I've been taking quetiapine as a new medication, and suffered from what I've had to look up - an arrhythmia. All four chambers of my heart felt like they were beating out of sync, with an extremely visceral palpitation, like my heart felt three times larger as it was beating in my chest, which might be tied to the new medication which apparently does cause a prolongation of the QT interval and has a bunch of heart-related side-effects that's listed under 'rare'.

In short, I'm going into A&E again this year, and if you suddenly stop hearing from me I don't want anyone to speculate. Its just a case of taking the wrong pill than anything anyone did or said to me. I will keep you updated when I can and how things turn out. I'm sorry I couldn't bring you better news.

Update: Scheduled for an ECG to check my heart rhythm. We'll find out more then.

The preliminary interviews have been done. I have a mental health review in a week, and next month will be the actual clinical assessments. I'll be asked questions, then reports will be written up. Things will be a little more invasive, all to get right down to the exact nuts and bolts of how I think and operate but the impressions are there, they always have been. The closest we've gotten to any kind of answer to why I seem to be having difficulties that other people simply don't share. Why it feels like I'm always saying the wrong thing, why I keep imposing routine, why there's all these sensory difficulties; noises and textures I can't tolerate. All these little bits and pieces, the alexithymia, the misophonia, specific learning difficulties, a pattern of sleep disturbances, how they all fit together. I've for years been chasing symptoms, unaware of what the larger picture is.

Given the evidence presented so far, a history of my childhood and family testimony, it's strongly pointing out that I do have autism. It's just a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's at this point. I've been looked over before, but each time it was one expert believing such an opinion if I have or have not been something outside their field, but nodding affirmatively in hedged language that it appears I have it. There was never any definitive follow-up which is where we are at this current point in time. The question now is if I have autism with or without ADHD, and if so then it's most likely the inattentive type. That is the part that's still up in the air and complicates any roadmap from where to go from here, operationally I'm acting as if I do have it.

I've spent time going over the strategies and coping mechanisms to make them mine. I've been experimenting and making my own notes of what's worked and what hasn't so far, and dealing with the paradoxical difficulty in wanting the safety of the routine, while also easily bored with it and craving novelty. Well, we squared that circle, and it was trivially easy and explains why every plan before to organize myself has so far failed. It's the same system I use to determine what I have for breakfast, omelette one day, porridge the next, with a floating day of visiting the cafe instead. This gives me routine, and with the choice of jam, spice, filling, well that fits the need for novelty. The same system can be abstracted for art.

It has been a while since I've made anything that I'd want to show off, I haven't made enough of anything to make an artpack yet (my preferred means of distribution) so there's a deal of rust, to tackle it I decided to give myself a project: Doing small animations and portraiture, and gamified it into an RPG. Every piece I do, I unlock points, points unlock levels, which give access to harder but more interesting prompts, and also even more points. Where artists online crave new watchers, favourites, comments, I've invented my own supply of 'dopamine' so to speak, and it has been driving me.

The animations are small, 200x100px gifs. Been trying to harken back to an earlier era of anime with these.
A. Grass Blowing in the Wind
B. Water Sparkling

A gallery full of headshots isn't one that's all that interesting to viewers, I might upload four at a time stitched together, but still prefer just zipping everything and dropping a link.
1. Pierced Dobergal
2. Sad Jackrabbit

Each level I've made myself pools of ideas that I can just pluck from based on what I'm in the mood for, and instead of starting and finishing that idea in the same day I've found out that I don't mind sticking to one stage and working on multiple pieces at once. Which is a far more efficient process as we're now working in batches. Instead of sketching, inking, colouring, shading, and final touches or revisions, each stage gets its own day when there's enough work to justify it. It feels like I'm less working against myself, and more in step with how I am. There's a lot more self-direction, and parts I didn't mention out of brevity. I'm using this as a vehicle to drive further self-improvement. Some portraits involve hands, almost all involve hair, and what isn't a person can be studied and looked at to make a small animation. I don't plan to work on this exclusively, I have sketchbooks I'm filling out and I'm giving myself more permission to act on impulse: Use up supplies, sit at the big drawing board and just trust the impulse to create.

