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So it's been long established that I'm a scatter brain and that my health is not the best. It's for this reason I've never been great at hard scheduling, or developing consistent routines. When I'm on a hot streak, more often than not a health lull will derail all the progress I've made in the blink of an eye. That said, what tends to work best taking all of that into consideration in order to work around it, is 'weekly goals'. With a failure rate of one out of three goals at most. This is...what I had been doing to a point up until now. I had a little weekly planner and everything.

But while it was 'successful' in that, and I did meet the bar I'd set nine times out of ten...it didn't exactly wrangle my tendencies or streamline focus. It always centered on the most urgent priorities...or maybe what I've been misinterpreting as my most urgent priorities. While I have been keeping quite busy with my workload, and am probably more productive than I've been in years, I haven't made any real progress on...well, self-improvement. At least, not enough in my eyes. I fell off the art school grind, partially due to health, and partially out of fear Patreon backers wouldn't care to see art practice stuff especially if it ate up most of my time. I've also been waiting in the wings to practice both animation (which I have some background in already) and 3D modeling.

Writing has also suffered. It was admittedly a lot easier to do it when there was no pressure, and I was just...I guess just letting it roll. I had a mantra I started with when writing Rehab where I repeatedly told myself 'if you let yourself, you'll just edit it forever. You need to release it, and pledge to do better with each subsequent chapter.' But despite my best efforts I've grown to take it too seriously. Having an editor helps as much as it hurts in terms of writing. Grammar and word overuse has improved significantly. But it's also made me obsess over word use amounts, and get so strung up when I can't get a sentence 'right' that it derails flow entirely. I've never been the type to skip around and return to an unfinished portion, cause the answer is always 'on the tip of my tongue'. Not to mention when it comes to my Zootopia series, I'm also all caught up in fear of accidental major retcons.

So, after some discussion with the bulk of my backers in Discord, and some deeper consideration, I've come up with what I hope is a tentative solution that will allow me to give nearly equal time to each of the three work tiers here. These three tiers are of course, (Art and Commission, Writing, and Practice.)

So how is this going to work? At least a first, barring any needed course corrections? Well, each of these 'focal shifts' will be in two-week intervals (save for writing but we'll get to that.) Starting today, I'm on my 'Commission and Personal art' leg of the schedule. Basically for the next two weeks I'll be working exclusively on pending commissions and art that needs completing. This includes several things that have been sitting in flats or line art stages for far too long.

At the end of that two weeks, I switch fully to writing mode. These two weeks are the only set in the schedule that I consider flexible. This is because it has a hard limit, unlike the other tiers. I have two weeks to complete any one-shot work, a chapter of The Family Vulpes, or any chapter-sized work. If I finish before the two-week deadline, I will roll right into the third schedule string unless I need to spend some time revising lore and other storyline factors. If I fail to finish a chapter size worth of work in two weeks (20-30 pages), then I can't allow myself to get caught up in disappointment. I simply have to table the work, and move on to the final schedule leg and complete said project next rotation.

The final string is two weeks of aggressive practice and research. This includes continuing the art school sessions at a revised pace to better fit my learning style, as well as various other 'educational attempts' like 3D modeling, animating, procreate, png-tubing, narration/voice acting, and so on. Naturally most of the work during this time will be a lot of rough scratch work, tutorial results, and experimental stuff. I'm most nervous about this phase of the schedule as I don't want backers to grow bored, so I will be doing all I can to make this section somewhat interactive. (AKA forcing myself to stream more and effectively hold 'draw alongs', 'listen alongs', and so on. This is going to be hardest for me because of my social anxiety issues...but I'll try harder to push through them.

There's a small caveat to the four weeks outside of 'art and commission' week. As a creative, sometimes I'm just going to need to sketch something down. So neither the writing nor practice blocks will ever be totally devoid of art output. I'm an artist first and foremost, and sometimes an idea just pounces on you. I may need to blow off some steam if writing isn't flowing, or if practice is getting droll and I need to liven things up with a palette cleanse. So being able to turn around and doodle is never off the table.

For now, that covers the bulk of the 'new schedule'. But I'll keep everyone updated as things develop and if aspects change as I try my hardest to implement this whole thing and make it work for me. That said, I appreciate your patience and understanding as I try to get a better grasp on the multitude of things I'd like to accomplish without turning into a jack of all trades; master of none.

So what else is on the docket...Oh god...My list of projects is huge. Writing-wise I'm about a third of the way through Kodi's intro in 'The Family Vulpes', and the chapter featuring Clover's therapy session is a few pages away from the editing being completed. I've got a private Warrowick project that's been sitting half-written for maybe...three months now. And I've got some one-shot ideas that are burning a hole in my brain (Mostly excuses to write some smut to make sure I still can.)

Art-wise the workload is steeper, I've got...a few commissions on deck. Then I've got like four pictures that have flat color down, but require various amounts of flourish. To explain, on Patreon I finished a series of Lanolin's Mom variants that I aimed to do cell shading on. (Which will see a public release soon.) I'm also working on the second commission from that Stella set that just needs some dialogue across the variants to call it done. It's also cell-shaded. At the same time I've got a Belphagor pin-up that also needs cell-shading.

Beyond that, I've got a few pieces, J'taime Mon Prince and the Horizontal Madison at a minimum I want to give a full polish treatment.

I've also got some new stickers and character adopts that are still in the plotting stage. The stickers will be a set featuring Hellhound gals from Helluva Boss slated for August. I'm planning to make four of them, with two of them guaranteed to be Loona and Esme. As for the adopts, the theme and creatures voted out for the next round is 'Cryptids', and 'Carnival Food Theming'. So we got Mothman, Chupacabra, Jersey Devil and the Wendigo. I'd also like to squeeze in my girl Nessie as a side character sheet for personal use similar to Fred. Been overdue for a sheet for some time now so it's a good excuse to include her.

That's only really scratched the surface. I fear to look at my 'progress report' tab in the server right now, and this has gone on long enough as it is. So let's wrap this up with a health report.

There's nothing to report. Not much has changed for better or worse. Barring any unforeseen incidents, workflow should continue at the current pace. If it changes, I'll let everyone in the Patreon know. If it's serious I'll make sure the public knows as well.

Thanks for reading, and once again, thanks so much to my backers! Wish me luck...

-Wasty