Hello everyone! I'm still alive and kicking!

It has been quite some time since I posted anything here on FA, I've been primarily active on places like Discord or other social sites like Twitter and Bluesky lately, however I've been lurking within shadows here, getting lots of birb goodness which you may have seen floating around on other artists galleries or social sites.

After hiding in shadows for this long period of time, I feel it is time to finally come out of the shadows into the light as I want to let you all know why I have been so quiet here for the past 5-6 years and some plans I have going forward. To make it easier for me to write things down, I've formatted the following as a mini Q&A:

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Q: Where have you been these last 5-6 years?
A: For last 5-6 years now I've been mainly juggling a lot of IRL stuff like my job and helping out my family. I covered in a previous journal after I had moved into my new house some of the these things, however since that journal, to say it has been quite chaotic and stressful is bit of understatement...

Some things we had to deal with in last 5-6 years with house include:

- Having a whole annexe house rebuilt from remains of old coach house so my mum and dads parents could move into property (all before covid and lockdowns happened)
- Having whole roof of house replaced so we can properly insulate loft and use it for storage
- Having our sewage pipes break due to nearby construction work and tree roots damaging pipes causing our garden to be flooded with raw sewage
- And many more....

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Q: How have you and your family been coping in those 5-6 years?
A: It has been quite a mental battle for all of us, while its been one thing trying to cope with work related stuff, house related stuff or day to day things, we had quite a few health scares within family in last few years as well as losing several family members. Last year especially has been very rough for us all as my young brother sadly passed away from seizure unexpectedly. His death has been one of the hardest deaths for me and my family to recover from and we still deeply miss him...

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Q: Have you and your family managed to find ways to recover or heal from all negative experiences?
A: Despite all the stress we been under, there has been some positive highlights for sure. Last year we adopted a new family pet cat, a female tuxedo cat who goes by name Tiggy. She has been such a welcome addition to the family and has particularly bonded with me since we adopted her, she been helping me immensely with my mental health and I've been finding myself more relaxed and in better mindset since we got her. Me and my family also been doing more activities together like visiting zoos or going on hikes, helping us bond more and try get away from all years of chaos we been dealing with, hopefully we plan to keep doing more activities like this when we can.

I've also been hanging out quite bit with friends over on discord, playing games, having doodle sessions drawing with each other or even just having some one on one chats together about life and events, these chats especially have been helping me greatly in particular. I want to briefly shout out all of my friends who in these last few years especially that have listened to my struggles, let me play with them or even join in on whatever silly activity they doing, from bottom of my heart I am grateful to have you as friends and hope one day I can return favour in whatever way I can. <3

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Q: Why return to FA now and what are your plans for FA?
A: 2025 has been bit of year of revaluating my life and tackling some bad habits of mine, particularly tackling bad habit I developed as mixture of laziness and trying to district myself with stuff cope with those last several years worth of stressful events. I feel now is the time for me to try get things sorted by clearing one of the biggest things I have procrastinated over for ages, that being 8 years worth of backlog uploads that been long overdue to be posted.

For the next month or two, My main goal is to finally tackle as much of my backlog as possible. There is approximately 600+ art pieces I've built up over these last 8 years which I've yet to upload here (3/4 of that number made up of Dart specific commissions alone). My goal starting soon™ is to try get into a daily routine of uploading roughly 10 of these commissions per day till backlog is finally cleared (excluding seasonal themed pics which I'll upload in October/December respectively).

I'm also updating my gallery with more organised folders so you can all easily find art of my characters and their reference sheets. I've also been moving some of my older uploads from gallery to scraps folder that I am personally not as happy with anymore or feature characters I'm don't really use or have plans with for time being. Some of these characters may end up being redesigned to reflect my current tastes or kinks but for now they will be on side-lines.

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Q: Any further plans once backlog has been tackled?
A: Once I've cleared vast majority of my backlog, i'm hoping to plan out something i've wanted to do for awhile now, a LONG overdue raffle to give you all a chance to get free pic with Dart or any of my characters. More info will come closer to the time as I'm still working out details and such. I'm also gonna try be more active not just here but on other social sites, you may see more journal/posts from me asking for ideas or feedback from you guys to help me with future commission ideas/

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Thank you all so much for taking time to read this lengthy journal post and allowing me to get some things off my fluffy birb chest.

Here to hopefully a brighter future~ ^ v ^