Things are exciting once again to me. Sure, things are scary with the assessments. I haven't fully come to terms with being recognised as autistic as opposed to 'mostly neurotypical with a few elevated autistic traits', it's a late diagnosis that we only caught bits and pieces like being recognised as having dyslexia, There's a lot of emotion, and it hasn't all been positive. I do feel frustrated it never was followed up sooner and how my family belittled my own coping mechanisms over the years, and I know it's ridiculous to be looking up social skill classes at this age. If the end result is I stop feeling like how I kept picking the worst dialogue options with everyone and burning every bridge I come across, I'll take it. All things considered, it feels like I've learnt to do more than survive day to day, and I am going to do more things that bring me joy.

My future looks bright. If the habits stick, and I do turn everything around with what we've learnt... I want to go back to college next year. Finish my HNC in Art & Design and take it from there.

Checking in between work hours, and I see that FurAffinity has walked back some change I didn't know about. My original plan has been to simplify what I type online. For submissions that's just either been three choice words for further reflection instead of explaining everything, or a dictionary definition if the submission's title is all one word. Partially this is to stop being as open about my life as I've been in the past, and inspired by "Clock (one and five)" by Joseph Kosuth artpiece done in 1965. I don't have any interesting analysis of that piece or others like it, just that at a time I studied both conceptual art and photorealism in art school just before Covid happened. Still, the idea is really to just let the art do the talking. I've ideas, plenty of sketches, some things that are close to completion, but nothing I feel like sharing at this time which is probably going to change soon.

So I need advice. When it came to tagging my artwork, I've just been selecting 'doodle' to save the mental energy. Gender and Species was usually accurate, and the tags box itself I've been stripping everything out and just writing in the characters names present. I'm planning on putting my username into the tags so people who don't want to see my art can just blacklist me but for those that do want to see what I continue to make what kind of tags, both specific and general, should I consider?

So far we've got:

● Name
● Gender
● Species

Anything that requires a content warning I feel at this time I'm unlikely to publish and just collate into a zip file I can stick on itchio or gumroad, so people that want it can grab that brown paperbag. This also isn't the space to ask for more of a particular kind of artwork but if there is a type of art you want to find easier, I'll think it over and add it to the relevant pieces when I comb over my gallery. I want to avoid the e621 problem of tagging everything, I'm not adding "black_hair" or other small relevant details, and just focus on anything that you can deem as relevant that I've overlooked.

Thank you.

- V.

You may recall I got away from the digital noise of social media and took more time to myself. This approach helped me reflect on what art means to me and how I connect to online communities, nearly half a year later I can say without qualifier this was the right choice for me to have made. It really let me know who my real friends are and my point of view has been valued by other artists going through rough patches and wanted to have that deep, difficult conversation about their own work and audience expectations. I think we're all a little healthier for it, and I've been selectively re-engaging with a sharper eye to my comfort and energy levels. Given success so far, I'm preparing to delete my reddit, tumblr, and pinterest too as they seem like the next big time and mood sinks.

With each cut I make, the more it becomes clear what it is I truly value and I feel has made me better. Not being constantly plugged in, my attention span is longer, my social skills improved, and I feel more in control of my life. As I'm going about making my own entertainment by checking what's happening locally and meeting new people. It also helped me deal with life's pressures which unfortunately did keep me apart from my drawing board (I now cleared and organised my own physical space to work with traditional mediums again), so I was unable to commit to making a spring art pack for the end of March. Not that it matters, the idea was always to give myself time to experiment, to fail, to have that unstructured play time needed to grow and mature as an artist. I've been using the assortment of sketchbooks, and getting ideas on where I want to go. I don't want to keep doing moody, introspective pieces of my own fursona, I want to turn my eye out to drawing multiple characters hanging out or something with a better narrative than 'look and think about it'.

