EDIT [9-28-21]: If you've noticed the new banner, it's a recent commission by the talented Garnet-Frost. I'll blog about it soon but I have also commissioned some album art from another artist and when they're both done I'll make a joint front page post about their work. It feels incredibly vain to ask for portrait commissions but I'm so happy with the work that I'm feeling silly about it. Thank you Jackie, I'm in love with this ridiculous thing.

In regards to the blog title, I wanted to focus this specific drawl on the paradoxical nature of life.

Everything is amazing right now. My life is at a certain point where everything feels perfect. I'm living a creative life off grid with a partner that is supporting this crazy chicken-owning life style. We have a beautiful piece of land in the middle of nowhere, hours away from any meaningful civilization, surrounded by mountains. Despite the amount of love I'm receiving from my fiance, I still woke up the other night with feelings of doubt and anxiety.

Was around four o'clock, after midnight, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm in a big bed with a snoring fiance, staring into the glow of my Newgrounds account wondering why I'm not a more successful artist. Fuck me, my life is objectively perfect and I still crave notifications and social confirmation from small, ridiculous communities? Let's sequester several minutes to take stock of a few things...

I am basically finished with a new EP, but I'm putting off releasing it for now. There's always more work you can do to an album but I'm experimenting with a couple of artist commissions. I asked two artists for some vanity drawings, something along the lines of "draw a sexy robot quarl, or just draw a quarl :3 idk" and I told at least one of them that I'm working on an EP that could use art. I'm waiting to see if these two get back to me because I'm excited by the idea of paying someone else to do the art for an album. Fuck my expensive BFA, drawing does not bring me any happiness. This is a decent means to funnel that 2nd place Robot Day money back into the community that helped raise me.

Here's a few failed concept arts for the new album:

yeah, I'm just gonna pay someone else instead.

Today, Tom an I are making use of a skid-steer to cover our cisterns with enough dirt to protect them from frost. We're burying enough gallons to last us 6 months. We've also set up a means to harvest rainfall or snow in an emergency. The system currently in place uses our roof gutters and it recently net us 1,000 gallons in one rainfall. We're putting the finishing touches on the solar array by contracting a couple of carpenters to help build wooden mounting units. Our array has been laying on the grass collecting energy since day one. It's also been killing the grass so I'm stoked to get them up off the ground finally. On a similarly plant related note, our hydroponic vegetables are doing really good. We'll be covered in snow this winter and still manage some home grown salads :D :D

Those same two carpenters I mentioned are helping us close off our porch so we have more square footage this winter. We've ordered a pellet stove for heat, next year we plan on installing a redundant geothermal heat source to take some stress off of the pellet stove/propane tank. The house's power grid can be hooked up to a propane generator, again in case of emergency. HEAT REDUNDANCIES!! WOOHOO!!

So with all this in mind, why am I waking up feeling like an anxious failure? Is it because I told my 2007 highschool graduating class "I'd work for Disney one day" and failed? Is it because I'm not some rock and roll legend that died of drugs or suicide when I was 27? Is it because I never found a better platform to share my work than Newgrounds? My working theory revolves around the fact that I'm only human. Life is so fucking good right now but I guess I'll always have a small place in my heart for feelings of self doubt and anxiety.

Fuck me I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