So what about you peeps? Do you have any experience with self-employment or a same / similar situation? Any tips, tricks, or life-hacks and, of course, encouragement are appreciated!

Thanks for reading this slew of words!

Yours sincerely

draneas

Welp, just a little reminder, that commissions are (still) open.
Check out the details HERE

There are 2 slots. Nothing special, just want to be able to have control about it and make sure everyone get's their order as fast as possible.
If 50 bucks is too much for one payment, you can pay in two installments on my patreon now. When they are done, I'll start drawing.
All details from my commission info stay the same.

Also, every Dollar via patreon is very appreciated!

Thanks for reading!