This does mean I need fuel for the fire to get better ideas (and also because reading books and watching films is enjoyable for their own sake), I've put together some lists:

Reading List: (ambitious for a dyslexic, I know):

- Blood Meridian (McCarthy)
- The Lathe of Heaven (Le Guin)
- House of Leaves (Danielewski)
- Titus Groan (Peake)
- Gödel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter)
- Naked Lunch (Burroughs)
...and several others.

Film Queue:

- Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto)
- The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
- Oldboy (Park)
- The Lighthouse (Eggers)
- Blind Chance (Kieślowski)
- Horns (Aja)
...not including the anime list.

I'm not promising to get through everything or use everything I see as inspiration for some future piece. I want to immerse myself and find unexpected connections. I'm going to continue living and working in the slow lane, than making risky promies of quick turn around on grand pipe dreams. It's been ... fun. I'm looking to evening art classes to flesh out my skillset a bit more and keep me accountable. Given how pressing it is, I'm also looking for computer classes around web design and development. Its been the forever goal to properly set up a personal website, and I think I have gotten lucky and found a programmer I can work with. I'll let you know how that goes.

Finally, to the handful of people who've engaged meaningfully with my work over the years and reached out to me, rather than showing up whenever I post something new asking me to roleplay: Thank you, you're the reason I post anything at all.

- V.

PS. I did curate my gallery and scraps, there's many pieces that have been removed due to no longer being an honest reflection of who I am. Although I am sorry to take down any piece as I think they have archival value for documenting my personal journey, I simply couldn't keep them around as they've been used to mischaracterise me. There was always a gap between what I intended, and what select audiences took away from it. I know I can't account for something like that, but given its been a recurring issue I've taken the stance just to inject a little normalcy back into my art. Getting in touch with that inner vanilla. It's been the hold-up regarding new work as I ask myself a run through of questions given many of you treat my work as if its part of Vosyl's Continuity Universe of Notable Tragedies (or CnNT for short). The new rule of thumb is anything in my main gallery is 'canon', anything in an artpack given to you elsewhere in the brown paperbag you found it in is 'for your pleasure'.

PSS. "Why did you censor-" there was a spider. I just had to turn the cup on top of it.

I'm not going to bury the lede, I'm planning to cull the majority of content in my gallery. If there is something I have produced over the years that you want to save, I'd suggest you download a copy. I don't owe anyone an explaination, as to paraphase Brain David Gilbert: "I'm not your friend, and you've no say over what I do with my art". It hasn't been a secret I've been unhappy with my oeuvre, and I sound like a broken record when I talk about this as its the same old problem that other people make me uncomfortable over it. Despite my best attempts to move on from what I did five to nine years ago, people still associate that art with me. I don't even roleplay anymore but people still ask me to ERP, or throw the same horny nonsense at me like I'm still in my twenties. I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to put up with this anymore. I've brought this up individually, and its always been a minefield of a discussion. I say I've changed, only to be told, oh no I haven't, I'm still that dirty Vosyl that's into this, and that. Some people have reacted so poorly and desperately at the thought of losing me, I've needed a support group to help me leave these toxic one-sided friendships and help point out where I've been gaslight and disparaged in a way that they made it seem like I was at fault. I've been told I'm being abusive for pursuing my own hobbies and interests, and I'm being ridiculous for letting little small disagreements come between such great friends.

