(sorry if this shows up twice in your inbox; I don't think this posted correctly the first time and I thought some of you guys might like to know where I've been and where I'll be off to)

Hi guys, sorry for the lack of activity lately. This past week has really been kind of a shitstorm for me.

This is probably going to be a long, emotional journal, so if you don't feel like reading my shit, feel free to press the "back" button now. Don't mind the hidden comments below; this is a recycled journal entry and all the hidden comments were related to the entry that USED to be at this URL. The reason why I didn't bother writing a new journal was because I didn't want this to be on my front page.


So I have an issue. Well, a few of them, really. Normally they're really quite manageable, but this past week, they all blew up in my face at once leaving me feeling pretty drained and pathetic, to be honest.

So what are my issues? Well first off, I have problems with time management. This isn't really a big secret or anything; I've mentioned it in a few of my previous journal entries so this isn't really anything new. I'm terrible at managing my own time and I'm terrible with remembering dates.

Second, I have the awful habit of becoming a total recluse whenever I feel overwhelmed. This impacts both my online and IRL social behavior, but in different ways. Online, I tend to isolate myself. I stop checking messages on dA, I become inactive on Tumblr (unless I'm in a REALLY bad state, during which I post hysterical text posts), and I just basically cut myself off from most forms of communication. I really had to force myself to even write this journal.

IRL, I still isolate myself, but in different ways. I bottle up my emotions and pretty much never make it known if something is bothering me, which works pretty well most of the time until the accumulated shit of however many months it has been since my last breakdown becomes too much and I basically turn into either The Incredible Rage-Hulk or a big pile of sobbing mess.

Third, I get intimidated REALLY easily. I try not to pay too much heed to what other people think about me, but in truth, those kinds of things really do matter to me. This can work both with me and against me. On good days when I'm feeling confident, this drives me to be active in the community and help other people wherever I can. On bad days, it does just the opposite: because I care too much about what other people think of me, I become isolated and withdrawn, avoiding talking to people because I'm afraid of their criticism.

It's not JUST people I'm intimidated by, either-- I'm really intimidated by big numbers, or more specifically a large volume of input from a lot of different sources at once. This is why it takes me so long to reply to messages sometimes: I just see that big, scary number at the top of my page, realize that every one of those is a person (or a spambot) who was kind enough to leave a comment or a fave, or one of my friends who wants feedback on their artwork, and instead of manning up and dealing with it, I basically wuss out and run away.

In more visual terms, this is my reaction:



Geez, that intro bit was way longer than I would have liked it to be. I hope this doesn't end up being a 10-page essay or anything


SO, I have all those above issues that I talked about and whatnot. They're usually pretty manageable. Usually. Until, that is, something comes along and kicks over my emotional tower of blocks and ruins everything forever.

In the past couple weeks, I've been busy with school. Usually it takes me a while to get readjusted whenever I enter a new semester, though this semester I've been having more difficulty than usual in doing so. I think this is mostly because my Mondays and Wednesdays are set up in such a fashion that prevents me from really getting anything done aside from schoolwork.

Basically this semester has been kind of taxing to me mentally because I'm back to taking "real" classes with "actual" homework and exams this semester instead of mostly doing art classes for my major.

So there's that... and I also recently found out that I'm probably going to have to go back to a fourth year of community college.

Personally, I'm not too upset about this in itself. I actually like community college; it's cheap and close to home so I don't have to worry about housing. What I DO have to worry about, though, is what's at home.

I haven't told either of my parents this yet because I'm absolutely terrified of how they'll react. My dad probably won't react too badly because he had to stay in school for a prolonged period of time due to switching majors, but my mom's potential reaction is what scares me the most.

During my first year of college, my mom made fun of one of my friends for staying in community college for four years, calling her a "loser." That phrase didn't really hold much significance then-- at most, I was irritated at my mother for talking rudely about my friend.

But then the end of my second year of college rolled around, and it was clear that I wouldn't be able to transfer to a larger university due to my lack of credits and my mother being diagnosed with colon cancer.

Then the end of my third year came around and I had applied to a number of universities and art colleges, my mother had undergone and finished treatment by this time, and though I was still short a few credits (some of the classes I had taken hadn't transferred to all the universities I wanted to apply to) , but I worked out a plan to finish those during this semester and the summer. I was feeling a mix of emotions-- panicky that I wouldn't be able to transfer in time, but also excited because my education seemed to actually be going somewhere. In the midst of all this, I fucked up. hard.

