The Anaether

I just finished page 34 and just started page 35. Every time I tell myself “I’m totally finishing this tonight,” I end up taking another night or two to actually finish. But I’m always happy to finish pages and start the next one. It’s the mid-progress that slows me down because I feel like it’s gonna be a while before I actually finish. The wrapping up part speeds me up a lot.

I’ll upload more pages to this site once I finish page 35. Right after that, I need to do a few other art projects unrelated to The Anaether, which I’m hoping would only take me up to 10 days or so. Then I think I might try to crank out another 5 pages by the end of November. Well, before that, I really want to do another smut illustration since I really haven’t done one in a long while.

I’m fairly content these days. I’ve only been experiencing minor headaches from pushing it a little bit with staying up at night, but never past like 3am, which makes all the difference in the world. I’m able to work on this thing pretty much every day.

My pace isn’t phenomenal, but it’s steady and consistent. I still get impulses to berate myself a lot for being slow, knowing that I could technically finish a page every other day. I’m choosing not to do that. In the past, my projects would be stop and go. They never had any certainty of completion, no plans. In comparison to project Anaether, anxiety levels in my past art projects were so high, and the mental self-abuse was rampant. With this project now, I’ve never felt so relaxed and this fulfilled working on anything in my life.

Everyone’s different, some people can work pretty well under pressure. But for me, I think school and work just always ruined everything for me. My artwork that ever pertained to school, work (paid or not), or any sort of assignment, was always utter shit compared to my personal work. I’m still living in fear that these near-perfect conditions for The Anaether will somehow be taken away. What else can I do though? Again all I can really tell you as that I’m going to ride the obsession wave as long as I can. I imagine sometimes I’ll have to be pretty disciplined, but under the ultimate goal of showing you guys how awesome my story is. God I hope I don’t go on an indefinite hiatus on this project.

I’m so conflicted. On the one hand I know that I have full control over this whole project and myself. But on the other, I’m acting like the only thing that’s running this whole project is my muse, which I feel like is often a very uncommitted one. My fear over this project someday falling into hiatus hell comes from experience. I’ve done it so many times, I have so many large projects that have been like that. I have witnessed other artists and creators do the same with their projects, whether indie or huge A-list epic projects like big movie or game projects.

One thought has been comforting though. My best friend made me feel better by telling me that it is better to be a creator with tons of unfinished work than one with very few projects going. Something like that.

I mean, we all want to be that creator who finishes all their work and executes well on all of them, but probably there are more people with unfinished works or fewer works in the world. For years I struggled with feeling so guilty for not being that “completionist” creator, so then I was the “worst” kind — the one who really wanted to create, but was paralyzed by guilt and anxiety and made nothing for long, long periods of time. This basically went on for years. I then decided I’m better off leaving my unfinished projects behind, even if I have to tell myself “I’ll come back to them someday” to help me just move on. Moving on was so important. When I did that, it got me to make more work and now I haven’t experienced that “creator’s paralysis” in over a year.

I truly hope that I don’t experience a long artist’s rut like that ever again in my life. I really hope to keep drawing and completing more artwork right up until the day I die.