Going forward:
- I'm going to change tact from giving everyone who wants to know me the opportunity, into focusing more on my actual friends. The people I've known the longest and can trust to have my back. I want to hang out more, get to really know them, do the whole quality over quantity thing. I watched Mickey 17 this week and had vietnamese food at theirs after, others got to watch me stream Silent Hill 2 and kick the shit out of everything, and I'm still volunteering at a writing club as an editor. I'm not a social media person and am drifting away from IMs to chase the things I want out of life.
- Tighter Curation. I've grown and matured as an artist, lessons at vocational college has helped tremendously. Especially advice I got on how to put together a portfolio and deciding on what kind of artist I want to be, i.e. don't draw weasels if you don't want to be known as the weasel artist. This is the other half of why i want to reduce my digital footprint so its just art that reflects my current temperament and values. Which I'm still in a process of self-discovery and experimentation over, which I can safely say is nothing from what I've done before.
- More consideration in what parts of my life I share online. Especially when it comes to whatever struggles I'm going through, I've been open over the years about my mental health, past homelessness, gender dysphoria, alcoholism, family life, and so on. That I feel I may have attracted the wrong kind of attention, I don't want admirers thinking I'm so brave for living through what I did, or to give me sympathy. Some conversations I've had struck me as weirdly parasocial. I've experimented in recent years with not detailing my thought process with my art, and just give three key words that fit, and I like that. That works better for me than a tell-all.
- Anything that'd earn an 'adult' rating I'll seek an off-site means of distribution. I'm spending more of my daily life unplugged from the internet, and I simply don't want to deal with FurAffinity updating its Acceptable Upload Policy nor do I want to file trouble tickets because someone got mad at my art in comments so those will still be disabled. I want my gallery to be as low maintenace to me as possible. NSFW I'll brown paperbag and wire you up the link to download elsewhere. This also helps an issue I've had of people immediately en masse messaging me on IMs to ERP, which has been disspiriting as its all the same faces who only ever message me whenever i upload and forget I exist when I'm not producing art. I always thought it was more sexy when people thought of you when you weren't around. That's how you know who your real friends are.

Fairly happy with the progress I've made of just letting myself try new mediums, and I let the idea that I need to exclusively do digital illustration to be successful as an artist die at last. Between bouncing from 3D modelling to oil painting, I just feel I've been aimless. It's been fun yet I haven't produced anything to write to home about, I'm just been enjoying the challenge of trying new things and giving myself permission to fail. I think for this next part, I'm going to rein in my focus and go back to basics by zeroing in on drawing. I've bought six new sketchbooks, four softcovers that I've labelled: "Anatomy & Figure Drawing", "Perspective & Environments", "Colour Theory & Composition", and "Light & Shadow". The other two are hardbacks, one that's brown paper I want to use for conte pencil and oil pastels, and the other that's regular paper is just a personal one for whatever I want to work away on. Only other interest I'm also pursuing is film photography to get a basic kit on the go, so any form of subject matter I can't easily draw on location I can just take a snap. I like the chemicals and how tactile using it is. It also feels like a compliamentary approach, and I'll also be signing up to art classes in the city. The reason I bring this all up, is learning what to make that'll make me happy was the previous barrier to getting through this dry spell, this barrier of learning how to deal with creeps and being able to set my own boundaries and be assertive, I feel is the last.

There's definately been a change in me. I'm asking other artists questions, the nuts and bolts of how they work, about projects they did and what they'd do differently if they started all over again with what they know now. Things I wouldn't ask if I wasn't serious about getting back into art. It's still early days, and I'm not making any promises. I feel like I'm on fire.

An appropriate song of choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvyywDE67tY

--- --- ---

This post has no set expiration date. Any journal entry that ends in '.txt' is meant to be a longer lasting notice. Of course this is online, by now you ought to realize that everything is ephemeral. What presense we have online is a castle in the sand waiting for the tide. It'll be gone when it's gone. So plenty of people are going to get the impression I'm pretentious for saying oeuvre, but only you and me are going to know I don't even know how to pronounce it.

It won't undo the damage. It won't bring my old friends back. It won't make up for what happened to me ten years ago.

But I'm right where the person that inspired me to quit was when I decided to follow their example.

I'm going to keep going.

(Scots Gaelic: Merry Christmas, pronounced as 'null-ig kree-yal')

I hope everyone has been enjoying their holidays, be it with family, friends, or alone. Some people have reached out to me, and were taken aback by relief upon hearing I've been fine. It hasn't been a secret this year has been rough for me. I've had difficulties with my family that have hit a tension point and was disinvited to Christmas dinner with them, I got laid off from work at the games studio I worked at since the start of covid, and before taking a leave of absense from the fandom I was having another round of health worries. I was showing signs of having prediabetes, and became stressed over having to handle another medical condition. It opened up some old wounds, specifically the one where I had a particular lung infection and a nine month wait to see a specialsit while wondering if it was going to kill me first. I promised myself at the time if I got through it, I'd settle down and make the art I always wanted to. Four years later, I found myself slipping into my own bad habits and not keeping my promise, and lashed out. I'm sorry for worrying everyone that cared about me.