Somehow, I missed the deadlines for sending transcripts to most of the schools I wanted to transfer to because I was stupid and fucking complacent that I had completed step 1 that I forgot that I actually had to complete step 2 in order to proceed. I just fucked up so hard and I fell flat on my face and landed in a big fat pile of wet shit and I fucking hate myself for it.

Suddenly, every single one of my issues that I had managed to keep straight exploded into a clusterfuck of raw emotion and sent me into a downward spiral into self-loathing. My mother's comment from three-and-a-half years ago hit me in the face like a sack of bricks, as the realization sank in that I was going to be the loser who went to community college for four years because I couldn't manage to grow the fuck up and act like a reasonable fucking adult.

In a state of panic, I tried to see if I could graduate from my community college with an AA so that my three years in community college wouldn't be for nothing, but all my credits were wrong because I had been taking classes to TRANSFER, not to graduate.

Basically my only choices right now are to go to a private art school that I'll probably have a hard time affording or go back to a fourth year of community college and be that "deadbeat loser" my mom hates.


Needless to say, I feel like shit.

I feel like I just shattered my parents' expectations of me. They had really high hopes for me from kindergarten all the way up to my senior year in high school. I was in honors program for the vast majority of those years and I scored high in most of my tests. I feel like I've let them down and I'm just waiting for shit to happen when they eventually find out how much I've fucked up.

I feel like a wreck for letting MYSELF down when I promised myself I'd actually get something right without having my hand held the whole way for once, but instead I've effectively fucked myself over.

I feel like a terrible person for letting that affect me so much that I couldn't even write a damn "thank you" for all the birthday wishes and gifts you guys were generous enough to give me and I feel like an ungrateful twat for not telling you guys that I love you often enough.

I feel like a terrible friend because while all this has happened, my friends go through problems of their own and I can't be bothered to let them know that I care because I'm too scared to talk to anyone.

I feel like an attention whore just for writing this journal and I feel awful for knowing that I'll probably be too afraid to reply to anyone who actually does bother to comment.

I feel like an irresponsible asshole for opening point commissions then not working on them even though I should clearly have enough time to work on them if I bothered to actually manage my goddamn time correctly.

I feel like a lazy writer because I haven't bothered to post a proper update since my comic was featured on SmackJeeves.

Sometimes when I'm driving I feel like I should floor the gas until I'm going at 100 mph and just ram my car into the most solid wall I could find. Those thoughts don't usually last very long, though.

I feel really vulnerable in general. I'm afraid that I'm just not good enough to do anything even remotely useful. I know I should just be appreciative that there are people who do support me, but I feel naked and hurt, like I can't deal with anything I've been able to deal with before.

For some reason I keep thinking back to this comment I received on my comic:

Absolutely blasphemous.
That comic had no comedy in it what-so-ever. There was absolutely no reason for me to scroll through it and waste 7 seconds of my time. I'd rather be writing comments like these than to read your filthy humorless comics.

...and even though I was able to handle it just fine when I first got it, right now it feels like one more arrow through my chest to add to the several that were already there. It's just one fucking comment written by someone who clearly had too much time on their hands, but it still bothers me because I'm afraid this person might be speaking the truth.

I guess it's a little silly to be worrying about something as stupid as a negative comment on my comic when I clearly have bigger things to worry about.


This whole ordeal has been really taxing to me and I don't know if I'll be able to devote any time to dA in the coming weeks. I might have to extend my absence and just take a hiatus or something.

idk, maybe this will turn out like one of those "I'M GOIN ON HIATUS GUYS" "WAIT NVM I ONLY HAD TO LEAVE FOR LIKE FOUR HOURS I'M BACK AGAIN" situations, but in case you guys don't hear from me for a while, I just wanted to make it known why I might be inactive.

This means that I won't be working on commissions until I'm emotionally stable again because it's really hard for me to do not-vent art in this state. If any of the three of you who have ordered a commission want to cancel or change an order, feel free to leave a note in my inbox. I probably won't get back to you for a while, but I'll get around to reading it before I'm ready to start again.

I'm really sorry about all this, guys. Thank you if you've read this far and I'm sorry for being a buttface this past week.





medli20 awaaaaaaaayyyyy!! *whoosh*