Thank you!! ❤️🙏 I own two and they’re still kinda babies (2 years old), but so large already and my favorite plant haha

I’ve considered it. My problem with patreon is how they’ve screwed over both creators and clients in the past, and though mine is still there and i haven’t fully taken it down yet, I’m weary of putting all my eggs in the patreon basket right now. I’ve considered substack or paying for my own blog

But great and as much of a giant blessing as it has always been to work with the most amazing AD and editorial team at SciAm, that work isn’t mine. It’s there to serve a purpose and has bits of me, but it’s not mine in the way a personal art practice can be, which I don’t have rn. So I float.

This is the shit that keeps me up at night even as I still against all odds make art in small ways, in the corners of meeting notes and scraps of work cardstock, in tiny sketchbooks and even tinier slots of time. The only thing that consistently kept me flexing that muscle memory has been SciAm

How do I navigate the internal compass shift after struggling to climb out of the yawning abyss that was burnout and artblock (and turning down opportunities because of it) only to find my peers just as blocked and stressed in different ways? How do any of us navigate any of it?

How do I navigate this old but new sphere when who I am now is not who I was when I was childless, wfh + freelancing full time? When my sweat and tears werent threatened to be scrapped for data bits, and socmed spaces still resembled a democratic bubble where all art could flourish but now don’t?

So where does that leave me when people ask me that question? Frozen in time, apparently. Is an artist really an artist if they aren’t consistently making art? <- that’s my college age insecurity speaking, but really.

Someone mixed in some green crayola wax into those peas. Nobody can convince me otherwise.

It’s so cuuuuteeeee!!!!!

Ha! Same! I have to fight that “I’m messing up” instinct every step of the way, so working in a sketchbook takes some of that pressure off!