The suspected horror story this time around is diabetic retinopathy in my left eye, my optometrist appointment isn't until next year. Its not the only thing I've experienced that's suspected to be caused by diabetes but it is the most worrying. There is some good news. The breakdown I had was likely the best thing that ever happened to me, and was a complete shock to my system. I realized the gravity of the situation and overnight implemented some new habits that I've managed to keep up.

I've:
- gotten up at 6:30 AM every day, and now sleep at 10:00 PM. Getting my full eight hours of sleep.
- cut out junk food, empty calories, gas station sandwiches, and alcohol. This is my fifty-sixth day at the time of writing of soberiety.
- made more of my meals from scratch, adopting a shopping philosophy of buying what I need instead of want, to use up what's still in the house.
- gone for a daily walk that lasts at least an hour.
- handled chores such as washing dishes and recycling every morning.
- kept a journal to plan out each day. The thousands of small tasks that only take five minutes has diminished as I set about doing three to five of them a day.

As a result I've steadily lost weight, became more self-confident and feel like I can trust myself. The good news keeps on coming, my grade for criminology and psychology has improved as my work ethic finally felt more applied. I once I took care of the depression debri there was little distracting me from approaching studies with the due care they required, and I'm aiming to get ahead with the class work. My assignment results have been at 70% with a lot of remarks on where to improve, into the 80+% range with a much more congradulatory tone in the feedback received. With college finally feeling like its under control, I've given more thought to pursuing a part-time job and revising my CV and I've a few promising leads so I won't remain unemployed for long. That said, thanks to my better time management, I'm looking to get back into art. I've simply become efficient at how I use my time, that I'm struggling to occupy the hours in the day.

Part of that efficiency is that I'm simply not on social media. I don't use facebook and haven't for years, I ditched twitter, didn't stick to bluesky, hated instagram, only use tumblr to collect art references so I don't talk to anybody, and cohost entered read-only mode at the end of september and will shut down at the end of the year. I only use Email, Instant Messaging, and Steam. So I use my time more constructively, and its also been very transformative for my life. I am constantly bored, and to relieve myself by actually talk to people and have been getting to know them. I think social media creates this mirage effect that we know who we see online simply by having seen them around for so long. But if you take the two of us onto a couples game show, we'd be humiliated. I've also gotten more comfortable just switching off entirely, walking around museums in the city, touring garden parks, visiting new venues. I've gone to the cinema more, and got familiar with the local libraries around me. My life isn't perfect, but I feel less tense and am enjoying everything so much more. I feel happy with the direction things are going.

Like the bad, there are good things I'm not telling you about either. You don't need to know everything about my life down to the minutae of every stubbed down and penny picked up. You just need to know that there is more good than bad, and I'm still trying to do my best. Deciding what to include and what not to is why writing this journal took so long.

--- --- ---

Artwise, I've taken up sketchbooking to get my juices back and taking monthly art classes in the city to give a sembalance of routine. It's helped immensely in keeping my technical ability rust-free. With the time I have, and knowing how art on the internet is precarious, I've been logging into this account every so often to download what's in my favourites. Its helped remind me why I fell in love with the fandom, with the passion and creativity to make something unique to share with the rest of us. I've in recent years taken a strong dislike to YCHs, Adopts, and cropped art of Patreon previews, and more sharply at the mentalities I've seen other artists adopt. Thinking we're embattled by powerful algorithm, that need every trick in the book from optimal posting times to including typos in keywords to avoid posts being suppressed, to failing to diversify where you post then getting mad at early adopters getting a lead when you finally cave and make an account elsewhere. I just feel alienated from the wider culture, and I always felt I was missing out. I'd only hear about something interesting when it was ending or cancelled.

