A Fifth Blogiversary Heart-to-Heart
Um... wow, it really has been about half a year since I've last posted here, hasn't it? Granted, I've never actually left tumblr— I've still been liking various posts and even posting some of my art on a handful of alts— but, yeah, I haven't been focusing on tumblr full-time since last October.
But I couldn't miss the five year anniversary of this blog, now could I?
I've composed posts in the past celebrating my previous 'blogiversaries' as I've dubbed them, and forgive me if I've made this point in any of them, though joining this site really has changed my life for the better. If not for the family I've met here (Looking at you, @wandering-coast, @stephysalcido, @giftboxxworld, @panurei-derogatory, @minxxikuo and one very special blog who I've chosen to kept anonymous for their sake— you know who you are <333), I genuinely don't know where I'd be right now.
As I've mentioned in my previous post, for the first time ever, I decided to shift gears posting to another website, Bluesky, without closing up shop on the site I'd previously been posting on. I'd amassed just as many followers over there in a month or two than it's taken me to amass on this site (Boy, that's humbling), though I'm willing to bet that that's 'cause it was during the big 'migration' from the site that has no place on my blog (It goes by a single letter now. Q, I think).
For a couple months, I kind of preferred it over there. I absolutely despise the fact that your follower count is right there on your page instead of tucked away in a sidebar like on here, but other than that, it felt nicer. And the site's head honcho, to my knowledge, isn't a raging transphobe (Unlike some head honchos whose name rhymes with 'whiny brat' around here)!
But something just wasn't clicking. I'm not ashamed to admit I posted some of my more recent (Well, then-recent) works over there, and they served to be way bigger hits. Most of my art was this way for a little while, but at one point that all just... stopped. Works I poured hours into would barely be worthy of double-digit likes, and given that I could always see when somebody stopped following me...
Well, that was kind of a death blow.
This isn't something I like to talk about publicly, though I suffer from extreme RSD (Rejection sensitivity disorder), and even the slightest hint of a critique or the feeling of being forgotten or left behind can cause me enough distress that one time it caused actual physical pain.
I'm telling you this because that is one of the reasons I kind of fizzled out of posting here. Of course, if you recall when I stopped posting here, you'll know there are other reasons, but I just felt like I peaked sometime in 2023 or something and it's just been kind of downhill ever since.
Call it hyperbolic, but I've had RSD bouts so bad that I'm starting to wonder if my work even has a place online anymore. If I feel like I'm posting to a brick wall half the time, then what is it for? Especially since sometimes even I don't like what I create? I thought that would change over on Bluesky, but ultimately, no dice.
So... yeah. I had to step away from tumblr because I was ashamed over how many of my posts were just DOA and that I was just wasting my time. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up. Lord knows I have almost given up at least three separate occasions between then and now, though through those hardships I've learned a very valuable lesson:
It's not about creating for others: it's about creating for you. If you are happy with what you create, that is all that matters.
Sometimes, I'm not exactly proud of what I create... but the times where I am far outweigh them. In the time I've been away, I've been hard at work on my project Door2Door, and I certainly have a lot of art pertaining to it to post over on @door2door-official, its own side blog. Moreover, since November, I've also drawn a few things that I'm quite proud of, and... you know, I think I'm ready to post some of it here.
Given this site's reputation, I can't say for how long I'll be sticking around, nor can I guarantee that I'll be as frequent as I was half a decade ago... though, as for the former, I'd like to see if I can hit an even, square ten years of Coolness.
To round this TED Talk off on a positive note, I think you'll find the selection on my RedBubble storefront has increased tenfold; there are over a hundred designs over there now! Here are just a few of my favorites.
TLDR: Consider this a soft return to form; I'll be posting more at my own pace rather than posting to 'make a quota'. Follow my Door2Door sideblog if you can, as I will be posting plenty there in the months to come.
Other than that... if you've read this far, help yourself to a cookie, and I guess all I can say is... thank you for your patience, and thank you for having not given up on me. 💙🏳️⚧️✨
