TNTBS - Ripples (Patreon)

"Not moving was the only way I wouldn't hurt anyone, but even if I didn't move at all, I still impacted or affected others around me, so I guess I might as well move however I want"

This one comes with a long post, I hope you stay for it. 

If you don't remember TNTBS stands for Trying Not to Be Sorry, pertaining to personal posts, art and comics.

This piece is part of a series of personal drawing regarding my process in therapy. The main theme is water... water has a big meaning in my life. Some will be very sad, others hopeful, some of them I'll leave to your interpretation.

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It's been quite the year, or more like YEARS. And I think this platform has been an unintended, intimate window into what has been going on with me.

I have been going to therapy for the last 5-6 years, 2022 and 2023 have been the most difficult ones, not because I was in a pit (that was the first years) but because there was a question looming above my head that I did NOT want to address: What do I want?

For the longest time that question HAUNTED me rather than excite me, it was painful to look at myself and my work and not like what I saw, to feel that I was directionless, despite me being the most productive I had ever been in a while. I felt like Patreon was supposed to be a product and not show my identity. Of course, I couldn't have been more wrong and the symptoms of that showed up as laziness (unhappy), anxiety (indecision), quick to burn out (overcompesating) and a bunch of other things... 

It hasn't been easy, not at all. But somehow, slowly, it has become easier, I guess it's finally sinking in?, in some parts of my life at least, and it has brought me a newfound consistency and pleasure for drawing that I can say with confidence, it's my own. 

As always, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to those who have stayed all this time to witness me my journey as an artist.