The best antidote I've found for my problem is just talking to friends. I quit using spotify and tidal and using the money I would've spent on streaming to just buying the albums I listen to, especially if I only listened to the one song from that album. I've been getting a fuller experience and a deeper understanding of the band, its history, and the genre. So I talk music and get recommendations and learn what they're into, I do the same with artists they like, and we swap recommendations. Nothing beats the power of word of mouth, and I've encouraged it every step of the way. Whenever I log in, I notice I've gained/lost a few watchers and favourites, despite not uploading anything or commenting anywhere. I've stopped caring about the numbers, its just the weather to me now. Sometimes they're high, sometimes they're low. Background noise. Artists make a big song and dance about the best way to support us is to 'like', 'reblog', and comment on our submissions. I don't think that's the case, the best thing you can do is tell your friends about them. I've been looking into Creative Commons Licenses that could better facilitate that. I'm not worried about derivatives, people reposting my work, or remixing it for their own creative projects. I want to encourage that especially as I don't use social media. Some friends asked about my own setting and made fan-characters based on the lore I told them, others have credited me for my ideas they've used in their own TTRPG campaigns.

I quit art because I realized I wasn't putting my heart and soul into it anymore, and kept justifying taking shortcuts to myself. Shortcuts aren't bad, and you usually pick up faster ways to do things that can save you time and energy and still get terrific results. Those are fine, the ones I took weren't. I'd trace over reference images, or shoehorn in some extra details so I can tag it in a particular way that would get more eyes on it, I'd put off doing studies or watching tutorials online and stick to 'safe' subject matter I knew how to do well. It all added up till I felt less and less like a real artist and more like a fraud. I wasn't pushing myself in the ways I knew i should've to make myself a better artists, and didn't make the time I needed to pursue any large passion project that desperately fantasized over. I never made the space in my life to try new things and fail but have fun doing them. The past three months have been a delight.

Since then I've:
- taken a stab at 3D Modelling in Blender.
- piecing together ideas for cel animations.
- came to understand game development better.
- got my feet wet in graphics programming with processing.js.
- had fun with writing and music, both with actual instruments and a DAW.
- not felt any pressure that I owe an audience results of me experimenting and trying new things.

I made a 'fantasy' CV of all the skills and projects I'd want to be mine, and a 'realistic' CV of wher I am in terms of things, and have been working to make my reality match the dream as a way to guide me. These are still all complex skills that'll take a long time for me to even come to terms with the basics involved. I have grown more in those three months, than I have in the past three years. Although to be fair, when covid happened, I dropped everything to zero in on becoming better at cooking. It is an essential life skill. The only issue is that it was a roadblock for me in trying these new skills out, because often the file formats or sizes involved aren't accepted by FurAffinity. Why work on something that I can't show off, I used to think to myself. For my future uploads I'm leaning on just releasing an 'art pack' at the end of each season (actual seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter.) that contains everything I worked on, no matter how unfinished or loose for those three months. Throw it up on here with a cover image and a link to download, and retreat into the shadows once more till next time. I want to take my time with whatever it is I'm working on, and don't want to pressure myself into finishing things quicker so I can upload them as soon as they're done. I think that's been an unhealthy habit of mine, and having a fixed date to upload might be a sound remedy. Give things I make a chance to sit, and me to go over and fix any issues I spot. I also enjoy sharing art with close friends, telling them only me and them have seen this piece and will remain that way for a day more, so they get that 'exclusive club' thrill. It may sound weird, but people as far as I've noticed do enjoy being made to feel special.

--- --- ---

This post is going to expire on the 1st of April on 2025. My notes are going to be enabled until then if people want to get in touch to get my email and instant messaging accounts, or even my Steam. Once I'm done FA is just going to be a showcase. I subscribe to the Dead Internet Conspiracy Theory that most online traffic is caused by robots and most comments because of that aren't genuine. I just want to make art for myself, and the ten closest freaks I'm friends with, and who they go on and share my art with, and so on. Sunday I spent a little bit of time picking through WIPs and Ideas I had to finish up while I'm still on holiday from university, I have my doubts I'll upload them immediately and might wait until I start doing the seasonal artpacks.

2025 is going to be a very interesting year for me.

Why does it have to be so difficult.